CEGU

In the old district of Guangzhou, the arcade buildings rise like sentinels of stone, their weathered columns marching along the streets in an eternal parade of remembrance. Walkways snake through the quarter like the ancient tributaries of the Pearl River, carrying not water but the flow of countless footsteps through time. On their weathered walls, time has left its marks, each groove and crack whispering tales of bustling trade. Those walkways were a product of the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican era—colonnades introduced by Westerners, but adapted by local Lingnan craftsmen who adorned the arches with plaster sculptures of peonies and bats, while southern-style louvered windows were hidden between the blue-brick walls, whispering of a Nanyang aesthetic. Below, the shops offer various Lingnan specialties—pastries and cooked foods—all bathed in the thick, dim glow of electric lights. Herbal tea vendors, shoe repairman, and sellers of salted snacks blend together, while Cantonese dialects drift through the desolate shopfronts, leaving only faded statues of the God of Wealth and thick layers of incense ash before signs reading “Blessings from the Heavenly Official.” (天官赐福) Yet as the city expands, these arcade buildings are gradually replaced by towering skyscrapers. The old spines bend lower and lower, while the silver skeletal frames of steel and concrete stand firm in their place.

The Pearl River flows gently through Guangzhou like a river of time, carrying much away while leaving much behind. Islands scatter across the river’s heart like forgotten time capsules. Scattered islands drift across the Pearl River’s surface, and in the depths of Datan’s banana groves, remnant pilings of Ming Dynasty water barriers still stand. In those days, the boat people would row through the morning mist of stone-enclosed ponds, with a Mazu shrine mounted at the bow of their vessel, while a compass left behind by the Dutch hung at the stern. By the White Goose Pond on Shamian Island, beneath the Gothic church’s stained-glass windows, the Seven-Star Lion Dance still unfolds on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. The lion dance, a vital symbol of Lingnan culture dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties, blends martial arts, dance, and folk beliefs. The lion heads are crafted with meticulous care—bamboo frames covered with colored paper or fabric, with glass beads for eyes that seem to sparkle with life. Yet the young performers wear Nike shoes, and the camera flashes from live smartphone broadcasts drain the lion’s spirit. The ancestral halls and temples that once bustled with life are now guarded by just a few elderly residents. The elder gentlemen squatting by the old ancestral hall walls, puffing on their water pipes, remark that in the past, the silk merchants of the Thirteen Factories performed the “Black Beard Liu Bei Lion Dance,” while today’s tourism companies only teach the “Golden Beard Smiling Lion.” Those glass-bead eyes, sprinkled with cheap gold dust, remain forever open, facing the old folks who close their eyes to bask in the sunlight. Wooden rocking chairs creak like solitary canoes caught in rapids, like boats stranded in the river, or like withered leaves drifting in the wind. 

The sliding lattice doors of the Western District mansions were long ago dismantled and burned in earthen kilns, with only half a remnant oyster-shell wall surviving along the Lichee Bay embankment. Those Cantonese pioneers who migrated south during the Northern Song Dynasty had built walls by ramming oyster shells dredged from the Pearl River estuary, somehow constructing homes that resisted decay for three hundred years in the salty, damp sea winds. Now, workers restoring the arcaded walkways mix ochre powder into concrete, attempting to imitate blue bricks, yet unable to reproduce the briny essence that once seeped through the oyster-shell layers. The young women at the cultural center, dressed in hanfu, teach children to paint in the Guangcai style, but the gilded peony glazes can never match the rich, buttery fragrance of the Century Egg Pastry from the now-defunct wedding cake shop at the arcade’s corner—lingering in its rusty tin, a final wisp of the vanishing culinary tradition.

Night after night, the salty tide washes over the old pier of Huangpu’s ancient port, and the Bodhi tree at Hai Dong Monastery continues to bear its seeds. The Swedish merchant ship “Göteborg” carried away more than just tea and porcelain—it also bore the salt-water folksongs of boat women. Those filled-in waterways, those flattened arcade streets—they’re like a local gazetteer with missing pages, the spirit of Lingnan scattered and lost in concrete seams, impossible to reassemble. Only when dim sum arrives at the old teahouse, in the delicate wrinkles of shrimp dumpling skin, do the livelihoods and dignity of generations still quietly curl.

Lingnan culture has never been singular. It’s a complex tapestry woven from Confucian traditions of Central Plains and the open spirit of the ocean, a linguistic atlas of Cantonese, Hakka, and Teochew dialects, a living space built from arcade buildings, ancestral halls, temples, and teahouses. As the heart of Lingnan culture, Guangzhou has long been a crucial port on the Maritime Silk Road. During the Tang Dynasty, it was already a prosperous hub where foreign ships gathered and merchants converged. By the Ming and Qing dynasties, Guangzhou’s Thirteen Factories became a vital nexus for trade between China and the West. This geographic openness has preserved Lingnan culture’s inherent qualities of inclusiveness and diversity. Yet these cultural characteristics are gradually being eroded by waves of modernization. People have begun searching for vanishing cultural symbols, like seeking the roots of their spiritual ancestry. The restoration of arcade buildings, preservation of lion dances, and revival of Cantonese opera have become sacred responsibilities in many hearts. Behind this quest lies a deep anxiety—can we truly preserve these cultural roots, or are we left only with occasional glimpses of past glories in our memories? This anxiety isn’t just fear of cultural loss; it’s a bewilderment about identity. Lingnan culture is the root of the people in this land—their language, customs, beliefs, their connection to the past and ancestors. As these cultural symbols fade, people seem to lose their spiritual anchor, like ships adrift in vast seas, unable to find their way home. So they search for roots, trying to discover their cultural identity among surviving arcade buildings, lion dances, and temples. Cultural fragments washed away by modernization have become too scattered to piece together completely. People continue their anxious quest, seeking balance between disappearance and preservation.

But oh, Pearl River, how should I regard you? Are you nurturing this land’s ever-changing development and growth, carrying proud ferries toward distant futures on your rolling waters? Or are you mercilessly washing away this land’s memories with your silt-laden currents? Standing in the shadowy depths of the old quarter’s alleys, where electric fans creek along with Cantonese opera flowing from bulky televisions, I ran my hand along these mailboxes from the last century. Spots of crimson-red rust scattered across their surface—whose tears could they be?