Zhongshan used to be called Xiangshan, literally meaning perfumed, or fragrant, mountain, the same Xiang as in Xiang Kang, the Chinese name for Hong Kong. There were trees growing on the hills in and around the city which exuded the sweet smell of Agarwood, the source of the most expensive incense we burn. The by-product of cuts, or injuries to those trees is a pungent essence which was harvested, shipped to Hong Kong and exported to anywhere that was willing to pay for what has become one of the most expensive scents in the world.
Hong Kong, 86 kilometres away on the other side of the Pearl River and Xiangshan shared the name of this wonderful, and profitable export until April 1925 when Xiangshan got a new name.
There are not many places in China which are named after a person. Xiangtan in Hunan, not far from Changsha, is where Mao was born and it retains its, not his, name, Guang’an in Sichuan province was where Deng Xiaoping started his life and it retains the name it’s always had rather than that of its most famous son but Zhongshan received a change in name to commemorate China’s revolutionary leader, Sun Yat Sen.
How Sun Yat Sen became Sun Zhongshan is the subject of some conjecture but it is known that because he was a revolutionary in China he travelled to, and lived in exile in Japan. While there, he adopted the alias Nakayama, meaning middle mountain. The same Japanese characters represent the words Zhongshan.
Visit the former residence of Sun Zhongshan.
Sun Zhongshan is so revered in China it would be hard to find a town or city that does not have a Zhongshan park, a Zhongshan Lu(road)a Zhongshan Dao(avenue)or all three of them. Guangzhou has a Sun Yat Sen University, Beijing has a 23-hectare Zhongshan Park, and one of the coolest suburbs of Taipei is called Zhongshan too. My own apartment sits inside the Paifeng(gate)of Zhongshan Gong Yuan(public park). Sun’s birthplace is Cuiheng, in the South of Zhongshan and his resting place is his Mausoleum in Nanjing. His legacy and history transcend the divisions of China’s politics as the one thing everyone can agree upon. His hometown is well worth a visit and that’s where we’re going today.
Full disclosure here, I both live in, and love Zhongshan, it’s been my home for almost 20 years but I have to admit, it wasn’t love at first sight. I arrived in 2004 with a contract to teach English in an international school and, for a few months, I couldn’t wait to finish my contract and then go home. This wasn’t Zhongshan’s fault, I couldn’t speak the language, and I wasn’t planning on learning it as I knew I would only be here a short while, I missed my family, my adopted home in Australia, I missed the great friends and the times I had there too.
But then one day, I woke up with the realisation that the days I was counting were leading to the day I must depart and came to the conclusion that I wasn’t ready to leave, the city had grown on me, it was under my skin and I found a way to stay here. It was a good decision, because of it, I also met my Zhongshan born wife.
Since then, I’ve realised that everything I enjoy in Australia or the UK, the place of my birth I can still enjoy on my periodic visits but so much more, can be enjoyed in China too. By living in Zhongshan, close to Hong Kong and Macau, as well as the rest of Southeast Asia and now, with easy access by high-speed train to anywhere else in China, I’ve seen and experienced more than I ever could if I’d returned to Australia at the end of my contract in 2005.
Yakou Village is one of the last collectives in China. A Chinese media outlet published an article about Yakou. It was a sad report of a Zhongshan village left behind when all the surrounding areas were selling their land to developers, Yakou’s village head was holding out: “How can we call ourselves farmers if we have no land?”he proudly asked. Compromise was reached, the land is still collectively farmed but some was sold to developers–“the people wanted money, they government needed land”was the village head’s response when asked why he changed his mind.
Yakou Village.
Yakou is now a tourist destination. It’s a rural revitalisation project and, if people want to take their children to rural China, work in the fields for a day and experience the traditional life of China, Yakou is a good choice;now dotted with coffee shops, restaurants and even some bed and breakfasts–no longer a poor collective, a rich yet traditional location that fought through those troubled times and has come out all the better for it–I see Yakou as a microcosm of China. It took time to get it right but it was worth the time and trouble.
Sun Yat Sen is not Zhongshan’s only revolutionary leader, and there were others who revolutionised trade and industry and even sport. China’s most prominent department store, the Sincere Store in Guangzhou and Shanghai, was established Zhongshan born Ma Yingbao who spent many years in the colony of New South Wales, before there was even a country called Australia. Ma is credited with being the person who changed Hong Kong into a retail hub.
Guo Le, who founded another department store chain, the Wing On stores also came from Zhongshan but he went on to so much more. He had hotels, banks, shipping and insurance too. Guo Le transitioned his company from retail to industrial textiles and exports thus becoming one of the early proponents of China’s growth to becoming the global leader in manufacturing and exporting.
Even Mao Zedong was influenced by Zhongshan born economist, writer and women’s activist Zheng Guanying. His work guided Mao through the difficulties of trade embargoes and sanctions imposed by the USA throughout the 1950’s, 60’s and into the 70’s.
Another Xiangshan resident was Tang Tingshu, who brought the first trains to China, he was an engineer, trained by the British in Hong Kong who spoke fluent English. Because of the combination of his language, engineering and entrepreneurial skills, he is known as the“Father of Modernisation”and, along with the department store and business founders mentioned, is recorded in history as one of the“five compradors of Zhongshan”.
