Guangzhou, << gwahng joh >> (pop. 12,000,000), is one of the largest cities in southern China and a major center of international trade. It is also an industrial center and one of China’s principal ports. Guangzhou is sometimes called Yangcheng (city of goats) by the Chinese. Foreigners have known it as Canton << kan TON >> , and its people as Cantonese. The city lies at the head of the Zhu Jiang (Pearl River) Delta. It is about 75 miles (121 kilometers) northwest of Hong Kong and the South China Sea.
The city
is the capital of Guangdong Province. Guangzhou is one of China’s most modern cities. Many of its people live in concrete high-rise apartment buildings. Until 1960, thousands of Cantonese lived on boats anchored in the Zhu Jiang. Since then, the government has moved these people into apartments.
The city has a sports stadium and several public parks and museums. It is home to the 1,969-foot (600-meter) Canton Tower, which features television and radio broadcast facilities, observation decks, a conference center, and other attractions. Guangzhou also has many national monuments, including the Peasant Movement Training Institute. In 1925 and 1926, Chairman Mao Zedong of the Chinese Communist Party taught Communist beliefs to party workers at the institute. Another monument marks the burial site of the people who died in the Guangzhou Uprising of 1927. That year, the Communists failed in an attempt to take over the city’s government. Jinan University and Sun Yat-sen University are in Guangzhou.
Economy
of Guangzhou is based largely on trade, and the city has an ideal location as a trade center. Tributaries of four rivers—the Zhu Jiang, the North, the East, and the West—connect Guangzhou and Guangxi Autonomous Region. Just east of Guangzhou is the deepwater port of Huangpu (also called Whampoa), which serves oceangoing ships. A railroad links Guangzhou to Hong Kong and to the industrial center of Wuhan, about 600 miles (966 kilometers) north of Guangzhou. The city is also served by an extensive subway system.
China’s largest foreign trade fair takes place twice annually in Guangzhou. This event, called the China Import and Export Fair or the Canton Fair, is held for a month each spring and fall. It attracts thousands of foreign merchants.
Products manufactured in Guangzhou include paper, sewing machines, and textiles. Shipbuilding and sugar refining are also important industries in the city.
Guangzhou has long been a center of handicraft industries. The city’s craftworkers are famous for their ivory and jade carvings, lacquerware, and porcelain.
History.
Guangzhou was founded about 214 B.C. by Shi Huangdi, the emperor of China’s Qin dynasty. During the time of the Roman Empire, from about 27 B.C. to A.D. 476, Roman merchants went to Guangzhou for silks, spices, and tea. Arab and Persian traders visited the city during the A.D. 600’s. Portuguese merchants first went to Guangzhou in 1516. By the early 1800’s, British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese traders controlled most of the trade between Guangzhou and the West. From 1759 to 1842, Guangzhou was the only Chinese port open to foreign trade. See China (Clash with the Western powers) .
Many leaders of the 1911 revolution came from Guangzhou. This revolt led to the establishment of the Chinese republic in 1912. One of the leaders was Sun Yat-sen, who helped form the Nationalist Party that year and became its first leader. The party had its headquarters in Guangzhou from 1917 to 1926. The Japanese occupied Guangzhou from 1938 until World War II ended in 1945. In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Nationalist Party since the mid-1920’s, moved his government from Nanjing to Guangzhou. The Chinese Communists took over China later in 1949, and the Chinese Nationalists fled from Guangzhou to Taiwan.
See also Guangdong Province .
