##30 Days in Guangzhou Urban Village

The most severe epidemic in Guangzhou is Haizhu District, and the most severe epidemic in Haizhu District is Kangle Village, Kecun, and Datang Village, which are urban villages that stretch for several kilometers. Hongyue Village, in particular, has become the main place where this wave of epidemics occurred. In Guangzhou, urban villages not only record the history of clans migrating south to avoid war, farming and multiplying until they prospered and became prominent families, but also bear witness to the difficult journey of a new generation of immigrants working hard to pursue their dreams in this city. For example, in Kangle Village, which has been hit by the epidemic this time, more than 100,000 foreigners have gathered here to work hard. According to relevant data, as of the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, there were 293 urban villages in Guangzhou, distributed in 11 districts of Guangzhou. The history of many urban villages can be traced back hundreds or even thousands of years. Another famous urban village in Guangzhou, the reconstruction of Xiancun is still under construction.

Follow me to see what the 30 days in the urban village of Guangzhou are all about.

During the 30 days in Kangle Village, Guangzhou, some people were afraid of infection and did not dare to transfer. Some merchants asked for rent exemption and the landlord ignored them

Text | Li Xiaofang intern Yang Donghai

Editor | Zhou Hang

Working girls on Zhaogong Street

Zhaogong Street is quiet. This is very unusual.

The street is about 900 meters long and runs through the two urban villages of Guangzhou Kangle and Lujiang. In the past, it often appeared in the public eye due to news of "recruitment difficulties". Along the way, there were crowds of garment factory owners. They were wearing sample clothes. They tore off a piece of cardboard and wrote down the type of work required and the wage, which turned out to be a recruitment sign. Garment workers came around like a tide, asking about the process, or trying to raise the piece rate by one or two yuan. Sometimes there are so many people gathering that delivery vans and tricycles get stuck in the flow of people, and the urban management team has to use a loudspeaker to repeatedly play reminders: "Stay on both sides when recruiting workers, don't block the middle of the road." The noise can last from 8 a.m. to late at night or even early in the morning.

It is like a flowing canal, continuously transporting labor and money in every link of the garment industry.

When Chen Yue, a girl from Hubei, went to the street for the first time, she thought it was the Spring Festival Transport scene during the Chinese New Year. "There were huge crowds of people, all of them heads." She just arrived in Guangzhou more than a month ago and was led by her fellow villagers. I went to Recruitment Street and found a job making sweatshirt sleeves and collars. As a result, I only worked for one day and earned about 100 yuan, and then the ban came.

At around 4 p.m. on October 23, she saw a long queue suddenly forming at the nucleic acid test site downstairs. She was very confused while resting in a rental house. In Kangyue Village, the small workshop-style garment factories scattered in every corner basically do not check nucleic acid, and there are not many people queuing up on weekdays. Official news soon came out - on October 23, a person who tested positive for nucleic acid was found in Haizhu District. His activities involved an urban village and a garment factory. There were also five abnormal samples in the regional nucleic acid screening.

All entrances and exits of the urban village were blocked by water horses, making it impossible to get in or out. Zhaogong Street has quickly become deserted. Many restaurants and clothing stores on both sides have closed their rolling shutters, and pedestrians occasionally walk through the street. At 9 p.m., a small garment factory owner received a notice from the community that the garment factories in Kangle and Lujiang areas would suspend work and production for three days starting from 0:00 on the 24th.

At first, people could move around freely in the village and didn't pay much attention. In the past three years, the village has carried out several nationwide nucleic acid tests and temporary lockdowns, which took as short as three days and as long as one week before returning to normal. Prior to this, there had not been a single positive case in Hong Kong Village.

Chen Yue was not nervous, but after seeing that all the instant noodles on the shelves of the small supermarket were sold out, he also bought some. I also stocked up on some potatoes, which are durable for storage. I just moved to Kangyue Estate. There was nothing in the rental house, so I bought an electric kettle, an electric cooking pot that can cook some noodles.

She couldn't make any more preparations. There is no refrigerator in the rental house, so there is no way to store supplies. The so-called kitchen is actually just a sink with a cutting board.

