I’ve found myself in Kaiping—a speck of a city in southern China, two hours from Guangzhou, known more for the people who’ve left it than the ones who’ve stayed. One suspects the place never quite recovered from its most brilliant export: the huáqiáo, or returning overseas Chinese, who came back with foreign educations, expensive suits, and enough money to build themselves European-style watchtowers—diāolóu, they’re called—by the dozen.