Panyu: Shawan Ancient Town, Yuyin Garden and Chimelong

The postcard Lingnan garden — and a reconstruction: a small late-Qing garden dedicated to the incorruptible Song judge Bao Zheng, destroyed in the 1950s, rebuilt from 1995 and expanded in four phases to 168 mu (about 100,000 m²) of pavilions, carp ponds, a 'Riverside Scene at Qingming' relief wall, museums of Zhao Tailai's collection and a Dunhuang mural hall. Across the road its sister Nanyue Garden (南粤苑) is sold separately or on a combined ticket. It is what most visitors picture when they say 'Lingnan garden'; it is also 30 years old. A weekend day out for Guangzhou families, on the same island as Zinitang creative park and one bus stop beyond Shawan.

China's biggest private theme-park complex and the one place in Guangzhou a family with children will insist on: the Safari Park (opened 26 December 1997, 500-plus species, panda triplets, drive-through zones), Chimelong Paradise (roller coasters), the International Circus (a nightly 19:30 show), the Water Park (seasonal) and the Birds Park — each a separate ticket, from ¥100 (Birds Park) to ¥350 (Safari Park on a 'specified day'). Everything is real-name: you buy against an ID document and are checked against it at the gate, and the official FAQ lists a passport among the accepted documents. Metro Line 3/7 Hanxi Changlong station, then a free resort shuttle.

Guangzhou's only 'National Historical and Cultural Village' (2007): a 900-year-old Chen-clan village at the foot of Pushan hill, a few kilometres west of Lianhua Mountain, laid out like a fish skeleton — one granite main street, 45 lanes running down to the Yudai river — with 112 Ming-to-Republic buildings, a 1660s red-sandstone double-arched bridge, a three-storey 'writing-brush' pagoda of 1884, ancestral halls faced with oyster shells, and residents who still live there. No ticket, no gate, no ferris wheel: the closest thing in Guangzhou to a Cantonese village that has not been turned into a shopping street. Bus from Line 4 Shiqi station.

The high-speed rail gateway — 28 platforms, three levels, and for anyone coming from Hong Kong the first thing they see of Guangzhou: West Kowloon to Guangzhounan is under an hour and ¥215 in second class. It is in Panyu, 17 km from the old city, and it is enormous: the station's own guidance is to allow real time inside, the intercity Panyu station underneath is about 8 minutes' walk from the Line 2/7 platforms (a Guangzhou Daily reporter's timing), and since September 2025 the taxi rank is on the east square (East Exit, then about 240 m north-east). Metro Lines 2, 7 and 22 (22 to Baietan/Fangcun in about 15 minutes since December 2025) and Foshan Line 2 leave from the basement; a 'no-re-screening' corridor takes arriving rail passengers straight to the metro gates.

A red-sandstone hill on the Shizi Ocean (the Pearl River's outer estuary), quarried for Guangzhou's temples, halls and city walls for two thousand years, which left it a 'man-made Danxia' of cliffs and caves (a national protected monument since 2001). On top, the 1612 Lianhua Pagoda that every ship entering the river once steered by, and since the 1990s a 40.88 m gilt-bronze Guanyin facing the sea. ¥54, 7:00-17:00, at the far eastern edge of Panyu: an hour from the centre by metro plus bus, or by boat from Tianzi Wharf. The pagoda interior is currently closed and parts of the quarry are fenced off — check the visitor page before making the trip.

The great hall of the Shawan He clan: founded in 1275, rebuilt to its present five-bay, five-hall plan over 17 years from 1700, 3,334 m² — the largest and oldest ancestral hall in Panyu and, since October 2019, a national protected monument. In front, a moon terrace with fifteen carved stone panels; inside, a 300-year-old camphor-wood name board dug out of a flood dyke in 1984, Kangxi's sixteen maxims, and a dragon roof ridge the clan earned through a Song-dynasty imperial son-in-law. It is the one building in Shawan you pay to enter (on the ¥40 seven-hall ticket; single-hall tickets are no longer listed anywhere) and the one worth it.

An 800-year-old Cantonese clan town of the He family, still lived in: 113 registered heritage sites, a hundred-odd ancestral halls with Liugengtang at the top, oyster-shell walls, a Ming-to-Republic 'history wall', and the home of both Cantonese music (the 'three He masters') and ginger milk pudding. The lanes are free and open all day; seven small museums — Liugengtang, the He Binglin memorial, the Cantonese music memorial in Sanrenting and four others — sell one combined ticket of ¥40 (¥30 on the platforms), so a visit costs nothing unless you go inside. Bus from Line 3 Shiqiao station; no metro.

One of the 'four great gardens of Guangdong' and the only one that keeps its original form: the scholar Wu Bin's private garden of 1867-1871, three mu (about 2,000 m²) of pavilions, a bridge-corridor and a pond built on the principle of 'hiding, and shrinking a dragon to an inch'. It is a national protected monument, open 8:00-18:00 every day for ¥18, half an hour by bus from Line 7 Yuangang station. Forty minutes is enough for the old garden; the newer Wu ancestral hall, the Yu garden and the back garden bring the whole site to 14,000 m².