Kaiping or Hoi Ping is a county-level city

County-level city

A county-level city is a county-level administrative division of mainland China. County-level cities are usually governed by prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by province-level divisions....

 in Guangdong

Guangdong

Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...

 Province, southern China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. It has a population of 680,000 as of 2003 and an area of 1,659 km². The locals speak a variation of the Taishan dialect

Taishan dialect

Taishanese is a dialect of Yue Chinese. The dialect is closely related to Cantonese.Taishanese is spoken in the southern part of Guangdong Province in China, particularly in and around the city-level county of Taishan...

.
Administratively, Kaiping City is under the jurisdiction of Jiangmen

Jiangmen

Jiangmen , is a prefecture-level city in Guangdong province in southern China with a population of about 4.48 million in 2010. The 3 urban districts are now part of Guangzhou - Shenzhen built up area.-Names:...

. It was set up as a city in 1993.
Kaiping City is located 140 km away from Guangzhou

Guangzhou

Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...

, in the southwestern part of the Pearl River Delta

Pearl River Delta

The Pearl River Delta , Zhujiang Delta or Zhusanjiao in Guangdong province, People's Republic of China is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea...

. Kaiping consists of three port cities: Changsha, Xinchang, and Dihai.
The diaolou

Diaolou

The Kaiping Diaolou are fortified multi-storey towers, generally made of reinforced concrete. These towers are located mainly in Kaiping County, Guangdong province, China...

(碉樓) are fortified multi-storey towers, which were constructed in the Kaiping area from the early Qing Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

, reaching a peak in the 1920s and 1930s, when there were more than three thousand of these structures.