Kaiping Diaolou, or watchtowers, and a clutch of idyllic Kaiping villages in Guangdong Province were described World Heritage status by the 31st World Heritage Committee meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand on June 28.

A cluster of striking Karst formations and stone forests in Southern China's Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi provinces was also listed as a natural world heritage site by UNESCO at the meeting.

Lying in a quiet corner of southern China, to the west of the Pearl River Delta, Kaiping's bucolic countryside is sprinkled with hundreds of rural Qiaoxiang, or overseas Chinese villages, which gave rise to much of the Chinese diaspora in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Many distinct buildings, including striking tall watchtowers or Diaolou, were built by returning émigrés in a distinct style fusing Chinese, Victorian and Baroque architectural elements.

There are a total of 1,823 diaolou in Kaiping, mixing the Chinese and western styles and appearing in various forms. They are a unique historical and cultural scene that reflect the integration and development of multiple cultures in a certain historical period.