Kaiping 开平市 |
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County-level city | |
Dixi Road in Chikan, Kaiping
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Location of Kaiping City (pink) in Jiangmen City (yellow), Guangdong province, and the PRC |
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Location of the city centre in Guangdong | |
Coordinates: 22°22′N 112°41′E / 22.367°N 112.683°ECoordinates: 22°22′N 112°41′E / 22.367°N 112.683°E | |
Country | People's Republic of China |
Province | Guangdong |
Prefecture-level city | Jiangmen |
County seat | Changsha Subdistrict (长沙街道) |
Area | |
• Total | 1,659 km2 (641 sq mi) |
Population (2010 census) | |
• Total | 699,242 |
• Density | 420/km2 (1,100/sq mi) |
Time zone | China Standard (UTC+8) |
Postal code | 529300 |
Area code(s) | 0750 |
Website | www.kaiping.gov.cn |
Kaiping | |||||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | |||||||||||||||||
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Traditional Chinese | |||||||||||||||||
Taishanese Jyutping | Hoi3-pen6 (local) | ||||||||||||||||
Hanyu Pinyin | Kāipíng | ||||||||||||||||
Postal | Hoiping | ||||||||||||||||
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Transcriptions | |
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Standard Mandarin | |
Hanyu Pinyin | Kāipíng |
Wade–Giles | K‘ai-p‘ing |
Yue: Cantonese | |
Jyutping | Hoi1-ping4 |
other Yue | |
Taishanese Jyutping | Hoi3-pen6 (local) |
Kaiping, formerly romanized as Hoiping, is a county-level city in Guangdong Province, China. It is located in the Pearl River Delta and administered as part of the prefecture-level city of Jiangmen. The area is the ancestral homeland of many overseas Chinese, particularly in the United States. It has a population of 680,000 as of 2003 and an area of 1,659 square kilometres (641 sq mi). The locals speak a variant of the Taishan dialect.
Under the Qing, Kaiping County made up part of the commandery of Zhaoqing. It was promoted to county-level city status in 1993.
Administratively, Kaiping is administered as part of the prefecture-level city of Jiangmen.
Kaiping City is located 140 kilometres (87 mi) away from Guangzhou, in the southwestern part of the Pearl River Delta. Kaiping consists of three port cities: Changsha, Xinchang, and Dihai.
Kaiping Diaolous (碉楼) are fortified multi-storey towers which were constructed in the Kaiping area from the early Qing Dynasty, reaching a peak in the 1920s and 1930s, when there were more than three thousand of these structures. Today, approximately 1,800 diaolou are still standing. The diaolou served two purposes: housing and protecting against forays by bandits. The Kaiping diaolou and villages were added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2007.