If the watchtowers could be said the typical representative of the resident dwelling in rural areas, the arcade-dwelling could be named the representative of the resident dwelling in towns of Wuyi region. Towns were usually the distributing center for commercial exchange and trade. Where there are towns, there are commercial activities. In the past, there were few specialized commercial facilities in large scale, mostly were buildings with the first stage used as store and the second stage used as living room, or with stores in front and dwelling in the back part. These arcade-dwellings combining business with dwelling became typical resident dwelling in the towns in southern Guangdong Province.

    Arcade-dwelling are common commercial buildings in the southern regions in China, they usually have 2 or 3 floors, the front part of the first floor is called pillar corridor. Pillar corridors of many buildings connected, thus the public pavement was formed. It is hot and rainy in south China, in order to let people stay away from sunlight or rain, the pavement was sheltered by the pillar corridors. With the prosperity of towns, a house was added on the pillar corridor to increase the building areas, in this way the earliest arcade dwelling came into being. The construction of arcade-dwelling made it convenient for the customers to do their shopping, and was beneficial to the marketing of commodities. Both customers and businessmen liked it very much. Arcade-dwelling, a product in the combination of alien architectural style and the climate and economic activities in China's southern towns, widely spread and developed in South China. It can be said that as long as the arcade- dwelling came into being, it bore, just like the watchtower, the obvious character of mixture of blood, a "symbiosis" of China's traditional culture and foreign culture.

    Arcade house can be divided into 3 parts: pillar corridor, building body and housetop. The pillar corridor mixed the Chinese type and Western type. The decoration on some pillar heads is of the ancient Greek or Romanesque style. Other pillars are of round or square types of Chinese style. There were three methods to make the building body: the first was to open windows in the wall with a lot of Chinese or Western decorations; the second was to concave the building body to make outer corridor with a lot of ancient Greek or Romanesque style of pillars, as well as Islamic style; the third was to build the balcony. The shape of the balcony' plane and the balcony's railing style changed in thousand of ways, such as the style of square, the style of curve and so on. There are railing boards which bear the carving patterns, and there are hollowed railing boards which are made of precut slabs, also there are iron-flower railings. The housetops of arcade-houses assume different shapes and postures. Most of them adopted simplified Western styles, even including the Western-style pavilions in microform.

    Most of the arcade-houses are located in the commercial streets in the prosperous towns, so they were built on both sides of the streets. The high price of the land forced the building plane of arcade-house to develop towards the trends of "small front and deep, large inside". The airing, light, water supply and drainage would be dealt with within the house, mainly through courtyard, hall and corridors. This arrangement looked not good in terms of the high density of building, it is, however, quite suitable to the local climate. It is hot in summer in southern Guangdong Province, and the sun shines long during the day. The high wall and narrow lanes will have most area in the shadow of these buildings, and the deep and quiet courtyards have the fine air-raising effect, therefore the local residents could enjoy a bit coolness.

    Walking among those arcade-houses, what people feel directly is the sense of entirety reflected by those zigzag arcade-dwellings. In other words, these houses offer fine visional sense of continuity. This mainly comes from the sense of prosody produced by the repetition of the small size of each house, i.e. the so called effect of ¡°row upon row¡±.  Though each shop front and the width of each front room are so different, yet the floors and height of the houses are nearly the same, the distance between shops is almost the same, thus giving a picture of prosperous commercial activities. This building group created by the local people really deserves the title of the ¡°city design¡± of traditional society, marveled at by all contemporary architects.

    In terms of the sightseeing of the towns, the ¡°mix-up pattern¡± of different cultures reflected by the arcade- dwelling offers all kinds of things that appear so unrelated and even contradictive, forming a kind of life situation in dramatic style. Different buildings mixed up, different shop signs come together, different shop owners shouted to sell their different goods, all of these seemed so untidy, while at the same time displayed some kind of vitality. It is the "mix" that brings the streets the interests of life and sense of humor. So far as the prosperity of the towns is concerned, such vigorous "mix" is beneficial and necessary.