Day 3 - Chikan Ancient Township

After visit LiYuan Garden, we went to visit Chikan Ancient Township which is not far away from LiYuan Garden.

At first i thought it was an actor and actress taking some shoots there, only to realise later that it's a couple taking shoots there.

Saw a dog there

Chikan is an ancient town established during the Qing Dynasty under the governance of Emperor Shunzhi. With 350 years of history Chikan evolved from a country market place into the business center of Kaiping. The prosperity of this ancient town was mostly attributed to the business competition between the Guan and Situ families. Memorial family libraries were built by each family and both libraries became landmarks of Chikan. The streets and buildings in Chikan, as they currently exist, were mostly built during the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century by Overseas Chinese returning to their villages. The Overseas Chinese incorporated elements of Western architecture into their new homes. The buildings were three-storey structures with a store front on the street level and two residential upper floors. Althoug the buildings did not have much decorative details, each building were built with a balcony facing the Tanjiang River which flowed along and divided the town. The balcony called Qilou in local dialect became a prominent architectural feature in Chikan. While Chikan evokes fond memories of a past glorious life, it is still very lively with delicious local foods, folk arts, fishing boats, old banyan trees, 600 old Qilou buildings and friendly people. It is a town with a unique presence in the middle of the surronding crop fields and Tanjiang River.