Qualla: Nantou (historic town)

Nantou (historic town): Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit biny86755, CC BY 2.0. The walled city of Nantou has been destroyed three times and rebuilt, shrunk, absorbed, and reinvented across seventeen centuries — and it still exists. Hidden inside the dense urban fabric of Nanshan District in modern Shenzhen, the town that once governed a coastline stretching from the Pearl River to the South China Sea now coexists with illegal multi-story townhouses, street food vendors, and more than 20,000 residents crowded into an area of roughly 70,000 square meters. History and the present do not occupy separate zones here. They share the same street.

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Image: biny86755 | CC BY 2.0

Nantou (historic town): The Gatekeeper of the Pearl River

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. Nantou's story begins in 331 CE, when the settlement was established as the capital of Dongguan Prefecture — an administrative unit that encompassed the territories now occupied by Dongguan, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Huizhou, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, and Macau, all before European colonial ...

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

Nantou (historic town): Zheng He and the Sea Route South

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pratyeka, CC BY-SA 4.0. Historic records suggest that the great Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He — whose treasure voyages between 1405 and 1433 took Chinese fleets as far as East Africa — passed through the waters near Nantou and encountered hazards in the area. According to these accounts, Zheng He went a...

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Image: Pratyeka | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nantou (historic town): Three Waves of Destruction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Iswzo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The town has been damaged deliberately three times, and each wave reshaped what remained. The first came during the Kangxi Emperor's Great Clearance of 1661 to 1669, when Qing dynasty authorities forcibly evacuated coastal settlements — displacing the inhabitants of Xin'an County...

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Image: Iswzo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nantou (historic town): What Remains of the Walls

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. The city walls of Nantou were founded on yellow sand, with defensive trenches running around the perimeter. Today almost all of them are gone. The south gate survives: 10 meters wide and 4.5 meters tall, though the gate tower above it was destroyed. A few sections of wall to the ...

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

Nantou (historic town): An Urban Village in an Economic Miracle

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 杏林小草, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nantou is now classified as an urban village — a category that exists throughout Chinese cities where old rural settlements have been surrounded and engulfed by urban development but retain their pre-urban land rights and governance structures. More than 20,000 people live here. ...

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Image: 杏林小草 | CC BY-SA 3.0