Before becoming a garment worker, Chen Yue worked in an electronics factory, sold mobile phones, and worked as a clerk.

Two years ago, she started learning to ride on a motor and cut clothes from her cousin. She is 28 years old and comes from Jingmen, Hubei. In her hometown, every household makes clothes. There are small workshops with a few people and clothing factories with dozens of people. Every process of making clothes is spread out in her hometown, and it is a mature assembly line. She feels that making clothes is more tiring than all the jobs she has been exposed to in the past. She can sit in front of the sewing machine for more than ten hours without stopping, but the income is also higher.

When Chen Yue came to Guangzhou, she just felt that "the wages outside should be higher than at home." She hopes to seize the time and work for another two months to earn some money to go home for the New Year.

Almost all the workers on the recruitment street had the same idea. Most of them are temporary workers. They wait for work from 8 o'clock in the morning and earn a day's wages for a day's work. A 30-year-old garment worker said: "Long-term workers can only get a stable salary, while temporary workers have room to negotiate during the peak season." He can earn an extra two to three thousand yuan and save enough money to go home and marry a wife earlier.

To be honest, Chen Yue doesn't like the life here very much. When she first arrived at Connaught Estate, her first impression was that "there were so many people and rubbish was everywhere." The agent took her to see the house, and she had to pay 20 yuan to see the house first. Finally, I chose a single room, which was "very, very small", but the rent was still 1,000 yuan, and the monthly water and electricity bills had to be surcharged three times. She didn't know why, but she asked other workers and they all said, "It's like this around here." She accepted it. Kangyue Village has its own operating rules, and coming here means accepting them all.

It was also in Kangyue Village that she learned for the first time that there were bed rooms that cost more than ten yuan a night. Each room could accommodate more than a dozen people. Many of the tenants there were elderly and it was difficult to find jobs. , or porters in the nearby cloth market. They don't have any clothing-making skills and can only work hard.

During this time, Chen Yue sometimes thought about the people living in these houses. This Guangzhou epidemic is the most serious in Kangle Lujiang Village. With the escalation of control, supermarkets have been closed, and so have vegetable markets. By the end of October, almost all buildings required tenants to "stay at home." She and her roommates all have electric kettles and electric cooking pots. What about those people who are crowded into a small room? Many people don’t cook on weekdays, and “maybe they don’t have hot water or bowls.”

Hubei Boss’s Sewing Machine

For the first time, the 130-square-meter factory building was completely quiet. There was no sound of the stamping of a sewing machine, only the push notifications that rang from time to time on the phone.

Before receiving the shutdown notice, Li Hong, the owner of a small garment factory, had just received two customers and had 3,000 pieces of clothing to be cut. She was going to work for a while before Double Eleven to try to save her business, which was bleak this year. Before the lockdown, one of the customers transported fabrics into the village and urged Li Hong to work secretly. But Li Hong doesn't dare to take risks. "If work starts, a fine of 30,000 yuan will be imposed and the factory will be closed for half a month."

In the past few years of the epidemic, Li Hong has faced this kind of uncertainty the most. She left Hubei for Guangdong when she was in her early twenties. She has been working in Guangdong for nearly 30 years, and has been working in Kangyue Village for 10 years.

People living here are accustomed to refer to Kanglu Village and Lujiang Village as Kanglu Area. The two urban villages are very close to each other, with a total area of ​​only about 1 square kilometer. They have a unique geographical advantage, next to the Zhongda Cloth Market. At its peak, half of China's clothes were produced in the Zhongda Market.

In the 1990s, a group of garment processing factories flooded into two urban villages, renting private houses and setting up factories. The bosses order fabrics at Zhongda Market in the morning, turn into Kangyue Village and find someone to process them, and pick up the goods in the evening. Local villagers began to build buildings on a large scale, one building next to the other with extremely narrow spacing. When you open the window, you can hold hands with the neighbors opposite, so they are called "handshake buildings." When the area was no longer enough, it began to grow upward, from two or three floors to six or seven floors. Public data shows that there are only six to seven thousand locals in the two villages, but there are more than 100,000 migrant populations.