In more modern times, the world’s fastest man is Su Bingtian. He may not be the world record holder in the 100m sprint but he did something no other Asian has done before by being one of the world’s fastest men in the 60 metre dash, an indoor sporting event where no Asian, until Zhongshan born Su, has ever competed at the top level. He went on to beat the West Indians and African Americans who dominate sprinting by being the fastest man out of the blocks and beating them all to the winning tape but, so far, only when the tape is 60 metres away;by 70 metres, he’s caught up by the longer legs of the much taller athletes but only the fastest of them, will overhaul him. In the last Olympic Games he received a Bronze Medal with his teammates in the 4x400m and remains to this day, one of the fastest men in the world over that crucial first 60 metres. Su is now an Associate Professor teaching sports at Jilin University in Guangzhou, so we can expect his students to carry on his legacy and hopefully reach the point where the last 40 metres will see Chinese athletes alongside their taller counterparts in upcoming Olympics and world sporting events.
It's easy to suggest that the proximity of Zhongshan to Hong Kong and Macau could have led to the success of it’s people and indeed, most of the people we’ve talked about so far were overseas trained, or gained their experience and financial capital from other countries. However, in the reign of Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty, when the imperial examinations prevailed, there were 16 successful candidates in the highest imperial examinations and over 180 successful candidates in the imperial examinations at the provincial level from Zhongshan. Obviously, there’s something good about Zhongshan and, it seems there always has been.
Every place we travel to in China has things it is famous for;usually one is a product, the other is a food. Zhongshan is a little different it has two products and two foods which are renowned throughout China and, in the case of lighting, around the world. Su Bingtian’s home is Guzhen, literally meaning ancient town but actually, it’s the opposite. Guzhen is an ultra-modern part of the city where a huge amount of the world’s lights and light fittings are made. If you’ve sat in a Starbucks, been to a Disney site, or watched any Olympic event, you’ve seen Guzhen’s lights. The chances are, since 70%of all China’s lights are made in this small part of Zhongshan, that you’re sitting under a light, or a light fitting that was made in Zhongshan right now, whether you’re in a street, a park, a mall or your private home, that’s how widely spread Guzhen lights have become.
Attend a local wedding.
Further South in Zhongshan is another specialised town, the town of Dachong, where, during the early days of Reform and Opening, a group of Zhejiang carpenters settled down and opened a business which is now one of the largest centres of redwood furniture manufacturing, there are currently almost 500 businesses specialising in what was once all mahogany but many other woods are now used to create exquisite and easily identifiable Chinese style furniture.
Anyone who knows Chinese culture will tell us, one of its most important aspects is food. Food is such an important feature of Chinese culture that everywhere we go there will be a claim of something unique to itself. Zhongshan, goes one better and has two: one is deep-fried pigeon and the other is something that would surprise most westerners;crispy carp fish.
Westerners don’t usually eat carp. It’s a fish with a bad reputation but it’s widely loved in China. In the West, some of our river systems have been taken over by this invasive species and for most of us, it’s not nice to eat. However, my wife’s hometown of Dongsheng, in the North of Zhongshan, has something a bit special. It’s a large carp, fed on a special diet of beans and known as either Crispy fish or crunchy fish, depending on your interpretation of the Chinese word cui(脆).
Zhongshan’s other famous delicacy is specific to the downtown area known as Shiqi. It’s a young pigeon, sometimes translated as Shiqi Pigeon and sometimes as Shiqi Squab. In culinary terms, a squab is a domesticated pigeon under 4 weeks old. Cooked in a wok, in hot oil, it comes out looking like a small roast chicken but the taste is superb. Often described as a Hong Kong delicacy but like Hong Kong’s name came from the scents shipped from Xiangshan, the island which became a colony and then a special Administrative Region, got many of its foods from the mainland too, this is one of them. Crispy skin on the outside, moist meat inside and absolutely delicious, this dish would put Colonel Sanders to shame.
The world knows that China has a huge population, but sometimes, some perspective is needed to understand just how big that population is. Because of the famous people who come from Zhongshan and because it’s named after one of China’s most popular leaders, everyone in China knows the city, they all know where it is, who comes from there and they’ve all been to a Zhongshan park or traveled along a Zhongshan road. But, outside of Asia, the name Zhongshan is relatively unknown. Before I arrived in China, I had heard of Sun Yat Sen but my education hadn’t informed me that Sun Zhongshan was another name he used, when I learnt that I would be sent there by my employer for an 8-month contract, I looked it up online and learnt a little more about it.
It really is a small city by Chinese standards, only 4 million people call it home, but that makes it bigger than all the UK’s cities other than London and with a slightly larger population than Los Angeles only one city in the USA is bigger, and that’s New York. Russia has two cities which are larger, Moscow and St Peterburg, but other than these and London, the continent of Europe has no cities larger than Zhongshan.
When talking of Zhongshan, I can echo the words of many visitors: to paraphrase Deng: I’ll never go back and, as Ricardo says, this is“My Zhongshan”;this is Zhongshan, this is my adopted home. I’ll welcome you in Zhongshan.
