The Lovely Chinese Watchtowers Built With Proceeds From the California Gold Rush

[LiberalArkie]

BY VERONIQUE GREENWOOD

Three hours out of the Chinese mega-city of Guangzhou, through the sugarcane and banana plantations and deep into the rice paddies, strange things start to rise from the fields. Called diaolou, or watchtowers, they have an oddly Western look, frosted with arches and spires and little domes that contrast with the straight lines of many traditional Chinese houses. There are more than 1,800 of these towers standing today, reaching five, six, seven stories tall.

There is a reason for their unusual appearance. This part of China was home to the Chinese who mined for gold and built the railroads and opened laundries and groceries in the late 19th century in the United States. The towers were built with the proceeds—they show a mixture of new tastes picked up in distant lands and local Chinese building styles that's unique byproduct of a very particular history.

The first towers were built in the Ming Dynasty, about 600 years ago. This region, called Siyi in the 1800s, is prone to flooding, and whole villages were saved from drowning by retreating to tall, castle keep-like structures. But according to Wuyi University historian Selia Tan, the tower building didn't begin in earnest until after the 1840s, when the Imperial court, responding to a British demand for laborers, decreed that people would be allowed to leave the country for work. Around the same time, rebellions devastated much of southern China. In Siyi, a 12-year war between local inhabitants over land left the area in an even worse situation. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, Siyi people were looking for a way out. Across the mouth of the Pearl River Delta, down to the harbor of Hong Kong they went, and then over the Pacific.

In California, the migrants sifted for gold in the mountains and later hired themselves out to work on building the new transcontinental railroad. Ninety percent of the Chinese in California in the 19th century were from Siyi, by one historian's estimate. The language that rang through Chinese camps in the gold country was not Mandarin, the northern tongue many people today call “Chinese,” but a dialect of Cantonese, the language of the south. The more enterprising new arrivals learned English and set themselves up as middlemen and eventually, merchants.

Snip

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-chinese-watchtowers-built-with-proceeds-from-the-california-gold-rush

[longship]

1. Cool! Well worth a click through. R&K nt

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Now, here's a story I've never heard before. And what a fascinating one it is.

Money from California's Gold Rush and the transcontinental railroad built these amazing towers.

Wow.

K&R

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. It IS astounding, isn't it?

I had no idea that so many of the laborers were all from the same area.

Much as most of the Indian motel owners in the USA are from the same area of India.

[yuiyoshida]

4. pretty cool stuff

Thanks for posting.