Guangzhou
Как живут местные
Деревня Шипай под небоскрёбами, где курьеры живут впятером в двух комнатах; Дуншанькоу, где по субботам пьют кофе во дворах вилл; улица Вэньмин, где с 1986 года варят сладкие супы; рынок Цинпин, где торгуются за грибы и сушёных гребешков; водно-болотный парк, куда Лян Бинъин вернулась из конторы в родную деревню; аркады Лунцзиньси, где врачи после войны собирались на чай. Сюда не за фасадами — за тем, как город ест, торгует и отдыхает.
Street & district
Shipai Village Rooftops and Alleys
Founded in 1273, Shipai lost its farmland as Tianhe expanded, and by 1994 its migrant tenants already outnumbered registered villagers. Tiny rooftop rooms could come with surprisingly large communal roofs where young musicians and artists gathered; a partial-demolition and upgrading plan announced in 2026 now makes its improvised vertical life especially time-sensitive.
Street & district
Dongshankou and Xinhepu
Early-20th-century villa quarter in Dongshan, walked from the Xinhepu streets.
Street & district
Baohan Straight Street
This short lane through Dengfeng became Guangzhou's best-known African street after traders and residents began settling nearby in growing numbers during the 1990s. Freight services, halal restaurants, currency exchange, beauty businesses and multilingual shop signs turned an old urban-village street into a piece of transnational West Africa, though repaving and tighter management have reduced its former pavement economy.
Street & district
Wenming Road Dessert Street
A historic street known for its dessert shops, particularly traditional sweet soups called tangshui.
Street & district
Xiaozhou Village
A water village with oyster shell walls and artist studios in ancestral temples.
Market
Baima Clothing Market
A large indoor wholesale clothing market near the train station, historically significant for international trade.
Street & district
Longjin West Road Qilou Block
Numbers 55–67 form an unusually intact Republican-era row of four-story qilou shop-houses, their sheltered pavement carried beneath residences and Ionic-style columns. The block records the transformation of Longjin from a waterside settlement into a modern commercial road after its expansion around 1930, while its ground-floor businesses still preserve the arcade’s original everyday purpose.
Park & garden
Lingnan Impression Park
Ticketed park of rebuilt Lingnan houses, ancestral halls and gardens on Xiaoguwei Island.
Architecture
Sun Yat-sen University South Campus
A large ensemble of 74 historic red-brick buildings from the Lingnan era.
Market
Fangcun Tea Market
A vast tea market with nearly 4,000 vendors where tea tasting is a key part of the buying process.
Museum
Liede Village History Museum
Liede changed from a water village crowded with handshake buildings into a high-rise enclave of 37 residential towers at the edge of Guangzhou's new business district. The village history museum, deliberately conceived as a repository of nostalgia, uses donated objects and reconstructed scenes to tell what was lost when fields, lanes and rental rooms became premium real estate.
