22 April 2018
Zhuhai is a modern city in China’s southern Guangdong province, on the border with Macau. It started out as a small fishing village and was transformed into one of China’s first Special Economic Zones in 1980. Now, there are towering hotels, modern apartments, shopping malls, resorts and theme parks. Zhuhai is also blessed with historical sites and enchanting natural scenery in the surrounding areas.
As first time visitors to Zhuhai, we planned to spend a leisurely day seeing a few prominent sights within the city, plus checking out the popular Gongbei Port Plaza underground shopping mall and trying the local seafood.
We started the morning enjoying a lavish International Buffet breakfast provided by our hotel, the Angsana Zhuhai Phoenix Bay.
After consulting the friendly hotel concierge, we decided that we would begin our sightseeing at the Zhuhai Opera House, followed by a walk along the famous Lover’s Road to the Fisher Girl Statue which is the landmark of the city. From there, we will decide on our next destination, probably have lunch and go to Gongbei Port Plaza which is a popular underground shopping mall. We will end the day with seafood dinner at the Wan Chai Seafood Street in the evening.
The Zhuhai Opera House is located on Yeli Island, linked by a causeway bridge and easily accessible by taxi.
It was easy to understand why the locals called it by its nickname “Sun Moon Shell” in Chinese. Shaped like scallops, it was also to represent the brilliant sun and moon. The tall but round structures looked awesome and out of this world. It actually reminded me of some buildings I saw in a Stars Wars movie.
Does this look like the Republic's shield generator on the ice planet Hoth from the Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back movie?
Side view – this really looks like a scallop shell! At night, the shells are artistically lit.
The two “shells” are of different sizes. The larger “Sun” shell is at 90 metres tall and the smaller “Moon” shell is at 60 metres tall.
We went inside to take a quick look. The Zhuhai Opera House has a 1,550-seat concert hall and a 500-seat theatre. It held its first performances in December 2016 and is now the venue for all sorts of stage performances and shows.
We could only access the lobby. A mini-exhibition at the far end of the lobby showcased other impressive Opera Houses and Grand Theatres in other cities of China.
A few samples of the impressive Opera Houses and Grand Theatres in other cities within China.
Yeli Island is a good place to relax outdoors, fly a kite, enjoy a family outing with views of the bay, Zhuhai city skyline and of course, the impressive Zhuhai Opera House.
Couple enjoying ice-creams on a 4 wheeler bike.
How I wish I could rent one of these shared bikes in Zhuhai.
Many people rented the shared bikes or even the three/four seats bike there and go cycling with family. The locals could just chose a bike they fancy, scan the QR code on the bike with an app on their smartphones to make online payment and unlock it, and then ride away within minutes. We were unable to rent these shared bikes since, as visitors, we were not plugged into the cashless payment infrastructure.
From Yeli Island, we walked back to the mainland via the newly constructed bridge. The bridge has three vehicle lanes with sidewalks on both sides. We saw marvellous views of the modern city skyline of Zhuhai and interesting old fishing boats.
A walk along the bridge linking Yeli Island to the mainland.
It was interesting to see people living on these “houseboats”. A reminder that Zhuhai used to be a fishing village.
Note the solar panels mounted on some of these boats!
Drying laundry on the boats!
Preparing meals and washing up at the stern of the boat.
A “floating” restaurant in the shape of a boat. This is the famous concrete pagoda ship-shaped Deyuefang Seafood Restaurant.
It was slightly past noon when we arrived back at the mainland and started our stroll along a section of the Lover’s Road southwards towards the Fisher Girl Statue. The statue is about 2.4 km away.
Although it was mid-day, the spring weather, hazy sky and sea breeze made the walk quite pleasant. I think a walk on this road in the evening or night would be better and definitely more romantic.
View of the Zhuhai Opera House and the pagoda ship-shaped Deyuefang restaurant from the Lover’s Road. A big contrast in architectural styles.
Artificial beach on our left and Zhuhai city on our right. It was a nice walk but not much shade.
The long stretch of artificial beach is clean and not crowded. There were signs warning against swimming in the sea. With the many factories discharging stuff into rivers, I guess the water in the bay could be hazardous to health.
The beach became more and more crowded as we approached the Fisher Girl Statue. It was interesting to see how the local Zhuhai citizens enjoy their time on the beach on a typical Sunday.
The beach nearest to the Fisher Girl Statue (background) is packed on this Sunday.
Folks having fun on the beach. Yeli Island, where we started our walk, is in the distant background.
Copenhagen has its Little Mermaid. Singapore has its Merlion. Zhuhai has this iconic Fisher Girl Statue. It shows a fisher girl holding a bright pearl up into the air with both hands.
This landmark of Zhuhai City is about 8.7 meters high and is made with about 70 pieces of granite. Like the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen that is based on a fairy tale, the Fisher Girl statue is based on a local legend.
