Welcome to Guangzhou!
Guangzhou (广州, Gwóngjāu in Cantonese, Guǎngzhōu in Mandarin, traditional English: Canton) is the capital of Guangdong Province in southern China.
According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 12.7 million, making it the third largest city in China after Shanghai and Beijing. It is a part of the Pearl River Delta, which also includes Shenzhen, Dongguan, Hong Kong, Macau, Foshan, Jiangmen, Huizhou, Zhongshan, and Zhuhai.
In the era of tea clippers, Guangzhou was known in the West as "Canton". The food and the language of the area are still known as "Cantonese" and it is perfectly acceptable to use either the western or Chinese terms interchangeably. The Cantonese are proud and hard-working people known throughout China and the world over for their famous cuisine and talent for business.
Guangzhou has been a major international trading hub for centuries, and it holds China's largest trade fair, the Canton Fair. While in modern times it is mostly known for its skyscrapers and shopping malls, the city is not bereft of culture, and Guangzhou boasts a large number of cultural and religious sites, and, in addition, is home to several internationally recognized music venues, museums, and galleries.
Guangzhou (simplified Chinese: 广州, traditional Chinese: 廣州, pinyin: Guǎngzhōu), also known as Canton and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and the largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about 120 km (75 mi) north-northwest of Hong Kong and 145 km (90 mi) north of Macau, Guangzhou has a history of over 2,200 years and was a major terminus of the maritime Silk Road, and continues to serve as a major port and transportation hub, as well as one of China's three largest cities. Long the only Chinese port accessible to most foreign traders, Guangzhou was captured by the British during the First Opium War. No longer enjoying a monopoly after the war, it lost trade to other ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, but continued to serve as a major transshipment port. Due to a high urban population and large volumes of port traffic, Guangzhou is classified as a Large-Port Megacity, the largest type of port-city in the world. Guangzhou is at the heart of the most-populous built-up metropolitan area in mainland China, which extends into the neighboring cities of Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Shenzhen, and part of Jiangmen, Huizhou, Zhuhai, and Macao, forming the largest urban agglomeration on Earth with approximately 47.6 million inhabitants and part of the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone. Administratively, the city holds subprovincial status and is one of China's nine National Central Cities. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, nationals of sub-Saharan Africa who had initially settled in the Middle East and Southeast Asia moved in unprecedented numbers to Guangzhou in response to the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis. The domestic migrant population from other provinces of China in Guangzhou was 40% of the city's total population in 2008. Together with Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen, Guangzhou has one of the most expensive real estate markets in China. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city's expansive administrative area was 18,676,605 inhabitants (up to 47% from the previous census in 2010) whom 16,492,590 lived in 9 urban districts (all but Conghua and Zengcheng).In modern commerce, Guangzhou is best known for its annual Canton Fair, the oldest and largest trade fair in China. For three consecutive years (2013–2015), Forbes ranked Guangzhou as the best commercial city in mainland China. Guangzhou is highly ranked as an Alpha- (global first-tier) city together with San Francisco and Stockholm. As an important international city, Guangzhou hosts 65 foreign representatives and ranks 10th in the world and 5th in China (after Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen) in terms of the number of billionaire residents according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020. The city has a high level of scientific research output, ranking 14th globally and 4th in China (after Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing), and is home to many of China's most prestigious universities, including Sun Yat-sen University, South China University of Technology, Jinan University, South China Normal University, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou University, Southern Medical University, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine.