In Their Footsteps – The Chikan Ancient Town

My friend and I went to Kaiping because she saw an ad on the MTR in Hong Kong promoting the Chikan Ancient Town. As such, it was with a whole lot of anticipation that I arrived at Chikan from Majianglong Village.

And, to say the least, the experience at Chikan was disappointing, and I shall explain below.

Upon arrival, Rongan Lou greeted visitors with a cheeky banner saying “fat choi from now on,” (become super wealthy from now on). This is one of the few diaolou’s in the ancient town. Rongan Lou has 6 stories, and it is one of the taller diaolou’s that I have seen.

We stayed at the Changsheng Hotel on site at the ancient town. The hotel was clean and modern, and that was about the best experience we had there at Chikan.

Included in our room fees was the entrance fee into the Chikan Ancient Town. As with Huangyao, you will be going through a face scan as your “entry ticket.”

Entrance fee is waived for Kaiping locals. We are not sure if other Chinese locals can enter the ancient town for free as well. Our appearance certainly did not pass for a local Chinese, therefore every time we tried to enter the ancient town, we were asked to show our “tickets.”

The History of Chikan, Kaiping

Chikan, meaning “red ground,” acquired its Chinese name due to the abundance of red earth in the area. The two main clans that settled in this area of Kaiping in Chikan were the Guan and the Situ. The history of settlement began about 350 years ago. In the earlier times, the Guans and the Situs did not get along. They each set up their own marketplaces, which were the economic lifelines in Chinese societies. Where their economic and territorial interests clashed, the two clans had resorted to violent confrontations.

Photos: The ancestral halls of the Situs and the Guans, respectively.

The Tan River (Tanjiang) runs through now Chikan Ancient Town. Traditionally, the Situs marked their territory north of the river. The Guans took the south. As with the general area of Kaiping, Chikan is also known for the heavy influence that the overseas Chinese have had in all aspects of its history and landscape.

Finally, because of the beautiful city-scape of Chikan, an abundance of its fusion architecture and qilou’s (arcade buildings that are very much a prominent feature of Guangdong architecture), Chikan has been a very popular choice for movie sets.

Photo: The qilou’s (arcade buildings) are very prominent in Guangdong architecture.

Amongst the best-known ones are Qiuxi (2009) and The Grandmaster (2013). Another movie that has earned wide acclaim was Let the Bullets Fly (2010). It was set in Kaiping.

The Tour Experience in Chikan

Our first sense of Chikan was its night scenery. To be fair, Chikan at night was beautiful in its own right. There was a very happening night market, but we opted to have dinner at a proper establishment. We found Meitang Hotel.

Located in the boundary point between the territories of the Guans and the Situs, Meitang Hotel was revitalized into a heritage site with upscale ambience. It is named after Situ Meitang, an overseas Chinese of the Situ lineage that had a legendary life working as a chef in the United States. He was a pivotal figure in a few anti-Qing organizations. He would eventually make great contributions to the 1911 Revolution.

The food was good, no doubt. Although we were hoping for western cuisine, we were shown a Chinese menu. For some reason, the restaurant was not able to handle the demand that evening (it did not seem like a full house to us). It took a very long time for our food to arrive. Considering that the experience was not perfect, we thought we paid a lot for this meal.

After our meal, we walked around the Chikan Ancient Town. Here are some of the photographs that shows its night scenery. The riverside areas are very popular with the tourists.

Day Tour in Chikan

The next morning we woke up and decided to walk a little bit more in Chikan, to see it in daylight. We slowly warmed up to the ambience of the studio city. We debated whether those buildings were heritage, or merely props that were built for movie sets. They looked, oddly, so new and so old at the same time.

After a leisurely lunch and coffee, we decided to take the tour bus as our finale in Chikan, before we would head off to the Nan Lou for some authentic, history-heavy diaolou viewing. I highly recommend the tour bus. Do keep in mind that the afternoon hours are very busy for this tour. It takes the tourists on a run around the studio city, certainly to spots too far for us to walk to.

By then, we have decided that most of what we were looking at were indeed old, heritage buildings. It was just that they were too poorly renovated, (they could not have been called “restoration”) with clearly new materials simply plastering over the old, without even skillful craftsmanship.

The Difficulty with Touring Chikan

The popularity of Chikan being a prime location for movie sets has resulted in Chikan Ancient Town being turned into a Universal Studio-type of venue. The Chikan studio city was built in 2005 with an RMB 20 million funding. The area spans 60,000 square meters.

Within its enormous square footage, the Chikan Ancient Town offers little by way of direction. In such a space, it is difficult for visitors to navigate the key sites without getting lost. The signages did not help much within the studio city. There is a large map that we saw, but really only in one spot within this vast space.

What frustrated us the most was the fact that it was a big hassle trying to get inside the studio city from our hotel. Our hotel stood right across the river from the ancient town, and for some reason, we kept walking on streets and bridges that looked as if they were leading into the ancient town but they turned out to be dead ends. We could not understand why a clear throughway could not have been provided. We have had to turn back a few times as we tried to get inside the town area.

In my humble opinion, the sites inside the studio city were poorly-renovated. The clear intention was to serve as movie sets and there was no effort to bring out the historic qualities in these buildings. The studio city trumped the authenticity of valuable historic sites with gaudy makeshift props and that broke my heart. There was little for the heritage tourist within the studio city.

The story of Chikan was not told to us in any coherent manner. I only learned about some key historic sites after we left: the Jinghui Lou, the two libraries of the Situs and the Guans etc. In the large map, there was no indication where the narrative of Chikan would be told, and there were thousands of buildings claiming to be heritage in the area. Although some shops showed exhibitions, the story told was pitifully inadequate.

Photo: One of the very few exhibitioins that we came across, on the former site of a light and power company.

My conclusion from this experience was that Chikan was actually not touristy enough. It was meant to be a studio city, certainly not for tourists. The poor design of the studio city was amply frustrating to those who look for more than instagrammable photographs.

Having spent one frustrating night and half a frustrating day there, I suggest tourists to scrap the Chikan studio city, and just visit the arcade buildings on the west bank of the river.

Our next stop is Nan Lou. It was going to be a whole lot better for the history tourist.

Sources

The Wikipedia on Chikan (Chin).