Shangxiajiu Shopping Street
The Shangxiajiu Shopping Street is located in the Liwan District, one of the four downtown districts of Guangzhou. For the last hundreds of years, the district has always been the busiest section of the town. However, until the 7th century during the Tang Dynasty (618 -907 AD), this place had been but a stretch of marshland with crisscrossing ditches and brooks on the north bank of the Pearl River. In 526 AD, when the Indian prince Dharma sailed east across the Indian Ocean and arrived at Guangzhou to propagate Chan Buddhism, here was the very place where he first went ashore. This Indian prince set up a hut on the bank of the river to preach Buddhist doctrine, which was gradually extended into the present-day Hualin Temple. Now the place around the temple is still called Xi Lai Chu Di, meaning” The First Landing Field when coming from the West”.
Prior to the Qing Dynasty, the Liwan District lay outside the west gate of the city walls, and so the area is commonly known as Xiguan, meaning “Western Outskirts “in English. During the Ming Dynasty between the 14th and 16th centuries, Guangzhou became China’s only trading port that was opened to foreign countries and, down to the Qing Dynasty several hundred years ago, many businessmen made great fortune from trades. These millionaires were fed up with the bustle of the heavily inhabited city center and had their houses built in this area one after another, so the district gradually developed into a new residential and business quarter.
The 1500-meter-long Shangxiajiu Shopping Street, flanked by some 300 stores and many of them being well-known old shops, is indeed a “paradise “for shopping. In this street, a great variety of articles are on sale, with just about everything one could wish to find. Around this shopping street are 10 other streets for specialized trades, such as the Qingping Farm Produce Market, the Hualin Jade-ware Street, the Yuansheng Pottery Antique Street and the Desheng Garment Accessory Street. Among them, the jade-ware street is well worth mentioning. This jade-ware street, about1000 meters long, has more than 400 shops and over80%of the jade-ware dealers in Guangzhou are gathered here. Apart from selling jade articles, they also take up the making of gold and silver ornaments. The art of jade-carving in Guangzhou has long been famous all over the world for its good quality and fine workmanship. Of the many jade wares made in Guangzhou, the jade-ball is the most exquisite and is the representative work of Guangzhou jade carving. A jade-ball is carved out of one whole piece of jade stone, with as many as 30 smaller balls one inside the other, which are all movable and are all carved with beautiful designs.