Among the more than 100,000 migrant population, the majority are from Hubei. They were the first batch of gold diggers. Relying on the tradition of "fellow villagers bringing fellow villagers", they gave the two villages the nickname "Hubei Village".

They spent their youth on sewing machines. Some of them scraped together enough money and bought their own sewing machines and started small business with a sign.

Li Hong and her husband worked for half their lives to help their son get married. At the end of 2018, they took out their savings and borrowed another 100,000 yuan to buy a small factory and start their own business. In Kangyue Village, you can find specialized skilled workers even if you just sew a button. The factory's orders have not stopped throughout the year. Sometimes the quantity of goods is too large to be finished, and they will distribute it to outside manufacturers who have not received orders.

In the first year, they paid off their debts. After 2019, the money to buy the factory was paid. Li Hong and her husband planned to continue their work. "Who knew the epidemic would come. "Even if there is no epidemic in Kangyue Village, there is an epidemic in the surrounding areas and there are fewer workers. She can't bear the wages raised by the workers. For a while, a temporary worker was paid 600 a day, and those with quick hands and feet were even paid 900 or 1,000.

Li Hong said that customers who have placed orders in the past two years have become more cautious. They only make as much as they need for the season and dare not stock up for fear of not being able to ship goods due to lockdown. Most of the foreign trade orders she received were from Southeast Asia and Africa. Some customers moved to other countries to place orders. She could only contact everywhere to find new orders and piece together things to support the factory.

Li Hong felt that he was smart after he stopped working for three days this time. "Look now, if you cut it, you will lose a lot of money. You can't ship it out if you make it secretly. In the end, it can only be treated as garbage. It costs 3 yuan to sell a piece, and the fabric for a piece of clothing costs about 10 yuan, and the labor cost is 12 yuan. You How much does it cost to buy 3,000 pieces of clothing?”

However, as the lockdown continues, she is no longer worried about just business. Afraid of infection in the rental house, she and her husband brought their bedding and moved into the factory on October 27. In the aisle between a row of pedal sewing machines and a cement wall, they used benches to make two sheets one meter wide. small bed. The only cooking tool is an electric skillet.

Among the eight long-term workers in the factory, they are all relatives and friends of Li Hong. Three of them took the initiative to go outside for isolation. The other two couples live together, so Li Hong does not have to worry about them. The remaining 51-year-old single female worker also moved into the factory and shared a "bench bed" with Li Hong, while Li Hong's husband slept on the other.

Li Hong has never been able to sleep well. "I can't sleep, and I seem to wake up when I fall asleep. There are several groups that I have to check at any time, including the group in the dormitory and the group in the factory. The news changes all the time."

Landlords and "loud-sounding public"

Real estate agent Feng Lun once imagined an ideal city that could accommodate 100,000 people in 1 square kilometer. In his plan, it was necessary to use People work, live and play happily inside. This building must be as tall as Shanghai Jin Mao Tower.

There are also 100,000 people living in 1 square kilometer. In reality, Kangle and Lujiang Urban Villages are like completely opposite high-density living versions.

Here, the sky is just a long and narrow line, cut into pieces by wires that are entangled like spider webs. The awnings of the shops on the first floor sometimes cover the lanes, preventing sunlight from entering. When doing nucleic acid tests in the alley, people couldn’t even line up in two rows. A tenant of Leisure Estate said that she could tolerate the rats, cockroaches and the smell of wet garbage coming through the masks in the urban village, but she has never been able to get used to the long-term darkness in the small rental house, which made her feel "like It is to sit in the abyss.”

According to official statistics, about 90% of the infected people in this round of Guangzhou's epidemic occurred in Haizhu District, and most of them were concentrated in Kangle and Lujiang Urban Village. To provide door-to-door services to this huge group of people, you can imagine how arduous the task facing the local area is.

A volunteer mentioned in an interview with Caixin that when distributing daily necessities, they estimated that 50 people might live in a 7-story building, but in fact there were 60, 70 or more people living there. Hundreds of people. “Perhaps only the landlord or second landlord really knows how many people live in a building,” the volunteer said.

