Kaiping Diaolou was built in the early Qing Dynasty, and a large number of them were built in the 1920s and 1930s. At present, there are 1, 466 watchtowers. These towers were built by overseas Chinese in Guangdong in the old days to prevent bandits and raise overseas Chinese funds to return to China. Kaiping is low-lying, with dense river networks, and is often worried about floods. The remote border areas of Xinhui, Taishan, Enping and Xinxing counties under their jurisdiction have always been known as "four cares" and the social order is rather chaotic. Therefore, in the late Ming Dynasty, villagers built watchtowers to prevent floods and bandits. 1840 after the opium war, a large-scale battle broke out between local people and foreigners in Kaiping, and everyone was afraid for himself. At this time, it happened that western countries recruited Chinese workers to develop gold mines and build railways along the coast of China, and a large number of Kaiping people left their homes for their livelihood, and Kaiping gradually became the hometown of overseas Chinese. The complex of "returning home with clothes" and "returning home with fallen leaves" makes most of them think of sending money home or going back to China in person to do "three things": buying land, building a house and marrying a wife. So in the 1920s and 1930s, the peak of overseas Chinese building came into being. However, the society in China at that time was chaotic and thieves were rampant. Overseas Chinese in Kaiping, their relatives and returned overseas Chinese are relatively rich, so bandits concentrate on committing crimes in Kaiping. In this sinister social environment, watchtowers with remarkable defensive functions came into being.