Yinglong lou, Sanmenli village, near Chikan, Kaiping, China

Yinglong lou was built in the mid-sixteenth century at Sanmenli village, near Chikan, Kaiping, China. It is the oldest surviving diaolou in China. The village is a Unesco world heritage site.

Most diaolou were built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to to guard against both bandits and periodic flooding. It s believed that about 3,000 were built originally, of these around 1,800 remain.

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