Zilicun is one of the classic Kaiping diaolou villages, where fortified multi-storey watchtowers rise from fields and low village houses. The towers mix Chinese planning with details borrowed from Europe, Southeast Asia, and North America, reflecting the money and ideas sent home by emigrants from this part of Guangdong.
For travellers, Zilicun is one of the clearest places to understand why the Kaiping diaolou became a UNESCO-listed landscape. The pleasure is in the combination: rice fields, defensive architecture, family compounds, and the slightly surreal sight of foreign-influenced towers standing in a rural Cantonese setting.