For a city of four million people, Guangzhou is compact and easy to navigate. It was originally divided up into an inner heart, enclosed by walls and sectioned into old and new quarters, with the surrounding district outside. The walls came down in the 1920s, but it is this area, bounded south by the Pearl River and north by Huanshi Lu , and cut by four arterial roads - Zhongshan and Dongfeng running east-west and Jiefang and Renmin running north-south - that constitutes downtown Guangzhou today. The longer streets are divided up into north, south, east, west and central sections, with the exception of Zhongshan Lu, whose segments are numbered.

 

North of Dongfeng Lu, tall buildings and wide boulevards are dwarfed by the city's two major parks, Yuexiu and Liuhua . South, between Dongfeng Lu and the river, the main roads are noticeably narrower, with flyovers taking the traffic, and it's here that you'll find most of the city's historical monuments. Down on the southwestern waterfront is Guangzhou's busiest corner, with the net of streets north of Liuersan Lu forming a particularly crowded and compelling market district , and Shamian Island , the quiet nineteenth-century foreigners' quarter, lying across a canal. Over on the other side of the Pearl River from here is Honan , a seedy hotspot during the 1930s; while east across the city, Tianhe is a hugely scaled, modern satellite suburb.