Home of the Zhus

I should give a quick geography lesson to give you an idea of where the Zhus are from and where they reside. My grandfather was born in Shilong (石龙), a small town on the outskirts of Guangzhou. Shilong is in Dongguan county, which is home to scores of factories that turn out a lot of the “Made in China” products.

My grandfather eventually moved the family to Guangzhou (广州), the third most populous metropolitan area in China, and the extended family — with the exception of my parents and me — still reside in or near Guangzhou today. The city is located on the Pearl River, near the Southeast coast of China and about an hour’s train ride north of Hong Kong.

Despite its size, Guangzhou isn’t as well known to the world as some of the other big cities in China. It doesn’t have Beijing’s imperial attractions, Shanghai’s reputation as a center of finance and trade, Xi’an’s army of terracotta soldiers, or Guilin’s famous rivers and mountains. However, Guangzhou is renowned both inside China and to foreigners in the know as a culinary capital. It is the home of Cantonese food (Canton being the city’s former name), and the city’s culinary delights are among the strongest memories I have from the ten years of my childhood that were spent there. The food is amazingly fresh and runs the gamut from the ordinary to the bizarre. In fact, there’s little from the natural world that doesn’t end up on a plate in Guangzhou. There used to be an old joke:

An alien lands in China. The people in Beijing say, “Let’s study it.” The people in Shanghai say, “Let’s put it in the zoo.” The people in Guangzhou say, “Let’s eat it.”

Aside from the food, however, Guangzhou has always been an important trading port throughout its long history. For much of China’s history, it was one of the few windows to the outside world, and that foreign influence is reflected in the culture. Having access to the outside world, the Cantonese have always seen themselves as more cultured, worldly, and refined compared to Northerners. That’s not an uncommon attitude in parts of China that lie south of the Yangzi River. The difference in Guangzhou is that if you are from anywhere north of the northern border of Guangdong province (in which Guangzhou is located), it’s not a question of whether you’re a Northerner, but how much of a Northerner you are.