50 Fun Facts About Guangdong

Which Guangdong city on the Hong Kong border became China's first special economic zone in the early 1980s?

Shenzhen was picked for its closeness to Hong Kong, which drew foreign investment and migrants to what had been a small market town.

Dafen, an urban village in Guangdong, is known around the world for workshops that mass-produce copies of what?

Oil paintings leave Dafen by the million: as of 2014 about 7,000 artists there were copying masters such as Van Gogh and Rembrandt for export.

Which city, the capital and largest city of Guangdong, hosted the Asian Games in 2010?

Guangzhou was for a long time the only Chinese port open to European traders, which made it one of the world's great trading cities.

Chimelong Safari Park in Guangdong is the birthplace of a famous set of surviving triplets of which animal?

Giant pandas put Chimelong Safari Park on the map; the group behind it began in 1989 as one restaurant run by a Panyu local, Su Zhigang.

Which style of bite-sized dishes, served with tea in Guangdong's teahouses, is the heart of a yum cha meal?

Dim sum grew out of teahouses in Guangdong's capital, where tenth-century travellers stopped for small plates with their tea.

Which Chinese leader's 1992 southern tour of Guangdong revived market reforms that had stalled after 1989?

Deng Xiaoping was 87 when he set off, and the remarks he made on the road restarted his reform and opening-up programme.

Which Paris landmark is rebuilt at one-third scale at Window of the World, a theme park in Guangdong?

The Eiffel Tower copy stands 108 metres tall and rises over about 130 reproductions of world landmarks.

Which Guangdong city was home to the kung fu masters Ip Man and Wong Fei-hung?

Foshan is also regarded as the home of lion dancing and of the martial art Nanquan.

Which Guangdong city borders Macau and gained a road link to Hong Kong when a giant sea bridge opened in 2018?

Zhuhai also hosts the largest air show in China, a big draw for visitors to the city.

Which animals, said to have carried five immortals to Guangdong's capital, give the city its best-known nickname?

Rams made it the City of the Five Rams: legend says they turned to stone once the immortals had brought rice farming to the area.

Which Guangdong factory city built a giant shopping mall that sat mostly vacant for more than a decade?

Dongguan's mall ranks among the largest on Earth by floor area, but so few merchants signed up that it was dubbed a dead mall.

Which waterway, China's third longest, gathers the Xi, Bei and Dong before reaching the sea in Guangdong?

The Pearl River carries more water than any Chinese river except the Yangtze, and its basin reaches into northern Vietnam.

Which tropical island was governed as part of Guangdong until it became a separate province in 1988?

Hainan was made a special economic zone in the same year it split away, in an effort to pull in investment.

Which variety of Chinese, the lingua franca of Guangdong, is also the dominant language of Hong Kong?

Cantonese is co-official in both Hong Kong and Macau, and it is widely spoken in overseas Chinese communities.

Which major line of latitude crosses Guangdong, passing just north of the provincial capital?

The Tropic of Cancer puts Guangdong's capital just inside the tropics on paper, yet the city's climate is classed as humid subtropical.

Which fruit was so prized at the Han imperial court that fast-horse couriers carried it fresh from Guangdong?

Lychee was later the favourite fruit of Yang Guifei, the famed consort of the Tang emperor Xuanzong.

Which Guangdong city, once called Xiangshan, was renamed in 1925 to honour the local-born revolutionary Sun Yat-sen?

Zhongshan is the name by which Sun Yat-sen is known in China, and the old name Xiangshan meant Fragrant Mountain.

Guangdong has about 4,300 kilometres of coastline along the north shore of which body of water?

The South China Sea holds Pratas Island, which was part of Guangdong before the Chinese Civil War and is administered from Taiwan.

Which tech giant, headquartered in twin towers in Guangdong's Nanshan district, runs the messaging apps QQ and WeChat?

Tencent was founded in 1998, and WeChat grew into a super app with more than a billion monthly users.

Which treaty port in eastern Guangdong was an original special economic zone but never boomed like its rivals?

Shantou, long romanised as Swatow, opened to foreigners in 1860 under the Treaty of Tientsin.

Which Guangdong county-level city is known for its diaolou, fortified towers that UNESCO listed in 2007?

Kaiping has 1,833 of the towers standing; building peaked in the 1920s and 1930s, paid for with money from overseas Chinese.

Which city in eastern Guangdong is home to Guangji Bridge, whose middle section is a row of boats that can open?

Chaozhou's crossing is counted among China's four famous ancient bridges, and its floating section parts to let ships through.

Which city in eastern Guangdong is the Hakka heartland, whose local dialect is treated as the prestige form of Hakka?

Meizhou's Meixian district gives the prestige dialect its name, and the general Ye Jianying is among the area's notable natives.

Which city in northern Guangdong is the gateway to Mount Danxia, a UNESCO-listed landscape of red sandstone cliffs?

Shaoguan also holds Nanhua Temple, closely tied to Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism.

Which Guangdong city has a West Lake that the exiled Song poet Su Shi judged as beautiful as Hangzhou's?

Huizhou's lake was formerly called Feng Lake, and Su Shi, banished to the city in 1094, is credited with giving it the West Lake name.

Which Guangdong city's museum earned a Guinness World Record for a collection of more than 10,000 dinosaur eggs?