Fenghe Economic Cooperative, which belongs to two urban villages, is trying to include landlords in the epidemic prevention management system. A notice issued on November 4 requires all village members and rental house owners to cooperate in epidemic prevention. Each building must provide a temporary administrator to be responsible for the contact management of the building and cooperate in the distribution of daily necessities.

If it is not implemented, economic "sanctions" may be imposed and year-end dividends may be withheld.

It is difficult to say whether the effect of this measure is as expected. Since the epidemic, Chen Yue’s landlord has not shown up, nor has a temporary administrator been elected.

In fact, those who stay in the village are usually second-time landlords. They usually spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands to secure the right to operate a rental house and obtain the rent difference. There are also administrators hired by landlords to collect utility bills and perform daily maintenance on furniture, doors and windows for tenants. With the advent of the epidemic, the usual administrator did not speak much. Chen Yue understood, "He definitely didn't want to stand out during special moments." By the end of October, when the epidemic was really serious, the administrator pulled all the tenants into the same WeChat group, which effectively The effect is approximately equal to none.

In the next few days, Chen Yue received two supplies, both from community epidemic prevention staff and volunteers. The supplies are mainly fast food, including instant noodles, self-heating hot pot, lunch meat, milk, egg pancakes, and some vegetables.

Zhang Yangyang, a 35-year-old native of Wuhan, Hubei, owns a first-floor shop in Lujiang Village. The situation in the six-story building where the shop is located is more complicated. The building was built by a local old man and gave it to his son. "But this son is a prodigal." When he was short of money, he sold one floor. The six floors ended up with six landlords, including Zhang Yangyang. She felt that even if they wanted to take care of it, it might be difficult to reconcile the same opinions.

Zhang Yangyang moved into Kangyue Village with his parents when he was 13 years old. Her parents run a clothing accessories store in Hong Le Village, selling all kinds of accessories you can think of for clothes, such as embroidery and beading. She also got married and had children here, and also started a clothing accessories business.

Nowadays, Zhang Yangyang, who is starting a business in other places, has almost no contact with his tenants. “I know that the tenants there don’t like the landlord very much, so I basically just sign the contract and disappear from his presence.” " She described the relationship between tenants and landlords in the village as "fearful and hateful, but inseparable."

However, she regards Kangle Village as another hometown and often misses this business place. A warm favor. In Kangle Village, favors are often more useful than rules and contracts. "The character of the people over there is that if I like you, I will let you make money." Zhang Yangyang said that the money he earned and the shop he bought were all due to their enthusiasm. This time, she took the initiative to send a message to her tenants to waive one month's rent.

Not all landlords are so kind-hearted. 35-year-old Xu Xiaozhen tried to ask the landlord if she could consider reducing the rent, but the landlord never responded. For the stall they rented, they had to pay more than 10,000 yuan in "admission fees" every year. Zhang Yangyang said that many landlords deliberately do not renew their leases after they expire, "If you don't pay, they will let you go. Anyway, you don't have to worry about rent."

Xu Xiaozhen works at a nearby cloth market, and her husband rents a 12-square-meter apartment in Kangle Village. The stalls on the left and right are dedicated to the clothing pattern making business. This stall is not only a shop, but also a dormitory for the couple when the rolling shutter is closed at night. She rarely sees the landlord, the middle-aged man who inherited a building from his father. "Every time he comes, he checks the water and electricity bills and collects the rent."

After the United Press issued the notice, Xu Xiaozhen's landlord selected a tenant to be the building manager. After all shops in the village were closed, tenants bought food through online software. After the vegetables are delivered, they are placed at the No. 7 post at the entrance of the village in the city. The epidemic prevention staff will deliver them to each building in the village, and then the building manager will distribute them to each household.

The process was perfect, but Xu Xiaozhen remembered that after only about three days of implementation, no one came to deliver food. She heard someone say that many of the volunteers who delivered food were tested positive, and the manpower was greatly reduced.

