Longrui, a few kilometres north of the city in the Nanlang area, is one of the better-preserved overseas-Chinese villages in the Pearl River Delta. The Zhongshan area produced a huge diaspora to North America and Australia in the late nineteenth century, and the money those migrants sent home funded a wave of building in the 1920s and 1930s — fortified mansions, watchtowers, and lineage halls in a hybrid Chinese-Western style.
Several of those buildings survive in Longrui in varying states of preservation. The village is best explored on foot in a half-day visit, ideally combined with the nearby Sun Yat-sen Memorial Museum at Cuiheng, twenty minutes away by taxi.