One of the most representative Diaolou buildings in Kaiping, Guangdong Province is pictured in this file photo. Such buildings in Kaiping were included on the list of World Heritage sites June 28, 2007. [Xinhua]

A clutch of idyllic Chinese villages with striking Western-style buildings embodying the roots of the Chinese diaspora over a century ago was made a United Nations World Heritage site on Thursday.

Lying in a quiet corner of southern China, to the west of the Pearl River Delta, Kaiping's bucolic countryside is sprinkled with hundreds of rural Qiaoxiang, or overseas Chinese villages, which, along with several neighbouring counties, gave rise to much of the Chinese diaspora in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Many distinct buildings, including striking tall watchtowers or Diaolou, were built by returning emigres in a distinct style fusing Chinese, Victorian and Baroque architectural elements.

A cluster of four such villages in Kaiping county including picturesque gems like Zili village, set amid verdant rice paddy fields, was designated by UNESCO's World Heritage Commission which met in Christchurch, New Zealand.

"I'm very happy they got it, because this is a reflection of history," said David Lung, the Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong.

Lung had helped initially with Kaiping's submission to the world cultural body by stressing its value as a repository of overseas Chinese culture.

"It's a reflection of the history of early settlers... the Chinese immigrants who went to San Francisco or Australia in the late 1800's, early 1900's that helped in the gold mines," he said.

Kaiping officials had spent eight years trying to get listed, a task made urgent by the deterioration and dereliction of some key historic spots.

"Kaiping is not so rich... so now we can make this site useful by developing it and opening it up to cultural tourism," said Selia Tan, the director of the Diaolou Research Department in Kaiping, who spoke by phone to Reuters from New Zealand after attending the UNESCO meeting.

Experts say up to 80 percent of the Chinese in North America came from the so called "Say-yat" region in the Pearl River Delta -- a group of four districts including Kaiping and Taishan.

The Chinese diaspora to North America and Australia began in the mid-1800's when Chinese peasants lured by tales of gold rushes headed off in steamships.

When the goldfields were exhausted, more still went to work on the Transcontinental railroads across Canada and the United States.

Subsequent generations ended up working in laundries, groceries and restaurants, among other enterprises, founding Chinatowns wherever they went.

With Kaiping's inscription, China now has 35 World Heritage cultural and natural sites -- ranging from the Great Wall and Lhasa's Potala Palace to Macau's historic Portuguese centre.

A cluster of striking Karst formations and stone forests in Southern China's Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi provinces was also listed as a natural world heritage site by UNESCO this week.

Oover 800 sites from around the world are now UNESCO World Heritage listed, described to be of outstanding universal value.