Pingshan District 坪山区

Setting and landscape

The land is made of shallow hills and basins, higher in the southwest and lower in the northeast, with low mountains to the west and a continuous upland to the south. The Pingshan River (坪山河), one of Shenzhen's five main rivers, rises at Meishajian (梅沙尖) in Sanzhoutian (三洲田) and flows into Huiyang as a tributary of the Danshui River (淡水河) in the East River system. The whole district lies on karst, with limestone buried under loose deposits in places and caves and underground streams below ground.

History

For centuries the area belonged to Guishan County (归善县) of Huizhou. Between 1684 and 1780 Hakka families named Zeng, Zhang, Huang and Dai moved here from Xingning (兴宁), Shaoguan (韶关) and Fujian, settling around today's Dawan Shiju and Liulian (六联); the district government explains the name "Pingshan" (level hills) by the flat land they found. The area passed to Bao'an County in 1958 and to Longgang District in 1993, became the Pingshan New Area in 2009 and a full district in 2016.

What to see

Dawan Shiju (大万世居), begun around 1763 by the Hakka Zeng Chuanzhou (曾传周), is a square compound of about 16,000 square metres with inner and outer walls, three-storey corner towers and a clan ancestral hall at its core; it has been a Guangdong protected site since 2002. Longtian Shiju (龙田世居), Xinqiao Shiju (新乔世居) and other walled houses survive across the district. Red-history sites include the East River Column Memorial Hall (东江纵队纪念馆) and the former home of Zeng Sheng (曾生故居). In the hills, the waterfalls of Maluan Mountain (马峦山) are described by the district government as Shenzhen's largest group of natural falls.

Food and local customs

Pingshan's qilin dance (坪山麒麟舞), on the Guangdong intangible-heritage list, flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, when more than thirty qilin troupes performed as far afield as Danshui (淡水), Hong Kong and Dongguan. The Dawan ancestral rites (大万祭祖), held for more than 200 years, joined Shenzhen's heritage list in 2021. Pingshan keeps the main Hakka customs, and festival foods mark the calendar, from mung-bean congee on the sixth day of the sixth lunar month to tea-fruit cakes (茶果饼) on the first day of the tenth.

Highlights

• Dawan Shiju 大万世居: Square Hakka walled compound begun around 1763, with corner towers and a central ancestral hall; Guangdong protected site since 2002.
• East River Column Memorial Hall 东江纵队纪念馆: Red-history site on the wartime East River Column, alongside Zeng Sheng's former home.
• Maluan Mountain waterfalls 马峦山: Described by the district government as Shenzhen's largest group of natural waterfalls.
• Pingshan qilin dance 坪山麒麟舞: Hakka qilin dance on the Guangdong intangible-heritage list.