Heyuan has been titled the Hometown of the Dinosaur in China, and skeletons and fossil footprints have turned up nearby too.

Which port city in western Guangdong was leased to France in 1898 and developed under the name Fort Bayard?

Zhanjiang was a small fishing port when France forced a 99-year lease on the area; Japan occupied the enclave in 1943, and it went back to China after the war.

Which Guangdong city hosted the first Jesuit mission house in mainland China, the home of the missionary Matteo Ricci?

Zhaoqing's governor let the Jesuits stay after learning of Ricci's skill with maths and maps, and Ricci drew the first modern Chinese world map there in 1584.

Which Guangdong district, home to a Bruce Lee museum, joined UNESCO's Creative Cities Network for its gastronomy?

Shunde is regarded as the cradle of the region's top chefs, and it is also the home base of the appliance maker Midea.

In 1952 Guangdong gave a strip of its coast, including the port of Beihai, to which landlocked neighbour?

Guangxi lost the strip again in 1955 and got it back in 1965, which left it the only autonomous region that is not landlocked.

Which Qing official supervised the destruction of seized opium at Humen in Guangdong in 1839, helping to trigger a war?

Lin Zexu had 500 workers spend 23 days mixing the drug with lime and salt and throwing it into the sea.

Which Guangdong-born rebel, sure that Jesus was his elder brother, declared himself Heavenly King of the Taiping?

Hong Xiuquan came from a Hakka family in Hua county, and the kingdom he founded went on to hold large portions of southern China.

Which Guangdong-born scholar joined his student Liang Qichao in the Hundred Days' Reform of 1898?

Kang Youwei was born in Nanhai county in 1858, and the campaign to modernise China that his ideas shaped proved abortive.

Which military academy opened on a Guangdong island in 1924 with Chiang Kai-shek as its head and Zhou Enlai on staff?

Whampoa was created to train junior officers for what became the National Revolutionary Army, and most of its political instructors were Communists.

Which ancient kingdom, founded in 204 BC by the Qin general Zhao Tuo, ruled from what is now Guangdong's capital?

Nanyue lasted until 111 BC under Zhao Tuo's family, whom Vietnamese history remembers as the Triệu dynasty.

Which 600-metre landmark in Guangdong's capital briefly held a world height record until Tokyo's Skytree passed it?

Canton Tower was also the tallest structure in China until the Shanghai Tower topped out in August 2013.

Which sandbank island in Guangdong's capital was split into British and French concessions in the 19th century?

Shamian's name literally means sandy surface, and the two foreign concessions on it lasted from 1859 to 1943.

Which Guangdong company, begun in 2006 with Frank Wang's dorm-room prototypes, came to dominate consumer drones?

DJI held over 90% of the world's consumer drone market as of June 2024, and its camera drones are widely used in film and television.

Which Guangdong carmaker began in 1995 as a battery manufacturer before becoming a giant of plug-in electric vehicles?

BYD's founder Wang Chuanfu says the Bi in its Chinese name was added partly to give the company an alphabetical edge at industry expos.

Which martial art did the Guangdong-raised master Ip Man teach to his most famous student, Bruce Lee?

Wing Chun was Ip Man's art from boyhood, and he was teaching it by the age of 20; he died only seven months before Bruce Lee.

Which viral disease, first identified in Guangdong in November 2002, went on to infect over 8,000 people worldwide?

SARS reached 30 countries and territories and killed at least 774 people, and that epidemic strain has not been seen outside a laboratory since.

Which Guangdong telecoms giant was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, a former army engineering officer?

Huawei takes its name from a slogan its founder saw on a wall, a phrase meaning China has achievements.

Which Guangdong-style barbecued pork, glazed with honey or maltose as it roasts, has a name meaning fork roasted?

Char siu traditionally got its red colour from fermented bean curd and red yeast rice; food colouring is the common shortcut.

Which coastal province borders Guangdong to the northeast and is the closest of all to Taiwan?

Fujian's ancient Minyue kingdom reached into eastern Guangdong, and its armies raided their neighbours there in the 2nd century BC.

What kind of power station at Daya Bay in Guangdong was conceived by the Hong Kong tycoon Lawrence Kadoorie?

Nuclear power from Daya Bay was meant to supply both Hong Kong and southern China, and its two French-designed reactors started up in 1993 and 1994.

Guangdong's capital has held China's oldest and largest example of which event each spring and autumn since 1957?

The trade fair is formally the China Import and Export Fair, and it is what the city is best known for in modern commerce.

Which peninsula, China's third largest, juts south from Guangdong with the Gulf of Tonkin on its western side?

Leizhou is dotted with dormant volcanoes, and the strait at its tip is only about 30 km wide.

Which mountain, called the lung of Guangdong's capital, shares its name with the city's international airport?

Baiyun's airport was briefly the world's busiest by passengers in 2020, when the pandemic cut air travel in other countries.

Guangdong became China's most populous province in 2005 by passing Shandong and which other province?

Henan and Shandong were both passed in January 2005, when Guangdong counted 79.1 million permanent residents plus 31 million long-stay migrants.

Which historic name for the region centred on Guangdong literally means south of the mountains?

Lingnan refers to the lands below the Nanling Mountains, and the same name survives in Vietnamese as Lĩnh Nam.