Liwan Lake Park best shows the elegant and gentle beauty of southern China and it is a park taking lake as the theme. It is located at Pantang area Xiguan Lizhiwan, Guangzhou, stretching to West Longjin Road at the east and lower reach of Xiguankou branch at the south, reaching Huangsha Avenue at the west and linking Zhongshanba Road at the north. This lake was constructed through the voluntary work of the public in 1958. It has an area of 280,000m2 with the area of lake accounting for two thirds.

The park got its name from an ancient river bend on West Pearl River—Lizhiwan, which is famous for the wide range plant of Lizhi (lichee) so it has the poetic charm of “One river of the water is green, two sides of the banks are red”. As the upper reaches of West Pearl River beneaped, Lizhiwan turns into an inland lake and the vast water turns into the lake sometimes dries. In the Tang Dynasty, Lizhiwan developed into a garden with tremendous lichees—Liyuan (Lichee Garden). From the Song Dynasty, north of Pantang eventually dried, the hag in the south was change into pond, but the lake surface was much broader than today. Boats could drive on the channel connecting with West Pearl River in Ming Dynasty so in that time Eight Sceneries of Guangzhou still included the scenery “Songs of Fishermen on Liwan”. From the Qing Dynasty, Lingnan garden architecture such as Tang Liyuan and Seamount Celestial House.

Liwan Lake Park, taking lakes as the main body, is composed of Xiaocui Lake, Yvcui Lake, Ruyi Lake and Wuxiu Lake. The pavilions, water pavilions, terraces, porches and towers set off one another in the blue waters and green trees. What a beautiful picture of southern China with shadowy trees, soft willows, mattress-like grass lawn, turning bridges and circling hurdles, pavilions, towers, water pavilions and stone bridges near the water reflecting the waves of the lake.

Liwan Lake Park is a synthesize park with several function of sight seeing, culture, entertainment and relax. It has all kinds of playing equipments, Gymnasiums, swimming pool of international standard, yachts, baby amusement park etc as well as service establishments such as hotels, bars, buffets and barbecues. In the Fuxiangwu of Xiaocui Lake there is a tea art amusement park, visitors can drink tea while enjoying the calligraphies and paintings of famous person and rare craftworks. In order to recover the past garden sceneries of Lizhiwan, government of Liwan District invested several millions to rebuild the Seamount Celestial House of Qing Dynasty at Wuxiu Lake and two water pavilions and a two-floor exhibition hall to exhibit series, collections and inscriptions etc. Lotuses are planted all over the Lingzhou Island of Wuxiu Lake. The previous charm of Lizhiwan will come into our eyes once more as Lichee trees are planted. The eight sceneries of Liwan Lake chosen through public appraisal in 1985, Dance with Flowers on the Lawn, Songs from Banyan Shade, Boating on Yuhu, Rainbow Bridge Crowed with Lichee, Ancestral Temple Ancient Ferry, Spring Wave Pine Shadow, Violet Elegant Path, Sha Zhu Gu Pu, are good sceneries of Liwan Lake.

Accompanying with Liwan Lake Park is one of the three garden restaurants of Guangzhou——Panxi Restaurant. This is a good place for visitors from China and abroad to taste Guangzhou cate.

The Liwan Museum is an integrated museum collecting, displaying and studying objects relating to Xiguan's history, culture and customs. It stands on the site of the former residence of Mr. Chen Qianzhong, a comprador for the Guangzhou branch of the HSBC in the early Republic of China period. The residence is a perfect union of a Lingnan-style courtyard and western-style villa, containing a flying banyan tree on top of a stone hill, which is dubbed the “quintessential work of Lingnan stone hill landscaping.” After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the residence served as an office for the Liwan district government and later as kindergarten for children of government employees. It was converted into the present Liwan Museum in 1996.

The museum has displays of Liwan customs and artistic conceptions of Xiguan residences and presents a substantial amount of documents and precious pictures and material objects, allowing visitors to gain an understanding of Xiguan's history, culture and folk customs, as well as the erstwhile local lifestyle.

