2022-06 Chaozhou

During the long weekend of the Duanwu Festival, the two of us visited Chaozhou old town.

The train ride from Guangzhou (Guangzhou East) to Chaozhou (Chaoshan) took more than 3 hours, and the taxi from the station to the old town took about 40 minutes. As we walked out of the station, we saw the bus stop mentioned by the tour guide was crowded, so we called a Didi / Gaode taxi instead. The taxi app also had a long waiting line, and it stopped when I was the second in the line. In the end we came back to the bus stop waiting for the next ride. When we finally got on the bus, I was still the second in the line in Didi.

Zaiyang Inn

We lived in the Zaiyang Inn, which is a historical house from Qing dynasty and was developped as an inn.¹

On the second floor we could oversee the rooftops of the historical houses in this neighborhood. Zaiyang Inn consisted of three yards, the left one, the middle one, and the right one. There were few customers. Our room was small, clean but somehow moist.

Chaozhou Old Town

The old town is not a big one, but packed with places of interest. There is some history behind every corner of the streets.

Kaiyuan Temple

The same as the Quanzhou Kaiyuan Temple, the Chaozhou Kaiyuan Temple is founded in Tang Dynasty. In the 26th year of Kaiyuan (738 AD), the Tang Emperor Xuanzong ordered the constructions of Kaiyuan Temples as official temples around the country, which is why there are so many “Kaiyuan” temples.² We could have a project of achievements to visit all the Kaiyuan temples, just as the Shikoku Pilgrimage of Japan.

Guangji City Gate

The Guangji City Gate is just the eastern gate of the city. The gate tower is called the Guangji Tower, or Hanjiang Tower. I was used to the city gates of Beijing and Shenyang, so I felt this city gate was kind of small.

There were 7 city gates around the old town. We also visited the other two along the way: Xiashui (Lower Water) and Zhumu (Bamboo and Wood).

Guangji Bridge

The Guangji bridge is just outside the Guangji Gate. It is one of the “Four Ancient Bridges of China”, and the other three are the Lugou Bridge in Beijing, the Zhaozhou Bridge in Hebei, the Luoyang Bridge in Quanzhou. Therefore I have visited all but the Zhaozhou Bridge. Both sides of the bridge are built from stones, while the center of it is a floating bridge. In the old time there were merchants on the bows of the floating boats as the bridge. While now there were art and craft vendors on the stone parts of the bridge.

On the first day, we planned to walk to the restaurant of dinner along the Hanjing river. But a storm suddenly came, and we were trapped in a pavilion by the river. As the storm eased we saw the floating boats of the Guangji bridge were towed away one by one. They must mean it when they said life in Chaozhou has a slow tempo, even the bridge gets off work at 6 pm sharp.

On the second morning we walked onto the bridge. The current of the Hanjing river was rapid, however we walked on the bridge as steady as on land. Anyhow it must be a horrific experience for the people who were caught by the storm while on the bridge yesterday.

Originally there were two iron oxen placed on both sides of the bridge, and the flood in the 22nd year of Daoguang (1842 AD) swept away on of them. It’s said to be found later, but sadly both of them were destroyed in the 1960s. The city has rebuilt two of them based on the photos, and placed one of them on the bridge, and the other one on the Yanfeng Mountain.³⁴⁵

The other end of the bridge faces the Hanshan Normal College.

Streets and Alleys

The Paifang Street is just the Taiping Road, which is the major north-south road in the center of the old town. As recorded there used to be 39 paifangs, 34 from the Ming dynasty and 5 from the Qing dynasty. The original paifang were all torn down in the 1950s, and the current ones were built since 2004.⁶

The Paifang Street was busy with all the tourists, meanwhile it was quiet in the other end of the street.

Led by some small alleys into the belly of the old town, there were barely any tourists, but only locals passing by on their bikes.

I’ve read in an article written by a local⁷, that there are old stores in the old town selling couplets and calligraphy. We did spot a couple of those stores in Changli Road. It was still early so they were not open yet.

Except those couplets, the fading texts on some of the house gates reminded us about the histories that happened here.

The words “revolution forever” turned up frequently on the gates, which I haven’t seen anywhere before. We also saw this sign in the exhibition of the Chaozhou’s Seven Days Red Revolution at the Xihu Hanbi Building, so perhaps it was from that period of time.

Probably for the slow life tempo of the old town, those old school scenes from the last century, such as the barber shop, tailor shop, watch and clock repair shop, and state owned restaurant, were still living in the old town.

If looking for it closely, there were cats in half of the stores. The cats in the old town were either free range or tied up by a leash like dogs.

And there were some uncategorized interesting photos.

Rain / Storm

Maybe the name of Chaozhou came literally from its “Chao” (meaning moist), we were caught by rain for five times in two days.

For our first rain in the old town, we hid into a coffee shop in the alley and took a break. But we were not as fortunate for the second one. We were walking along the Hanjing river just outside the old town, and a storm started to pour. Quickly we ran into a long open corridor in the riverside park. There were only a couple of crowd playing and watching chess games, but soon it was packed. It was quite narrow that a breeze could blow the storm inside. The mountains and tall buildings in the other side of the river gradually disappeared. The chess players cared none of it, still deeply immersed in their games.

Fortunately, just as we were wondering if we should rush to a place to get on a taxi, the storm eased. So we rushed back into the old town. The river was cleared and the Guangji Bridge came back to our sight. The streets in the old town were washed sparkling clean.

Chaozhou Xihu

Xihu (West Lake) is just outside the old town, a narrow and long lake, which used to be the city moat of the old Chaozhou. The Hanbi Building were used as the command office of the Nanchang Uprising Army when they occupied Chaozhou. The hill by the West Lake is called the Hulu (Calabash) Mount. We climbed a little onto the mount and had to retreat due to the fierce mosquitoes. We took a detour back.

Cliff Inscriptions

Chased by mosquitoes, we could only have a glance of those inscriptions along the way.

The inscriptions can be dated back to the Song dynasty. There are still 138 remaining inscriptions, 16 from Song, 1 from Yuan, 24 from Ming, 28 from Qing, 18 from modern China, and 48 from unknown period.

Chaozhou Zoo

There were a small amusement park on the Hulu Mount, which had only 3 or 4 rides. Across it was the Chaozhou Zoo. Since fate had led us to the gate already, we’d rather have a look.

It must be the humblest zoo I have ever been to, which took a little more than 10 minutes to circle back (also the mosquitoes were killing us). The animals looked bored and listless, while fairly healthy. The cage of the black bear was so close that I could almost touch it if I tried. A monkey sat in a cage with its back facing visitors. Maybe it was sick of all the few people feeding it with stupid carrots everyday.

Chaozhou Food

Chaozhou is famous for its food. Although we did love to eat, we (or I) lack the tasting capability to be a gourment. So we didn’t feel the food here were particularly good. Perhaps only with local friends we could find those local specialties. But it is nice to see that even in the center of the old town, the stores still have local customers. They could be a little bit pricy but at least they wouldn’t treat tourists as idiots.