“The Fisher Girl was the daughter of the Sea Dragon King and was so fascinated by Zhuhai's scenery that she secretly descended upon the mortal world and disguised as a fisher girl, weaving nets and searching for pearls to support herself. She fell in love with a young local fisherman named Haipeng and lived happily.
Unfortunately, Haipeng listened to an evil man’s calumny and demanded the fisher girl to give him her bracelet as token of attachment. Unknown to Haipeng, the fisher girl’s bracelet, if removed, will cause her to die. The fisher girl removed her bracelet to prove her love for Haipeng, and died in his arms immediately.
An Immortal named Jiuzhou Elder was moved by their love and helped Haipeng to resuscitate the girl using a magical resurrection grass that must be fed by man’s blood (Haifeng’s blood) every day. Henceforth, the fisher girl became a true mortal.
On their wedding day, the fisher girl presents a precious pearl to the Jiuzhou Elder with both hands as a token of their appreciation for his kindness.”
There is a statue of Haipeng somewhere within Zhuhai city but it is not as popular. Since we did not have plenty of time in Zhuhai, it was not worth the effort to go seek it out.
The Fisher Girl Statue of Zhuhai - Popular with visitors to Zhuhai.
We did not spend too much time admiring the statue although it is quite photogenic standing on its own rock in Xianglu Bay with the Zhuhai skyline in the background.
From there, we decided to head to the Gongbei Port Plaza and have lunch over there.
We managed to hail a passing taxi to take us to Gongbei Port Plaza. That was after 15 to 20 minutes of anxiety on the side of the road watching occupied taxis zipping by and wondering if trying to flag down an empty taxi is a fruitless thing to do in a modern city like Zhuhai where almost everything is based on information technology and QR codes.
Feeling relieved that we could still flag down a vacant taxi on the streets of Zhuhai, we made use of the short ride to Gongbei Port to see more of Zhuhai city. Along the way, we spotted the Gongbei branch of the Shi Shen Seafood City Restaurant that was known for its pricy but good seafood. I made a mental note of its location in case we wanted to come back for seafood dinner.
One of the entrances to the Port Plaza, underground shopping mall at GongBei. It is also known as the GongBei Underground Market.
Gongbei Port is an immigration and customs checkpoint located on Zhuhai’s side of the border with Macau. The large underground shopping mall called Port Plaza is just next to it. It is popular with day trippers who come over from Macau for a shopping spree in the ‘fake goods markets’ where one can buy almost anything, either bulk or retail.
The underground mall is huge, very crowded and busy. Probably busier than normal since it was a Sunday.
There are lots of stores engaged in clothes, cosmetics, services, electronics and phone accessories and local snacks. Most importantly for us, it has restaurants where we could grab some lunch before exploring the place!
Cheap and good noodles soup for lunch at Gongbei underground mall. Hopefully these are real noodles, not fake.
We did not plan to buy anything. It was interesting to just browse the goods on offer. Although it is said that one should bargain hard (at least 50% off) at these shops, the few shops that we checked out claimed that their prices are fixed and already discounted.
We found that it more interesting to explore the shops on the streets than in the underground mall.
As we were quite tired, we decided to forgo a trip to Wan Chai Seafood Street and go find the Shi Shen Seafood City Restaurant that we saw earlier to have an early dinner instead.
Shi Shen actually means “God of Food” in Chinese and this restaurant is quite popular with the locals. It is located next to the Nanyang Seascape Hotel and within walking distance from Gongbei Port.
We were its first customer for the evening and we have plenty of time to browse through the menu while sipping Chinese tea and munching on melon seeds.
Shi Shen Seafood City Restaurant is famous for their award winning baked oysters with cheese for 12 RMB each.
They have a variety of live crabs, fish and shrimps displayed in tanks and baskets that we could choose and buy based on weight.
Our dinner of 2 baked oysters, a 1 kg mud-crab, 800 g of mantis shrimps and a double boiled herbal quail soup costs 380 RMB (about USD 60). This may be pricy by Zhuhai’s standard but pretty good value for seafood served in a restaurant with good service and ambience.
The oysters were served first. The oysters are quite large and actually baked in re-used oyster shells. Although delicious, it was quite normal tasting to us, with little wow factor.
We chose to try the mantis shrimps since they are not commonly available back home but quite commonly served in Hong Kong and Zhuhai restaurants. Mantis shrimps are not the typical shrimps or prawns, although they appear similar. Mantis shrimps have the front limbs modified into a scissor-like device, the inner margins of which are lined with long spines. More importantly, as seafood, they are supposed to be sweeter in taste than the normal shrimps although their shells are quite hard and sharp. So we had to be careful when peeling them.
The mantis shrimps were relatively small in size, about 10 cm in length each, and were quite disappointing compared to what I had tasted years ago. Although tasty, I think the fried shrimps were overcooked and the fresh a little too dry.
The herbal quail soup and spicy crab were marvellous.
Overall, it was a nice dinner to end a day of exploring Zhuhai.
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