Xu Xiaozhen said that they have to pay attention to the "loud loudspeaker" (hand-held loudspeaker) every day. The stall of Xu Xiaozhen and her husband is on the first floor. When they hear noises every day, they will look out and see staff wearing protective suits shouting "loud sir" to make nucleic acid or distribute supplies. They are in the building. A reminder in the WeChat group.

Xu Xiaozhen knew a couple with two children who lived deep in an alley. Every time supplies are distributed, Xu Xiaozhen always remembers to tell the couple to remind them not to miss it. "We are all strangers," she said.

During the lockdown, many garment workers stayed in rented houses with nothing to do but sleep. If they were not careful, they might miss the nucleic acid test. The garment workers who live on the lower floors are even a little lucky to be able to hear the announcements from the "loud public" more clearly. At around 1 a.m. on November 5, Chen Yue, who lived on the second floor, heard a staff member shouting with a loudspeaker, "There is sunshine in this building. Everyone needs to move out in a large area. Pack up a change of clothes and go to quarantine."

She and her friend hurriedly picked up two pairs of clothes and went downstairs. The alleyway was crowded with people, a dense crowd. Chen Yue no longer cared about cross-infection. "The conditions for transfer must be more comfortable. At least you can eat rice three times a day." There were also some workers who lived further away who didn't hear the loudspeakers clearly, but in the WeChat group When I saw the transfer notice sent by others, I kept going downstairs and got to the end of the queue.

Waiting until 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning, Chen Yue boarded the bus to Huizhou for quarantine.

People waiting to leave

Transferring people collectively has been used by many big cities to prevent epidemics in urban villages, and it is also Guangzhou's countermeasure this time. According to the Guangzhou press conference on November 5, with the support of surrounding cities, the city has transported and quarantined approximately 31,000 people in the past three days.

Zhang Zhoubin, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that urban villages are mostly small streets and narrow alleys, and the air circulation in the entire area is poor, making it easy for the virus to form within the area and difficult to dissipate in a short time. Aerosol. To solve this problem, the best way is to transfer and isolate, and significantly reduce the population density in the entire risk area.

At 9 o'clock in the evening on November 6, "Dangshenggong" came to the downstairs of Li Hong's factory: "Everyone who has gone out to quarantine hastily pack up and go downstairs. Get in line early and get on the bus early. If you are late, you have to wait in line again." There’s a long queue.”

She was a little hesitant at first, so she leaned against the window and asked the neighbors upstairs and downstairs. She found that the people who originally said they wouldn’t leave had decided to leave, so she quickly discussed with her husband to pack a change of clothes. , go downstairs, take a shortcut to the checkpoint and queue up.

It was raining lightly that night in Kangyue Village, and the umbrellas were rubbing against each other. Some were wearing N95 masks, some were wearing ordinary masks, and some were standing in front of Li Hong, who pulled down their masks to smoke. She stood to the side and used an umbrella to protect her. At one o'clock in the morning, a staff member squeezed in and used a loudspeaker to inform everyone that there were no vacancies. However, the people in line did not want to go back. There were complaints in the alley. "I waited for seven or eight hours yesterday and they said there was no car or hotel. It’s like this again today.”

Those who didn’t want to leave stayed there until three o’clock, and staff came to spray alcohol every once in a while. There was a four or five-year-old child sleeping next to Li Hong. He was wrapped in clothes by his mother and sitting under the eaves. At almost four o'clock, Li Hong decided to give up and return to the factory.

Looking at the new cases every day and the long queues of people for transfer in short videos, Li Hong always said that she was afraid. She was afraid that if she stayed in Kangle, no one would care about them in the future. But she was also afraid of cross-infection and did not dare to go out and queue again.

A friend who was diagnosed and went into isolation told Li Hong: "After I recovered, I had nothing to worry about. I started to have a headache and lacked strength, so I drank boiled water every day, and then I got better." But some people also told her that she had sequelae. Li Hong couldn't figure it out, "I don't know what's going on."

In the rental houses in Kangle Village, the only places where people can get exposure to sunlight are balconies and windows. However, as the number of cases increases, the original space for obtaining information and light has become a daunting existence.

