Guangzhou, often known as Canton, is the capital of southern China’s Guangdong Province. Long a major port city and commercial gateway to southern China, it has an extensive history of foreign contact, reaching back to Arab traders of the Tang period, through British merchants of the 19th century and on to today’s multinational participants in the famous biannual Trade Fairs. In turn, Guangzhou and surrounding regions sent the bulk of overseas emigrants in the 19th century to found the Chinatowns of major cities around the

world. Cantonese culture has maintained strong distinctionsfrom the rest of China not only in its cosmopolitanism and entrepreneurial spirit, but in its formidably complex dialect and world-famous cuisine.
Guangzhou is nicknamed the “City of Five Rams,” which derives from a legend that it was founded when Five Immortals riding five rams descended to each plan a sheaf of grain there, symbolizing its never-ending prosperity. On firmer historical ground, an administrative city then called Panyu

occupied this site by the 3rd century BC, serving as the capital of the Nanyue Kingdom founded in the region by a breakaway commander from the Qin Empire. The recently discovered Nanyue royal tomb of his grandson have yielded some of the most exquisite jade carvings ever produced in China’s 5,000 year long history of jade working. Already by the earlier centuries AD Guangzhou was an important international port and trading center, with merchants and traders from Southeast Asia and as far away as Rome came to buy