The bus journey between Huizhou and Shantou is somewhat surreal. As undulating hills and plains float by in the background, you pass kilometre after kilometre of unbroken, appallingly anonymous housing, built one block deep like a film set, and 1950s estates of grey rectangular buildings packed as closely as possible into stark grids. The dreary modern flats are so similar they can be distinguished only by their inhumane addresses - A10, E5 - painted on their fronts. Still, the highway is good, making for fast and furious driving, and it's not unusual to cover the 300km in a respectable four hours - even faster than the train.
SHANTOU sits in a well-protected marine harbour at the mouth of the stunted Rong River, where eastern Guangdong's major waterway, the Han River , disgorges into the South China Sea through a complex estuary. This strategic access to the south's mountainous interior, not to mention a useful position between Guangzhou and Xiamen in Fujian, was overlooked until Shantou was first opened to foreigners in 1858 following the post-Opium War Tianjin Treaty . The mainly British entrepreneurs who moved in called the town Swatow after the local pronounciation, followed the Han River upstream to establish Church missions, built a city in grand colonial style and, by 1900, had turned Shantou from a fishing village into a major trading port. It remained so for half a century, but the Communist takeover saw the city's interests gradually shifting towards light industries, which were greatly expanded after Shantou's 1980 elevation to one of Guangdong's Special Economic Zones. Today the old waterfront district is somewhat neglected, as a new, modern business city of over a million inhabitants expands steadily east. While incredibly crowded and noisy, the crumbling old quarter, a few nice traditional buildings and a quick trip across the harbour make Shantou a decent place to pause before continuing east into Fujian, or north to Chaozhou.
The City
Overall, Shantou is a huge, sprawling city, but everything of interest is in the western end, a stubby, three-kilometre-broad thumb of land bounded south by the harbour and farther west and north by various trailing outflows descending from the Han River estuary. One of these, the
Meixi Canal , surrounds
Zhongshan Park (¥2) on the northern side of the "thumb", a twenty-minute walk from the long-distance bus station - take Xinghua Lu east over the Xinghua Bridge, then follow the footpath south along the canal. The nicest place in Shantou to start the day in relative calm among ballroom dancers and martial arts experts training with swords, there's a small outdoor
theatre on the eastern side (where Chaozhou opera gets an airing most weekends), a
museum under construction on the northern side, and plenty of trees and water.
Five minutes southwest of the park along Minzu Lu you'll find yourself on a large, pavilion-centred roundabout . Anping Lu continues down into Shantou's seedy old colonial quarter from here, but first turn east along Shengping Lu and seek out Tianhou Gong . Built in 1879 and beautifully restored, it's possibly the smallest temple you'll see anywhere. Partitioned in two, the main courtyard can barely contain twenty people, but the statues and decorations are extraordinarily opulent, with guardian spirits handpainted on the wooden doors, beams carved into dragons and animals, and roof tiles showing scenes from the lives of the red-faced warrior Guan Yu, and a local heroine and her tiger. A similar building a few minutes farther east along Waima Lu sports two large rooftop dragons facing off across a glass "pearl".
Back at the roundabout, Anping Lu runs southwest for more than a kilometre towards the waterfront between some incredible, mouldering colonial facades (once the city's pride) and block upon block of three-storeyed town houses and warehouses, all with elaborate, decaying plaster decor and fluted columns flanking windows and doorways. Though decidedly downmarket and not a little claustrophobic - many of the buildings look as if they're about to keel over on top of you - it's easy to spend a couple of absorbing hours poking around. When you've had enough, press on farther down to Xidi Lu, which crosses Anping and runs southeast for 200m or so to the Shanjiao Ferry (6am-at least 6pm; ¥2). This carries you south across the harbour in about ten minutes, landing at Jiaoshi , an airy headland covered in paths where you could spend half a day wandering among granite boulders and low trees.
