In the mid-1930s, the financial lifelines of the Beihai Diocese traced a sweeping global geography. Funds originated at the Vatican, passed through colonial Hong Kong, and arrived in this coastal Chinese city to pay a local construction firm named Hengxinglong. The physical result of this transaction is the Bishop’s Palace. Locals were struck by its scale and the dense, shaded canopy surrounding it. They borrowed a phrase from classical Chinese poetry to describe this European ecclesiastical headquarters, naming it the "Red Building."

Completed in 1935, the palace spans precisely 42 meters in length. Its defining architectural feature is a deep, continuous corridor lined with dozens of arched windows and classical columns. These rhythmic openings were designed to catch the subtropical breezes, naturally cooling the administrative nerve center of one of Guangdong’s seven major Catholic territories. From this two-story building, a French bishop governed religious affairs across twelve counties, appointed local priests, and managed a network of orphanages, convents, and hospitals. The European proportions of the masonry arches imposed a quiet, structured authority on the southern Chinese landscape.

The building survives today as a layered historical record. The graceful arches of the lower levels still speak of 1930s treaty-port globalization and missionary ambition. The heavy masonry of the top floor grounds the structure in the bureaucratic realities that followed. Together, these clashing architectural layers show how Beihai has continuously absorbed, accommodated, and ultimately modified the foreign influences that arrived on its shores.