The former residence of Chen Qianzhong was declared a Guangzhou municipal-level protected cultural heritage site in 1993.

Admission fee: RMB ￥ 8 per person
Address: No.84 Fengyuan Street North, Longjinxi Road, Guangzhou City
Traffic: Take Bus No.2, 25, 55 or 66 and get off at the Pantang (Pantang Restaurant) station; alternatively, take Metro Line 1 and get off at the Changshou station.

Liuhua Lake Park is a park of tropical charms composed of low hillocks and lakes. It is located at the south of Liuhua Road, north of West Dongfeng Road and west of North Renmin Road; there gates in the three directions. It is said that it was once a famous imperial garden in the ancient times. The maids of honor dressed and made up in the morning and threw flowers into the water. Petals floated away with the water so it was called Liuhua (drifting flowers).

Liuhua Lake was a natural lake at the ancient times and was called Lan (orchid) Lake or Zhilan Lake. Until 5 century BC the lake reached directly to the Pearl River and was an important inner harbor to go to the north from Guangzhou. In Tang Dynasty, here set up the Xihou jingting and was the waterway entrance of Guangzhou to the north. Boats came and left Guangzhou swarming into Guangzhou under the inspection of Si Ma (minister of war in ancient times). It was a military fort as well as an important transportation channel. In Ming Dynasty the lake was silted eventually into a sewage pond. In 1958, lake was constructed into an artificial lake through the voluntary work of the public. It has an area of 540,000m2 now with the area of 330,000m2 lake surface. Because at the northeast of the lake is the historic site of Southern Han Liuhua Bridge, so it is called Liuhua Lake Park.

The park makes the tropical natural scenery as the keynote. Tropical and subtropical plants and flowers and grass such as Palms, Chinese fan palms, yews etc are planted all over the park. The lake surface is broad. Clear waves, rippled green lake, banks with palms stretching and shadows of palms dancing, the banyan at the bank shade the sun giving a tranquil and charming view of southern China.

In the lake of the park there is an island called Lake Center Island. It has an area of 3,000m2 with vast shadowy of woods. This island is an aigret protection base and is under enclosed protection. Through decades of year's reproduction, now there are over thousands of aigrets on the island. It has become the rare “heaven of birds” in the downtown area. Around the island are pavilions, terraces for the visitors to see the birds. The beautiful environment has offered visitors preferable sightseeing conditions.

There is a garden famous in and out of china for the potted plants and miniascapes for display in Liuhua Lake Park—Xiyuan (west garden). It was built in 1956 with an area of 50,000 odd m2. It is at the bank of the lake with beautiful landscapes and full of poetic charms and is a welcomed place for miniascapes fans in and out of China. It is entitled “Home of Miniascapes”. In the garden there is an small island covered with banyans displaying several hundreds of miniascapes of Lingnan style such as murraya jasminorages, sparrow plums, Fujian Tea, gingkgo etc. At the inner yard of the miniascapes exhibition hall is tor miniascapes scenery spot called Pinshixuan (Stone enjoying loft). There displays all kinds tor miniascapes of pumice, Lashi, pine-skin stone and stone, grotesque and gaudy and full of beautiful things.

In the west garden there is a commemorative oak. It was planted by the queen of England ElizabethⅡon October 18, 1986 when she visited China. It was the time not long from the signing of China-England Joint Declaration. The monarch of Guangdong Province at that time Ye Xuanping sent a miniascape of 60 years old common jasminorange on behalf of people of Guangdong to the queen of England ElizabethⅡ. Because the common jasminorange had the same age with the queen so she was very pleased. She planted the oak carried from England in special plane and symbolizing the friendship of England and China with nomarch Ye Xuanping.

