In this post I’ll share a few images from the Zhujiang New Town area, a CBD in the Tianhe District of the megacity of Guangzhou. Guangzhou is located in southern China, about one hour by high speed train from Hong Kong’s Kowloon West Station.
Guangzhou is the capital city of Guangdong province, with a population of 18 million people; it’s categorized as a Tier 1 city in China meaning it has great significance to the country’s economic power.
In modern times (1650-1850), Guangzhou’s importance started from it being the only Mainland China port accessible to foreign trade. It also benefited greatly from the “reform and opening up” policies of Deng Xiaoping, the same policies that transformed nearby Shenzhen.
I’ve been to the city many times, so it was a bit surprising that I’ve never shared images from this amazing city. Sadly, many of the images I took in my early days in China have been lost, but I recently had the chance to visit the city again and took the Fujifilm GFX100S with me.
It’s an eye opening sight during the day, but becomes truly magical at night. It’s hard to fathom that all of this was built in the past two decades!
I was in Guangzhou on a business trip so I only had one night to roam around. Therefore, I’m only able to share images from the Zhujiang New Town area, which is one of the key central business districts in the sprawling city.
With this district being so new, it’s filled with stunning architectural wonders. It includes the famous Guangzhou Opera House, designed by the groundbreaking Iraqi Zaha Hadid. We sadly lost her far too early.
In the sweltering summer heat, I walked the full 1.5km length back and forth from the Pearl River and Huangpu Road. It’s an eye opening sight during the day, but becomes truly magical at night. It’s hard to fathom that all of this was built in the past two decades!
Guangzhou has a lot more to offer, including a wonderful mix of old and new, but for this post, please enjoy some of the new, from a very small part of this huge city. Some of the images will have noise because I hand-held the camera.
I had the Peak Design tripod on me, but I knew that being one of the only foreigners in that area, I would attract a lot of attention. Since I was pressed for time and wouldn’t be able to reciprocate in conversations with the locals, I was trying to be as discrete as possible.
Please enjoy the images and let me know in the comments below if you’ve been to Guangzhou before.
