Zhongshan

Zhongshan is a city in Guangdong province in southern China, on the west side of the Pearl River Delta near Macau. It is named after Sun Yat-sen, known in China as Sun Zhongshan, who was born in its village of Cuiheng.

The area was the county of Xiangshan for centuries, a land of rice paddies and fish ponds, and many of its people sailed to work in Hawaii and California. Sun Yat-sen was born in Cuiheng in 1866, studied in Honolulu and Hong Kong, and led the movement that founded the Republic of China. The county was renamed Zhongshan in his honor in 1925. Its old town of Shiqi grew along the Qijiang River, and arcaded shophouses still line Sun Wen West Road.

Guzhen, a town of the city, makes lamps and lighting fixtures in thousands of workshops, and an annual lighting fair draws buyers from abroad. Mingyang Smart Energy, based in Zhongshan, makes wind turbines for farms on land and at sea. Vatti, also based in the city, makes kitchen range hoods and gas water heaters.

The Dr. Sun Yat-sen Residence Memorial Museum in Cuiheng keeps the house he built for his family, with Western arches and Chinese rooms, and a village of farm buildings around it. Zhongshan Park in Shiqi has a hill with a pagoda over the river. Shiqi roast pigeon, with crisp skin and tender meat, is served in restaurants across Guangdong. The Shenzhen–Zhongshan Link, a bridge and undersea tunnel across the Pearl River estuary, opened in the 2020s and joined the city to Shenzhen.