Insider View

Guangzhou, also known as Canton, one of China’s 4 metropolia, is famous for the Canton Fair, especially for business travelers. Normally it takes 1-2 days to see the city’s highlights, and if you have more time in the city, you can take an excursion to visit Kaiping Diaolou, a UNESCO World Heritage site, which lies 130 km from the city. For travelers with kids, Chimelong Tourist Resort, with hotel, theme park, and safari park, is the perfect place to go.

For food lovers, Guangzhou is the best place to go, not only for Chinese travelers from other parts of China but also for foreign travelers from all over the world.

For luxury travelers, like Beijing and Shanghai, most luxury hotel brands have their hotels in Guangzhou, such as Four Seasons, Rosewood, Mandarin Oriental, Park Hyatt, Shangri-La, etc.
— Your China Specialists
Four Seasons Guangzhou
FOUR SEASONS GUANGZHOU
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Rosewood Guangzhou
ROSEWOOD GUANGZHOU
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Basic Information

Guangzhou, also known as Canton and alternately romanized as Kwangchow, is the capital and most populous city of the province of Guangdong in southern China. On the Pearl River about 120 km (75 mi) north-northwest of Hong Kong and 145 km (90 mi) north of Macau, 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, it 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 and Shenzhen, forming one of the largest urban agglomerations on Earth, 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 the city 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. At the end of 2018, the population of the city’s expansive administrative area was estimated at 14,904,400 by city authorities, up 3.8% from the previous year. There is a rapidly increasing number of foreign temporary residents and immigrants from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa. This recent population influx has led to it being dubbed the “Capital of the Third World”.

Nowadays, in modern commerce, it 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.

Source: Wikipedia