Guangzhou
— — the river city the trade winds found first.
Not only on a wall.
“The old port the West knew as Canton. For most of the Qing dynasty Guangzhou was the only Chinese city foreign traders could enter, and the warehouses along the Pearl River fed tea, silk, and porcelain to Europe. Today it is the third-largest city in mainland China, the cradle of Cantonese cooking, and the host of the Canton Fair twice a year.
Guangzhou, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Guangzhou sits on the Pearl River delta in southern Guangdong province, about 120 kilometres northwest of Hong Kong and 145 kilometres north of Macau. With roughly 18.7 million residents in the city proper, it is the third-largest city in mainland China after Shanghai and Beijing. Founded in 214 BC under the Qin dynasty as Panyu, the city has been a working port for more than 2,200 years, and it remains the southern terminus of the historic Maritime Silk Road.
The China Import and Export Fair, known the world over as the Canton Fair, has been held in Guangzhou every spring and autumn since 1957; each session draws over 200,000 overseas buyers across three phases. The Cantonese new year follows the lunar calendar, with the Flower Market on the eve of the spring festival a tradition more than five centuries old. Typhoon season runs July through September, when the river turns grey and the heat lifts briefly.
The Canton Tower, finished in 2010 at 604 metres, is the tallest structure in the city and among the tallest free-standing towers in the world; the observation deck opens above the Pearl River loop. Shamian Island, the old foreign concession, preserves European colonial architecture across two square kilometres of pedestrian streets. Yum cha at one of the old houses — Tao Tao Ju has been serving since 1880 — remains the way locals open a morning.