China's millennia-old trading port and the capital of Cantonese food — slow mornings over yum cha, Lingnan courtyards, and the Pearl River glowing at night. English-friendly and a breeze on the metro.
Guangzhou has been a trading port for two thousand years and still behaves like one: fewer monuments than Beijing or Xi'an, and far more to eat. The reason to come is breakfast — a pot of tea and an hour of small plates in a tea house that has been doing it since the 1880s. Metro announcements are in Mandarin, Cantonese and English, and Hong Kong is under an hour away by train. What trips people up here is the calendar, not the language.
Yum cha runs from around seven in the morning. There is a tea-seat charge of about ¥8 a head, more for a named tea, and it is printed on the menu. Then you order from a paper card or a QR code. Locals give it ninety minutes, and so should you.
Held twice a year at Pazhou, mid-April to early May and mid-October to early November. Hotel prices across the city climb steeply in those weeks and rooms go early. The October dates fall in the dry, mild half of the year; the April ones fall at the start of the rains.
Baiyun's old T1 closed for rebuilding in May 2026 and its airlines moved to the new T3. Metro line 3 serves T2 only — the Airport South stop that served T1 is shut and trains run through it. For T3, the intercity train stops at Baiyun Airport East inside the terminal building; otherwise take line 3 or 9 to Gaozeng and the ¥2 shuttle bus.
Guangzhou South runs to Hong Kong West Kowloon in a little over an hour. Guangzhou East is nearer an hour and forty minutes, but it is the easier station to reach from Tianhe. It is a separate immigration jurisdiction, so going and coming back counts as leaving China and entering again.
Heavy rain bands can shut cruises and outdoor sights for a day. Check the forecast and keep a flexible morning.
Seasonal notePanxi and Taotaoju still do trolley dim sum. Go before 9am on a weekday to skip the wait.
Verified 11 JunHop the short APM line for the riverside towers; tap through with your Alipay ride code.
Official source ✓
The best building in the city, and the one that needs planning: closed Tuesdays, ¥10, and booked ahead through the museum's WeChat account rather than at a window. Entry is by scanning the document you booked with, so carry your passport. Come for the roof ridges — carved stone, wood and glazed figures stacked in layers. An hour is enough, and Huangsha for Shamian Island is two stops down line 1.
A sandbank leased to Britain and France in the 1860s, now a few streets of old consulates and banks under big banyans, closed to through traffic. Free, and half an hour end to end unless you stop for coffee, which most people do. Huangsha on lines 1 and 6; over the east bridge is Qingping's dried-goods and medicine market.
Two pedestrian streets, and they are not the same thing. Shangxiajiu in Xiguan is arcaded qilou shopfronts and the old tea houses, and parts of it have been under restoration for years. Beijing Road, at Gongyuanqian where lines 1 and 2 cross, has eleven layers of excavated road surface under glass in the middle of the street.
Free, open from six in the morning, and the city's back garden: banyans, three lakes and the Five Rams statue that is Guangzhou's emblem. The Ming-dynasty Zhenhai Tower inside it holds the Guangzhou Museum — ¥10, and closed Mondays, which is the opposite of the Chen Clan Academy. Line 2 to Yuexiu Park.
Six hundred metres of twisted steel, and the deck you choose sets the price: from ¥150 for the enclosed halls at 433m up to ¥328 for the open platform at 488m. Open 9:30 to 22:30, and better after dark. Tickets are sold under your own name, so bring your passport. Line 3 or the APM.
About an hour on the water, and tickets from roughly ¥78 depending on the boat and the deck. Dashatou sails from six in the evening to half past ten, every ten to thirty minutes; Tianzi starts late morning and its last boat goes before ten. Boarding is under your own name, so carry your passport.
One of only four all-granite Gothic cathedrals in the world — 25 years in the building (1863–88), French-designed and Cantonese-built, with lion-shaped drains and stained glass shipped from France. Free, at Yide Lu station on metro line 6. Hours are the trap: published schedules conflict and religious holidays often close the interior to all but worshippers, so confirm the day's notice before you go. Dress modestly, don't walk around during Mass; the 15:30 Sunday English Mass draws many foreign visitors.