Li Hong closed all the doors and windows of the factory and only opened the windows to dry clothes when the sun was strong. Sometimes I look down from the window and see people constantly pulling boxes for transport.

In Kangle Village, there is a Fujian couple with a 6-year-old child. The male owner has the habit of drinking tea, so he specially set up a tea table on a narrow balcony and prepared a complete set of tea sets. Later, two positive cases appeared in the building opposite. The male host quickly moved the coffee table into the room. The hostess also closed the doors and windows tightly. She said she was worried about the sequelae if the child got infected. But she couldn't tell what the specific sequelae were.

Xu Xiaozhen did not seal the windows. She had to stare at the windows to see if anyone was distributing supplies or notifying nucleic acid tests. It's just that she and her husband wore masks at all times in the house except for eating and sleeping. She is worried about causing trouble to the epidemic prevention personnel. "They are also working hard, so I don't want to cause trouble to them."

She is not afraid of infection. What she fears is that the peak garment-making season before the end of the year will pass like this. She has four children, the oldest has just entered high school, and money is everywhere. There are also parents in their hometown in Heyuan, Guangdong, waiting for the couple to send money home.

"What I'm most afraid of is that I was detained for more than 20 days. In the end, I became yang, and all my persistence was in vain. Then the person with yang in the front has recovered and can move freely, and I still have to go to the hospital. Isn't it a waste of time to go to the cabin and go to quarantine?" She said, "Now I am thinking that as long as I can go out and find something to do somewhere else, I will have some income and I can make some money back during the New Year."

Many days have passed since Double 11, and Li Hong still misses it. She said she was "heartbroken by the loss this year." This Hubei woman "spent her youth" in Guangdong and "didn't take care of her children or take care of her grandchildren." Looking back on her life now, she feels like she's back to square one.

But now, all they can do is wait, not only waiting to leave the urban village, but also waiting to leave Guangzhou.

On November 13, Fenghe Economic Union issued an announcement to carry out a one-month comprehensive management work in the Kanglu area, requiring all rental owners and residents within the area to temporarily return to their hometowns. Or they can seek refuge with relatives and friends. After the treatment work is completed, residents can return to the area. On the same day, Li Hong saw a notice in the group, "Guests who were originally scheduled to be sent back to Fengyang Street in Haizhu will be sent to Guangzhou South Railway Station."

The notice also stated, "Since the 1990s, after nearly 30 years of development, Kanglu Area has become a nationally renowned entrepreneurial port for migrant workers in Guangzhou." However, it also mentioned that, Due to lack of early planning, urban villages have many problems.

In fact, the renovation of Kangle Village and Lujiang Village is already on the schedule. It is planned to start the construction of resettlement houses before the end of 2023 and basically complete the construction of resettlement houses by the end of 2025. The investment is huge and it is the largest renovation project in Guangzhou.

Li Hong doesn’t know if those relatives and friends will continue to work with her next year. If it is demolished, she wants to sell the factory and go back to her hometown to work in the factory run by her son. Now, like Xu Xiaozhen and his wife, she and her husband have filled out the return home application form and voluntary quarantine form, and are waiting for the arrival of the transfer vehicle.

A few days ago, Chen Yue successfully passed the 7-day quarantine period and was sent to Guangzhou South Railway Station. She contacted the village committee, which was willing to take her home. It's just that the clothing business in my hometown has also been affected by the epidemic, and my neighbor's sister has been on vacation for several days. She is still thinking about her next job, but it won't be long before she will be working again. After all, as long as life goes on, making money must continue.

(Except for Zhang Yangyang, the other narrators have pseudonyms)

- END -

Guangzhou’s urban villages during the epidemic

This is Guangzhou The wave of epidemics is most severe in Haizhu District, and the most severe epidemic in Haizhu District is Kangle Village, Kecun, and Datang Village, an area of ​​urban villages that stretches for several kilometers. Hongyue Village, in particular, has become the main place where this wave of epidemics occurred.

