Understanding the history of Guangzhou Market reveals that Luoyang is actually an immigrant city; after its upgrade, it has become the first in Henan
Chinese people have a habit of labeling cities, such as Shanghai being called the Magic Capital, Guangzhou the Flower City, Wuhan the River City, Chengdu the Leisure City, and Chongqing the Internet Celebrity City. As for Luoyang in Henan, if we were to give it a label, most people would probably call it the Ancient Capital of Thirteen Dynasties. Indeed, it is a millennia-old capital with a long history and rich culture. However, in modern times, it actually has another label that many have gradually forgotten—the City of Immigrants.
Why is it called the City of Immigrants? Isn't immigration usually from north to south? Isn't it from the Central Plains to Lingnan and the southwest? When did Luoyang, the cradle of Chinese civilization, become an immigrant city? I'm sure many friends have this question, including me, Yu Fan. But after a recent trip to Luoyang and a walk through the local Guangzhou Market pedestrian street with local friends, I slowly came to understand this history.
It turns out that during the First Five-Year Plan period, when the country was undergoing large-scale economic construction, Luoyang was one of the key cities being developed. Among the 156 major national construction projects, seven were arranged in Luoyang, and most of these projects' construction sites were chosen in what was then the sparsely populated Jianxi District. As a result, over 100,000 construction workers from all over the country, full of soaring enthusiasm (at that time, Luoyang's urban population was only 60,000, and the migrant population outnumbered the local population, so calling it an immigrant city is not an exaggeration), came to this barren land, working together to paint the newest and most beautiful socialist blueprint.
According to local friends, at that time, aside from the Luotong Highway running through it and a few villages dotting the area, the Jianxi District was almost entirely farmland. The massive construction not only required ensuring material supplies but also the establishment of corresponding commercial outlets to provide supporting services for the construction workers. At that time, Luoyang's urban population was only over 60,000, and commercial outlets were mainly concentrated in the old city. Relying on these commercial outlets to serve the construction workers 10 kilometers away was clearly insufficient.
To solve this practical problem, in 1956, Luoyang built two large markets, each covering an area of 30,000 square meters, one near the 704 construction site and the other at the current intersection of Jinghua Road and Taiyuan Road (later known as Guangzhou Market). However, these large markets lacked the support of commercial enterprises—meaning the markets were built but lacked strong business operators.
To address this, the then mayor of Luoyang visited economically developed cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou to mobilize state-owned commercial enterprises and private merchants in those cities to relocate inland to Luoyang to support its industrial construction. In those passionate years, within just two to three years, more than 17 factories, 88 stores, and over 3,500 workers from Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other places responded to the Party's call and moved to Luoyang. Among those relocated from Guangzhou to Luoyang were mainly the Sanle Food Factory, Daxin Restaurant, Guangzhou Canteen (later renamed Guangzhou Restaurant), and Wan's Photo Studio (later renamed People's Photo Studio).
With the market built, shops and goods were available, and the immigrants from Guangzhou were very active in industry and commerce. What should this market be named? At that time, Wang Huishan, director of the Luoyang Administration for Industry and Commerce, asked the then Luoyang Party Secretary Li Li (later governor of Guizhou Province) for advice on naming the new market. Secretary Li said, 'Isn't it easy to come up with a name? Since so many comrades moved here from Shanghai and Guangzhou, let's give them a name that makes them feel warm and at home. How about Guangzhou Market and Shanghai Market?' And so, Luoyang's 'Guangzhou Market' and 'Shanghai Market' got their names.
In the following decades, Guangzhou Market remained one of the most bustling and lively commercial centers in Luoyang. However, in recent years, with rapid changes and fierce competition in Luoyang's commercial sector, and the emergence of various new commercial complexes, the traditional 'Guangzhou Market' and 'Shanghai Market' have gradually declined from their peak and faded from people's lives, which makes many old Luoyang residents feel reluctant.
Fortunately, in 2019, the local government invested in a systematic renovation of the old Guangzhou Market through investment attraction, and invited professional design teams from prestigious schools such as the Luxun Academy of Fine Arts to carry out unified planning for the pedestrian street's renovation. Following the overall style of 'Guangzhou Street, Republic of China Style,' the street environment was comprehensively renovated and upgraded, including old pipelines for water supply, drainage, electricity, and the ground and exterior walls.
When I, Yu Fan, recently passed by Guangzhou Market with some local Luoyang friends, I saw that the beautiful streetscape is full of a sense of time, elegant and nostalgic yet high-end and modern. Some shops are rushing to finish decoration, while those that have completed renovations have already entered trial operations. This indicates that the highly anticipated renovation and upgrading project of Guangzhou Market Pedestrian Street is nearing completion and will soon return to Luoyang with a fresh look of 'Guangzhou Street, Republic of China Style.'
According to friends familiar with Guangzhou Market, the pedestrian street takes national trend cultural and creative interactive experiences, exquisite slow living, and popular food snacks as its core, and has established entertainment facilities, flea markets, public interest book clubs, and art creation aggregation projects. Not only can elderly people find past memories here, but there are also many entertainment facilities that appeal to young people. Moreover, it has incorporated many internet celebrity elements, introducing popular stores such as Haidilao. It is nostalgic but not old-fashioned, stylish yet not losing tradition.
It is worth mentioning that the Guangzhou Market Pedestrian Street, through cooperation with Alibaba's subsidiaries and local financial institutions, has built an intelligent management system to provide services such as integrated payment, fund collection, GDP data statistics and upload, product quality traceability, online delivery, online water and electricity control, data query, and operation monitoring for the street, making it the first 'smart featured commercial street' in Henan.
With the completion of the Guangzhou Market Pedestrian Street's renovation and upgrade, old Guangdong time-honored brands represented by Guangzhou Restaurant are also returning, giving it not only the name 'Guangzhou' but also a strong Lingnan cultural character, with products and flavors also bearing the imprint of Guangzhou. Combined with the creation of four major themes—'New Engine for Cultural Creativity,' 'Internet Celebrity Check-in Spot,' 'Night Economy Complex,' and 'Cultural Tourism Habitat'—it is believed that Guangzhou Market will become a distinctive cultural and tourism commercial street in Luoyang, a popular destination loved by local residents and tourists alike. Especially friends from Guangdong should seize the opportunity to come and see it; it might even give you the time-travel feeling of Shangxiajiu or Beijing Road.
