Shuidong Street 水东街

About Shuidong Street

Nanfang Daily's own reporting records that the street was first built in the Northern Song dynasty, flourished commercially in the Ming and Qing, and took on its present arcaded form in the Republican period, when the 1928 Huiyang Street Improvement Committee rebuilt the old street with qilou arcades to form a street of more than 700 metres, according to local historian He Zhicheng of the Huizhou Lingdong Institute of History and Literature. The paper reports that Japanese forces bombed the Huizhou prefectural city repeatedly, hitting Shuidong Street in at least three raids that destroyed three-quarters of its buildings, and that merchants rebuilt and reopened; Huizhou was liberated on 15 October 1949 when the Yue-Gan-Xiang Border Column entered the city from Danshui, Huiyang.

The qilou district follows a fishbone pattern of streets and lanes off the east-west Shuidongdong Road. Nanfang Daily names the Donghu Hotel, at 70 Shangtang Street, as one of Huizhou's secret relay points for evacuating cultural figures out of Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, and Zhenji Hao as one of the two oldest qilou buildings in the arcade group; a heritage trail linking Donghu Hotel, Zhenji Hao and the Shuidong Street qilou group was placed in the second batch of Guangdong's Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area cultural heritage trails. The Huizhou culture and tourism bureau reports the street, Hejiang Tower and the Dongpo Shrine as one group, and records it as a designated national-level night-time cultural tourism consumption cluster.

What to look for

• The qilou arcade buildings along Shuidongdong Road, rebuilt in their present form after the 1928 street-improvement scheme.
• Donghu Hotel (东湖旅店) at 70 Shangtang Street, a wartime relay point for evacuating cultural figures from occupied Hong Kong.
• Zhenji Hao (镇记号), one of the two oldest qilou buildings in the arcade group.
• The fishbone pattern of lanes running north-south off the east-west Shuidongdong Road.
• Hejiang Tower (合江楼) and the Dongpo Shrine (东坡祠), which the culture and tourism bureau reports as one group with Shuidong Street.

Location & getting there

Getting to Shuidong Street

Identify the main visitor approach and any separately managed houses, museums or performances. Ask before entering residential spaces or photographing residents.

• Search for 水东街 with 惠州市 and 惠城区.