Kaiping

About 150 km from Guangzhou, Kaiping is a place full of fortified towers called Dialou. These towers were built by rich merchants as housing and protection from bandits. They started building them from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) and kept building them till about the 1930s. There are about 1800 of these 'castles' left and they are protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The locals have started to commercialize them and villages have an entrance fee to see up close.

We visited them recently on a trip to Guangzhou, taking a dick si to Kaiping for the day. Well worth the trek if you're in or around Guangzhou.

Ding2 ding2

Hong Kong seems to have it's own take on Cantonese. I just got back from Guangzhou, where the folks speak a slightly different version of Cantonese that is easier to understand and relate to Mandarin than the Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong.

Ding2 ding2 is the Cantonese word for tram and it comes from the noise that trams make as they hurtle around the streets at snails pace.