A museum built straight over the 2,000-year-old tomb of the second Nanyue king — you stand on the original chambers above his thousand-plus burial goods, including the silk-thread jade suit and the gold 'Emperor Wen' seal. Two sites, don't mix them up: the tomb section (¥10) is on Jiefang North Road, the palace-ruins section (free, reserve via the official account) sits a few minutes off Beijing Road. First-timers should pick just one — the tomb. Both close Mondays.
Three venues under one long white roof on the Liwan riverfront: the new Guangdong Museum of Art, the provincial intangible-heritage museum (Cantonese porcelain, embroidery, opera, lion dance) and a literature museum — free, walk-in with valid ID. It's vast; pick one museum, not three, for a half-day. Closed Mondays; no public parking, no food, drinks or selfie sticks inside, and the air-con is fierce. Metro lines 1/11 to Fangcun; afterwards the ¥2 S6A water bus crosses to Shamian in ten minutes.
China's best-known safari park: drive-through predator zones, a transparent cable car over the savanna, giraffe feeding, and the panda triplets Mengmeng, Kuku and Shuaishuai. It's a full day in Panyu (metro lines 3/7 to Hanxi Chimelong, 40 minutes from downtown), tickets from around ¥300 with food and fast passes extra, and weekend queues are heavy — go on a weekday morning. If nobody in the group is a kid or an animal person, the day costs you a lot elsewhere.
The lane that's replacing Shangxiajiu in local life — Enning Road, one of Guangzhou's best-preserved arcade streets, holding Bruce Lee's ancestral home and a garden-style Cantonese Opera Museum with regular performances. Free, and Xiguan's own old shopkeepers say the crowds have moved here. It is a renovated commercial district, so come for the arcades and the opera, not 'untouched old Guangzhou'; weekday afternoons are quietest. The opera museum's hours and showtimes change — verify before building your day around a performance.
Har gow, siu mai, cheung fun, and a pot of tea you top up yourself. Go on a weekday before nine, and give it the ninety minutes everyone around you is giving it.
Taotaoju · Guangzhou Restaurant · Panxi
Poached whole, cooled, chopped on the bone and served cold with ginger and spring onion in oil. The plainest thing on a Cantonese table and the test of the kitchen.
Qingping Restaurant
Roast goose, char siu and crisp-skinned pork hanging in the window, chopped to order and served over rice. A counter lunch, and the fastest good meal in the city.
Bingsheng · Panxi
Congee with fish, peanuts, jellyfish and fried noodle threads stirred through at the last minute. It was cooked and sold from sampans on Lychee Bay in the west of the city, and the Chinese name still means sampan congee.
Wu Zhan Ji · Panxi
Set buffalo milk with a skin on top and a second skin folded underneath. Warm or cold, plain or with red beans, and it belongs to Shunde down the road as much as to Guangzhou.
Nanxin · Renxin Laopu
Sesame paste, walnut cream, ginger-curdled milk, sago and mango. Hot or iced, ¥15–25 a bowl at the old shops, and eaten after dinner rather than with it — dessert here is a separate stop, not something that arrives with the bill.
Baihua Dessert · Nanxin
Guangzhou's CBD, and the half of the city where eating and sleeping take no effort. Lines 3 and 5 plus the APM, and Canton Tower is across the river. Furthest from the old streets.
¥500–2,000 a night
The historic centre: Yuexiu Park, Beijing Road, and Gongyuanqian where lines 1 and 2 cross. Best value if you want to walk to things rather than ride.
¥250–900 a night
Xiguan — the old tea houses, the dessert shops and Shamian Island. Cheapest of the four and the best for breakfast; older buildings, and street noise until late.
¥200–700 a night
Built around the Canton Fair complex, on line 8 and quiet the rest of the year. Convenient if you are here for the fair, and short on street life if you are not.
