In Jiangmen, Guangdong—China's foremost hometown of overseas Chinese—lies Chikan Town, the Overseas Chinese Hometown. It boasts a history of over 370 years since its establishment as a trading port and market. After years of meticulous planning and construction, it has returned with a fresh face while preserving its rich history, becoming the only one of China's ancient towns dedicated to overseas Chinese culture.
The town has a profound cultural heritage and is renowned as a historic and artistic town and one of China's first distinctive towns. It preserves more than 600 arcaded buildings, forming the largest, most continuous, and best-preserved collection of ancient arcaded buildings in the hometown of overseas Chinese.
The current resort area centres on the historic arcaded street district, aiming to create a comprehensive leisure and tourism resort and a world-class tourist destination that integrates sightseeing, leisure and vacationing, business conventions and exhibitions, cultural creativity, and ancient town experiences. It allows modern people to experience the ambience of life, economy, trade, and culture of the Republic of China era within the tourist area.
The project takes the historic streets with the most prominent historical and cultural features as the historical landscape axis, the riverfront landscape along the Tanjiang River, and the surrounding riverside buildings as the traditional riverside landscape axis featuring golden riverbanks and docks. It divides the natural domains of the two prominent Chikan families, the Guan and Situ families, into the upper and lower cores, showcasing Chikan's prosperous commerce and market life in the early 20th century.
Upon entering Chikan Town, one is greeted by the vibrant atmosphere of the streets and alleys on Dixi Road, open-air movies at dusk, colourful river lanterns lit at night, and stunning music and water dance shows filled with high-tech elements. The reopened ancient town has attracted large crowds of tourists, bustling with activity and excitement.
Older people born and raised in the town see preservation and new changes, with old streets and houses retained. Tourists can experience the ambience of life, economy, trade, and culture of the Republic of China era within the tourist area. The century-old overseas Chinese houses embody the principle of "developing while protecting and protecting while developing."
The Chikan Overseas Chinese Ancient Town project (Phase I) has planned and developed cultural streets, workshop streets, traditional souvenir streets, fashion shopping streets, European-style streets, and Nanyang-style streets, forming a complex business system comprising overseas Chinese culture exhibitions, intangible cultural heritage workshops, performing arts theatres, hotels, and homestays.
Through tourism experiences with profound cultural connotations and high-quality tourism products, it provides tourists with comprehensive services covering food, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, shopping, and entertainment, reshaping the unique competitiveness of tourism in Chikan Overseas Chinese Ancient Town through innovation.
As the only large-scale cultural leisure and resort project in China dedicated to overseas Chinese culture, Chikan Town—Overseas Chinese Town is leveraging its practices to promote higher-level, deeper, and broader integration of local cultural tourism, creating a new model for cultural tourism development. It will become a platform for cultural exchanges among overseas Chinese.
Author | Alice
Photo | Alice
Editor | Will, James
