That’s China: 11 August 2019
Describing a nearby village: “It’s called Canada Village because most of the original inhabitants left the area for Canada,” Rocky Deng, a hotel, art space and restaurant proprietor in the town of Tangkou, tells us over a late-night beer on our most recent visit. “The whole village is empty, maybe only one or two families still live there and there might be a security guard on-site – but that’s it.”
Deng, who had previously lived in both Hong Kong and Vietnam before moving to Kaiping in 2010, adds that there are lots of beautiful – albeit decaying – old residences left behind by their inhabitants in the 1960s and ’70s, when many people left the area for the lights of the big cities on the Pearl River Delta or the promise of a new life overseas. Deng, whose parents are originally from Huadu in Guangzhou, first visited the area in 2004 and opened his hostel slash art space slash restaurant – known as Tk-Space – in 2016….