In Guangzhou, during the Republic of China, there was a saying, “Young masters of the East Mountain, young ladies of the West Gate”, which represented the elegance and glamour of Guangzhou at that time.
Between the 1920s and the Japanese invasion, hundreds of small mansions and Western-style villas were built in the Dongshan area.
It is said that the owners of the houses were mostly successful people who had earned their first and second fortunes in Southeast Asia. They returned to Guangzhou to buy land and build houses. Having lived in Southeast Asia for many years, they brought back the exterior facades and internal structural patterns of the houses there, combined them with European styles, and built a large number of villas with similar but not identical characteristics.
To this day, after a century of wind and rain, these houses are still the shining highlights of Guangzhou’s residential area, attracting people from all over the world to visit. Many college students use this place as a weekend destination and a date spot.
Huanghua New Village, about 5 kilometers away from the Dongshan Western-style buildings, is surrounded by towering green trees and has dozens of villas built around 1955. It is called the Overseas Chinese New Village.
These houses were built after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, when a large number of overseas Chinese returned to China to participate in the socialist revolution and construction. In order to provide them with a place to live, the government used a variety of investment methods to build them.
The villas here were built only 30 years apart from the villas in Dongshan, but they are worlds apart from the red-walled and elegant houses in Dongshan. Their stone-washed exterior walls are dull and gray, and their facades are relatively rigid and lifeless.
Although the Overseas Chinese New Village is very simple compared with the Western-style buildings in Dongshan, it still has a noble and upright style compared with the residential buildings nearby.
The observer can’t help but sigh, why are the newly built houses not as beautiful as the old houses, and the old houses not as beautiful as the even older houses?
Recently, I visited Mong Cai in Vietnam. Mong Cai is only separated from Dongxing City in Guangxi Province by a small river of 100 meters. The houses I saw in Mong Cai are unique in style, each with its own characteristics, with smiling courtyards and bright colors.
Objectively speaking, Mong Cai is several times more elegant than the houses in most cities in China.
Houses, or rather buildings, are the three-dimensional expression of the culture of a place and a period. Just as people’s clothing is a reflection of the prosperity of a society’s culture and the flourishing of its civilization.
