Guangzhou or Kwongchow( ; jyutping : Gwong²zau¹; Yale: Gwóngjàu) is the capital of Guangdong (Kwangtung / Canton) Province and a sub-provincial city in the southern part of the People's Republic of China. The city and surrounding areas, particularly the areas between the city and Hong Kong, through the heavily traded Pearl River Delta region, are often simply called by their provincial name in English, Canton. It is a port on the Pearl River, navigable to the South China Sea, and is located about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Hong Kong. As of the 2000 census, the city has a population of 6 million, and a metropolitan population of roughly 8.5 million (though some estimates are as high as 12.6 million) making it the most populous city in the province and the third most populous metropolitan area in mainland China. The official estimate of the metropolitan area's population at end 2006 by the Provincial Government was 9,754,600. Guangzhou's urban land area is the third largest in China, ranking only after Beijing's and Shanghai's.

History

The Han Dynasty annexed Nanyue in 111 BC, and Panyu became a provincial capital and remains so until this day. In 226 AD, the city however became the seat of the Guang Prefecture (廣州; Guangzhou). Therefore, "Guangzhou" was the name of the prefecture, not of the city. However, people grew accustomed to calling the city Guangzhou, instead of Panyu.

Although the Chinese name of Guangzhou replaced Panyu as the name of the walled city, Panyu was still the name of the area surrounding the walled city until the end of Qing era.

Arab and Persian pirates sacked Guangzhou (known to them as Sin-Kalan) in AD 758, ² according to a local Guangzhou government report on October 30 758, which corresponded to the day of Guisi (癸巳) of the ninth lunar month in the first year of the Qianyuan era of Emperor Suzong of the Tang Dynasty. The Arab historian Abu Zayd Hasan of Siraf reports that in 878 followers of the Chinese rebel leader Huang Chao besieged the city and killed a large number of foreign merchants resident there.

During the Northern Song Dynasty, the celebrated poet Su Shi (Shisu) visited Guangzhou's Baozhuangyan Temple and wrote the inscription "Liu Rong" (Six Banyan Trees) because of the six banyan trees he saw there. It has since been called the Temple of the 6 Banyan Trees.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive to the city by sea, establishing a monopoly on the external trade out of its harbor by 1511. They were later expelled from their settlements in Guangzhou (in Portuguese Cantão), but instead granted use of Macau as a trade base with the city in 1557. They would keep a near monopoly of foreign trade in the region until the arrival of the Dutch in the early seventeenth century.