In Guangzhou, urban villages not only record the history of clans migrating south to escape the war, farming and multiplying until they prospered and became prominent families, but also witness the new generation of immigrants working hard for their dreams in this city. difficult journey. Urban villages are like utopias, carrying the struggles and homesickness of outsiders in Guangzhou. For example, in Kangle Village, which has been hit by the epidemic this time, more than 100,000 foreigners have gathered here to work hard.

How many urban villages are there in Guangzhou?

According to relevant data, as of the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, there are 293 urban villages in Guangzhou, distributed in 11 districts of Guangzhou. The history of many urban villages can be traced back hundreds or even thousands of years. .

How are urban villages formed?

Urban villages are created in the context of rapid industrialization and urbanization. For example, in Guangzhou, with the expansion of urban land, more and more villages that were originally on the outskirts of the city have been annexed into urban land and are surrounded by rows of high-rise buildings. The unique phenomenon of "city surrounding rural areas" has emerged. Villages in the city are managed according to the urban-rural dual system and the household registration system. The original residents are all natives of the local area. The land is collectively owned by the village, and the original residents have property rights in the houses.

The positive significance of urban villages

First, it promotes urban economic development: urban villages create conditions for migrants to stay in Guangzhou, build Guangzhou, and develop Guangzhou, and better promote the economic development of the city. Guangzhou urban economic development.

The second is to protect the historical context: urban villages still retain many local historical and cultural heritages, urban villages maintain certain "village" characteristics, and historical contexts such as ancestral temples and ancestral halls can be protected, such as Pagoda. Customs such as Dragon Boat Festival and Qiao Qiao Festival are all preserved in urban villages.

Problems with urban villages

Guangzhou urban villages are scattered stars under the bustling city of Guangzhou. The existence of urban villages has made important contributions to the economic development of Guangzhou, but at the same time it also It has brought about problems in various aspects of urban management such as public security, transportation, and fire protection. The problems and benefits brought by urban villages involve all aspects. In the process of urban history, it will gradually move towards a better place.

Three successful transformations of urban villages in Guangzhou

Liede Village, Yangji Village, and Pazhou Village have taken the lead in the transformation of urban villages in Tianhe District, Yuexiu District, and Haizhu District respectively. It serves as an example and at the same time, it has written a glorious and rich color in the historical process of Guangzhou’s urban renewal.

1. Liede Village

Liede Village was founded in the Song Dynasty and has a history of more than 800 years. From the beginning of a suburban countryside to the largest wealthy village in Guangzhou today, it is accompanied by the Pearl River. The rise and development of New Town CBD. Liede Village was fully renovated in September 2010, and the villagers moved back smoothly.

In February 2016, the Xinhuanet Guangdong News drone team took aerial photography of the 808-table flowing-water banquet held on the Lunar New Year's Day in Liede Village in 2016.

2. Pazhou Village

Pazhou Village was built in the Ming Dynasty and has a history of more than 900 years. It took the opportunity of the Guangzhou Asian Games to achieve phoenix nirvana and usher in the history of the development of the Pazhou area in Guangzhou. Opportunities have become a prime location for Guangzhou’s eastward development. In November 2014, Pazhou Village began to relocate the entire village, completing the country's first and largest urban village renovation project led by a developer (Poly).

3. Yangji Village

Yangji Village was built in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. It has grown from an ancient village over 900 years old to the R&F Dongshan Xintiandi complex next to the Pearl River New CBD. The project has witnessed the development of Guangzhou’s economic center moving eastward. On October 2, 2016, the relocated residents of Yangji Village held a wedding banquet of 1,500 tables to celebrate their return.

Guangzhou’s urban village renovation is in progress—Xiancun

Another famous urban village in Guangzhou—Xiancun’s renovation is currently under construction. The movie "A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind" is based on the forced demolition case of Xian Village in Guangzhou in 2010. It records the era since the reform and opening up with a story spanning 30 years. Regarding the "story" of Xian Village, articles such as "Guangzhou's "Ten Billion Village Officials" Fleeed and Controlled Xian Village for 33 Years with the Back of the Deputy Mayor" and "Why the Demolition of Xian Village in Guangzhou has reached a deadlock" are still circulating on the Internet. Friends who are interested can search the Internet for brainstorming on their own.