The earliest name of Guangzhou was called Renxiao or Panyu when General Ren Xiao built Panyu Town in 214 BC, and then Zhaotuo Town in the Nanyue Kingdom.It wasn't called Guangzhou until in 226 AD during the Period of Three Kingdoms.

Guangzhou was set up as a modern city in 1921 when Dr. Sun Yat-sen established the first republic in Asia.

Being a famous cultural city and with a 2200-year-long history, Guangzhou now is the capital as well as the political, cultural, technological and educational center of Guangdong Province. It is also one of the communication hubs and important international trade ports in South China.

At this historic moment of the turning point of the 21st century, Guangzhou seems to be constantly reinventing itself. New bridges span the Pearl River, the Inner-Ring Express snakes around the city and subway, as it races along out of sight and underground.

This dynamic city, though plagued with incessant problems of pollution, traffic jams and overcrowding, is a city of magic change. It is very diverse as modern shopping malls and department stores spring up between the backstreet markets and the hawker lined shopping streets. Skyscrapers are popping up like the proverbial mushroom, and new roads are bulldozed through the red brick dwellings of old China leaving behind, in their wake something resembling a battlefield, until the new road rises like a modern-day phoenix, out of the rubble and a small part of old China is lost forever.

Heading into the new millennium, Guangzhou is making great efforts to realize its target of the four modernizations ahead of schedule and to turn itself into an international eco-metropolis, leading the way to globalization.

Guangzhou's GDP reached 238.3 billion yuan in the year 2000, only second to Shanghai and Beijing. In other words, its GDP per capita is the highest in China, over 34 500 yuan and personal disposal income reached 13 966.53 yuan per capita. So they have more mobile phones and computers than any other city in China, with 72.2 mobile phones for every 100 people and 54.2 computers for every 100 households. They go and eat out more often than any counterpart in China. Guangzhou's GDP reached 268.5 billion yuan with 37 900 yuan per capita in 2001.

Covering an area of 3 700 sq km, Guangzhou is a progressive, industrial, modern yet traditional city with a typical southern climate. This dichotomy between tradition and progress is a characteristic of both the city and its 9.943 million citizens. Guangzhou stands on the plain that slopes gradually from Mt.Baiyun to the lower reaches of the Pearl River.

The city's civil and financial center is shifted from aged Xiguan downtown area to newly sprouted business center, Tianhe Sports Center. It is a symbolic shift from tradition to modernity.

Guangzhou contains a lot of monuments and remains from all the different stages in its history. All this comes to light in various ways, for example, in its traditionalism and in its rich and varied past. This is expressed in religion -- Buddhism in various forms, in society with very deep-rooted pursuit for a rich and peaceful life, in popular festivities that are maintained with both naturalness and fervor, in the Cantonese dialect which still been conserved despite constant pressure from putonghua, as well as in other areas of popular or minority cultures.
 
Editor: Catherine