Guangzhou’s Pearl is a short name for a vast delta system
In southern China the Pearl River label covers both a short, wide distributary north of Guangzhou and the wider Guangdong watershed of the Xi, Bei, and Dong rivers. Those channels empty toward the South China Sea across one shared delta. Pearl-coloured shells in the Guangzhou bed supposedly inspired the name.
Chinese speakers call it Zhujiang, pearl river, or sometimes Yuejiang after the old Yue name for the region. Measured from the farthest headwaters of the Xi, the chain of rivers known successively as the Nanpan, Hongshui, Qian, Xun, Xi and Pearl runs about 2,400 kilometres. That makes it China’s third-longest river system after the Yangtze and the Yellow River, while only the Yangtze carries more water.
Its basin, roughly 453,700 square kilometres, drains most of Guangdong and Guangxi, the pair traditionally called Liangguang, plus slices of Yunnan, Guizhou, Hunan and Jiangxi. It even reaches over the border into the northern tips of Vietnam’s Cao Bằng and Lạng Sơn provinces. In Guangdong the western, northern and eastern tributaries, the Xi, Bei and Dong, all converge on the Pearl River Delta before reaching the South China Sea.
The name also belongs to one particular channel. Waters gathering east of the Bei take the Pearl label just north of Guangzhou, forming the widest distributary in the delta, though a short one. Its throat, the Bocca Tigris, is dredged regularly to keep ocean shipping moving, and beyond it the estuary opens into a broad bay divided into Shiziyang, Lingdingyang and Jiuzhouyang, the last ringed by the Wanshan islands. That bay separates Macau and Zhuhai on one shore from Hong Kong and Shenzhen on the other.
Pale, pearl-like shells in the riverbed at Guangzhou are said to explain the name. Near the Nansha Bridge a 500-kilovolt power line crosses on three of the world’s tallest pylons, and local companies trade on the river’s fame: the Zhujiang Brewery ranks among China’s three biggest domestic brewers, and Pearl River Bridge is a well-known city food maker.
Source: Pearl River
