Shantou overview 汕头

About Shantou

Streets around Shengping Road and Anping Road spread through a fan-shaped network of arcaded buildings, where covered ground floors and upper facades create different levels of detail. Across the water, Queshi’s rocky hills offer a broader view of the port setting. Combine an old-town circuit with one hill area, leaving time for the local food streets rather than trying to cover the whole coast.

In the Song dynasty, Shantou was a fishing village in Jieyang County; a larger settlement called Xialing existed nearby by the Yuan dynasty. After 1563 the area belonged to Chenghai County of Chaozhou Prefecture, and by 1575 it was called Shashaping. In 1669 the Tuopu naval camp here was renamed Shantou Xun, taken from the Chaoshan-dialect word for a sand ridge (汕).

After the Second Opium War, the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin designated Chaozhou as a treaty port, but resistance from residents there led foreign traders to choose the safer Shantou instead; the Chaozhou Customs house opened on Mayu Island on 1 January 1860, and Shantou formally became a port, the third in the country to have a customs house. The Chaoshan Railway linking Shantou and Chaozhou opened in 1906, the first Chinese-owned commercial railway in the country.

An earthquake measuring 7.5 struck the city on 13 February 1918, the most severe recorded in Guangdong, collapsing most Chinese-built houses and the French and Dutch consulates and killing about 1,000 people. Shantou was established as an independent municipal government, separate from Chenghai, in 1921. On 2 August 1922 a typhoon struck the city, killing an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people; Shantou was formally established as a city in 1930.

What to look for

• Small Park’s arcaded shop buildings line the streets around Shengping and Anping roads.
• Queshi’s granite hills provide a contrasting view of the city and waterfront.

Location & getting there

Getting to Shantou

Shantou railway station is the city’s principal rail arrival. Continue by local transport to Shengping Road and Anping Road for the Small Park district; Queshi is a separate destination at 4 Queshi Haipang Road across the water.