Qilou: Corridors through China’s colonial past

• Source: Global Times
• [21:52 July 08 2009]
• Comments

By Zhang Lei

Qilou street in Beihai. Photo: Sab Cheung

A stylishly classic fusion of Eastern and Western architecture, Qilou, or Chinese arcade houses, serve as a cultural landmark in the coastal cities of South China. Their exotic exteriors and characteristic colonnades illustrate China’s unique colonial and trading history dating back to the early 19th century.

With its origins in ancient Greece, it was overseas Chinese merchants and colonial traders who introduced arcade architecture to Guangzhou. When the Guangzhou city government began to widen its roads at the beginning of the 20th century, they built extensive blocks of Qilou houses, mixing Western and Cantonese construction features to form the now historic city center of Guangzhou.

“In the 1920s, Sun Yat-sen’s son Sun Ke promoted the architectural style by replacing the old city walls with Qilou buildings, which later covered most commercial districts in Guangzhou,” said Yang Honglie, professor of Architecture and City Planning at Guangzhou University.

Varying from city to city, the uniting characteristics of Qilou are that they stand three to four stories in height, with the first floor set back halfway into the building to be used as a storefront; while the upper floors are used as living spaces hanging over the sidewalk, supported by columns. In this way, Qilou create stretches of outdoor corridors lined with shops underneath. Tightly built side by side, these corridors serve as the perfect pedestrian shopping street, whether rain or shine.

Today, the century-old Qilou buildings are still a part of daily life in Guangzhou. Walking through the corridors of the Qilou is a walk back in time, where old Canton is still alive today.

Built with gothic, baroque, Romanesque and Cantonese facades, these buildings make up the heart of the old town of Guangzhou. Some of the city’s most time-honored shops are established here, set amongst small groceries, hardware stores, bookshops, boutiques and antique galleries.

Yu Yishan, 27, a resident of one of Guangzhou’s Qilou neighborhoods, likes to buy sodas from the little shops and sip them while sitting in the shade of the corridors as he did when he was a little boy.

“It is old-fashioned living, but I enjoy it,” said Yu.