In the exhibition hall of Liuhua Tea Art City, thousands of red porcelain teapots are on exhibition. In the center of the hall is the yew tea desk with 6ms span, 30 odd people can sit around it. Tea drinkers can see the teapot while drinking tea and enjoying dim sums. The dim sums all have connections with tea. Snack cooks put the tea, powders of tea and flowers of tea into the snacks according to the specialties of each tea. To drink tea slowly here and taste snacks delicately here is enjoying life. What a happy and harmonious life! Indeed it is “A path of palms along the drifting water and shadowy flowers, the reflection of the Rainbow Bridge swings in the green mist. Light adornment betters Xihu, visitors are absorbed to leave for home slowly”.

Located on Liurong Road, the Liurong Temple (Six Banyan Tree Temple) enjoys a long history and a widespread fame both at home and abroad.

The temple was originally built in 537 and was rebuilt in the Northern Song Dynasty. The pagoda in it is quite colorful and houses some thousand Buddha statues, thus it has got another name “Thousand-Buddha Pagoda” Some well-known ancient poets such as Wang Bo, Su Dongpo and so on visited this temple and wrote down either poetic phrases or articles acclaiming this temple.

The ancient temple features a towering colorful pagoda, Luxuriant trees and historic and cultural relics. Because of the splendid pagoda, this temple was selected as one of the top ten scenic spots in Guangzhou.

Words About Guangdong said, “the water in the well is rich in minerals and sweet in taste and is the saliva of jade”“Zhao Tuo often drank the water and his skin was moist and smooth. He lived to over one hundred years without his hearing and seeing declining.” If there is enough evidence that the water in this well has such great effects, it is highly valuable in development and utilization.

With an important location, good-quality water and so many beautiful tales, King Yue Well easily attracted the attention of the palace and local authorities and inevitably fell exclusive to them.

Liu Gong, the king of South Han, had the well to himself and called it “Yuelong Spring” and “forbade the common people to use it”. Shu Dongpo, a great writer of the Northern Song Dynasty once wrote in a letter :“All the Guangzhou residents enjoy drinking the water in it, but only the officials have the access to the well”. Shang Kexi, King Pingnan in the early Qing Dynasty ordered his men to build brick walls around the well and to guard it and to warn: anyone who drew the water without permission would be flogged forty times.

During the years of Tianshun's rein of the Ming Dynasty (1457-1464), the Tongpan (the official in charge of trial) of Guangzhou prefecture listed the King Yue Well among the top ten renowned springs, which ranks the eighth. In the early years of the Republic of China, a warlord Long Jiguang wanted to cleanse the well and ordered tens of his men in turn to pump water.It took them two days to finish, which follows that the well has a large capacity. In old days in some famous teahouses in the city, the tea, made with the water from the well, attracted customers in an endless stream. In the 1950s, a number of residents still fetched drinking water from King Yue Well. After the 1960s, the environments around it got destroyed. The well failed to be maintained for long, and silt piled up at its bottom. Gradually, the water in the well became undrinkable. As a result it just remained a place of historic interest. In 1983, Guangzhou Municipal Government began to protect King Yue Well as a relic. Meanwhile, some persons suggested developing and applying the water culture resource of King Yue Well; even some persons had the idea of making use of the land by demolishing the well. Between the years of 1996 and 1997, a big dispute on “demolishing the well or keeping it” was widely reported by media, luckily ending in recovering its original appearance.

Now, King Yue Well has become a beautiful scenery zone. Behind a white horizontal stone board inscribe with King Yue Well, a pebble-paved path winds, its way to the well, which means a long history. A green tiled pavilion has been constructed the upper side. The walls and pillars printed in red and upturned eaves pointing to the sky. The pavilion is of classic beauty and in elegant taste. The decoration on the top of the pavilion is an imitation of the bronze scarlet Bird unearthed from Nanyue King Tomb. The architectural style of this is the same as Nanyue King Tom. The penetrating walls and the jade green garden are another view in the zone. Before long, a preliminary plan was put forward to recover six irrigation ditches starting from King Yue Well in the north to Jade Belt River in the south. Experts had an idea that six irrigation ditches all leading to the sea, will be reproduced in this way and King Yue Well is focused on. Great attention is being paid on the plan.