¥300–1,200 a night
Hotels were told in 2024 to stop refusing foreign passports, and plenty still do it at the desk anyway. Filter for the ones that take foreign guests before you pay. Then check your dates against the Canton Fair: mid-April to early May and mid-October to early November, when rooms go early and prices climb.
Baiyun airport (CAN)
T1 closed for rebuilding in May 2026 and its airlines moved to the new T3. Check which terminal your ticket says before you plan the ride in — they are not the same journey.
Airport to the city
From T2, metro line 3 from Airport North is ¥7–12 and about an hour to Tianhe. T3 has its own station under the terminal, Baiyun Airport East, on the intercity line — about half an hour from Guangzhou South. Otherwise take line 3 or 9 to Gaozeng and the ¥2 shuttle bus. A taxi or DiDi is ¥120–200 plus tolls.
Train stations
Guangzhou South for most high-speed lines, Guangzhou East and Guangzhou station for the rest. Both South and East run to Hong Kong West Kowloon — a little over an hour from South, nearer an hour and forty minutes from East.
Your passport is the ticket on 12306, and every station here sits on a metro line.
Metro
¥2–20 by distance, and only a few yuan for anything central. Signed in Chinese and English, and announced in Mandarin, Cantonese and English. It reaches every sight on this page.
DiDi
English interface, takes foreign cards, and no address to say out loud. A street taxi starts at ¥12 for the first three kilometres, plus a small fuel surcharge.
APM
The short driverless line under Zhujiang New Town, Linhexi down to Canton Tower. A flat ¥2, charged separately from the rest of your metro travel.
No card needed: open the transport mini-app inside Alipay, choose Guangzhou, and scan the QR code at the gate.
NIGHTLY
Nightly · free from the south bank
DLY
From 7:00 · trolley dim sum
TUE
10:00 · meet at the church
OCT 15–NOV 4
Phase 1 Oct 15–19 · Phase 2 Oct 23–27 · Phase 3 Oct 31–Nov 4
First trip
Two days is what the city itself suggests, and the thing that decides them is not distance but the calendar: the Chen Clan Academy shuts on Tuesdays and the Guangzhou Museum inside Yuexiu Park on Mondays. Get the order of the days right and the rest is morning tea, an island of old consulates, and a river that only switches its lights on after dark.
Nature + food
The capital of Cantonese food, and a city where the sights exist mainly to walk between meals. Three days of yum cha, colonial islands, an ancestral hall covered in carving, and one very good river at night.
Food
Two cities half an hour apart, and the best eating in the country on one of them. Guangzhou is the older city — morning tea, arcaded shopfronts, a sandbank of old consulates. Shenzhen is forty years old and does not pretend otherwise: a factory quarter turned into galleries, and a park hill with the whole skyline in front of it.
First trip
Shenzhen rewards a sequence, not a list: three days moving north to south without doubling back, one day east on the peninsula where the city's real coastline and its 600-year-old fortress sit, and a 29-minute train that lands you 2,000 years earlier in Guangzhou. Three time scales — a 40-year-old city, a Ming walled town, a two-millennium port — and every day runs as an actual timetable, with the traps marked before you meet them.
October to December and March to April. Skip the muggy, rainy summer if you can.
Two to three days: the historic centre and Shamian, Canton Tower and the river by night, and long mornings over yum cha.
Metro Line 3 runs from the airport to the centre in about an hour. A DiDi costs around ¥120.
The metro, ¥2–20 by distance and only a few yuan for most rides. The driverless APM shuttles under Zhujiang New Town, and DiDi works in English with foreign cards.
Zhujiang New Town–Tianhe is the modern centre; Yuexiu–Beijing Road is the historic one; Liwan–Shangxiajiu puts the old tea houses and Shamian at your door; Pazhou only makes sense for the Canton Fair.
Do a proper yum cha at least once — a pot of tea and a parade of small plates is the soul of the city. Then white-cut chicken, Cantonese roast meats, sampan congee, double-skin milk and the dessert soups.
The Chen Clan Academy, Shamian Island, Shangxiajiu and Beijing Road, Yuexiu Park and Canton Tower — and a Pearl River night cruise to see the towers at their colour-changing best.