Navigating China is both mysteriously simple (like when you catch a ride with a random driver in Yunnan who knows exactly which hole-in-the-wall bar you’re looking for) and painfully perplexing (like when you live in Guangdong).
Here’s why:
As our friends in cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Foshan are well aware, duplicate street names in South China are like the indistinguishable cockroaches lurking in your kitchen: there's definitely more than one – and maybe even 10 – but you have no idea which you’ve happened upon before.
There are, to be exact, seven different Renmin Lu’s in Guangzhou, 12 Gongyuan Lu’s in Shenzhen, 15 Jiaoyu Lu’s in Dongguan and no less than 23 Gongye Dadao’s in Foshan.
Sure, they’re usually numbered and in the same general area, but what if you forget to set your starting location while typing ‘Wenming Lu’ into Apple Maps? You could end up in Zhuhai, Huizhou, Zhongshan, Zhaoqing, Jiangmen, Qingyuan, Maoming, Zhanjiang… you get the idea.
The repetition isn’t only a problem for expats. This July, Yi Raomei, deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Civil Affairs Bureau, opened a new hotline – ‘Guangdong Voice of the People’ (广东民声热线) – for residents to call in and share their concerns or questions about daily life in the province.
One of the first enquirers brought up the issue of recurring road names, asking how one city – and sometimes even one district – could have so many duplicate designations.
A staff member from the Nanhai District Civil Affairs Bureau responded, explaining that town officials in South China were once responsible for naming roads within their jurisdiction. As long as the names of avenues between each town did not repeat, the region was easy to navigate.
Years later, however, as cities modernized and boundaries were redrawn (clumping multiple towns together into districts), it became evident that many administrators had brainstormed identical street names. The once isolated Chuangye Lu’s of towns A, B and C suddenly found themselves side by side in one district D.
Today, new legislation (the Guangdong Provincial Geographical Names Management Regulations) strives to prevent the issue, stating there should be “no duplicate names of roads, streets, alleys, buildings or residential areas within the same town.”
Unfortunately, the phrase “in the same town” (同一城镇) has been interpreted differently across the province (likely because 城 means 'city' and 镇 translates 'town').
The Nanhai District Civil Affairs Bureau, for example, took the word ‘城镇’ to mean ‘town,’ and prevented duplicate street names within each town, but not throughout the entire city.
The Panyu District Civil Affairs Bureau, on the other hand, understood the regulation to mean ‘in the same city,’ and therefore avoided using appellations that already existed in other parts of Guangzhou.
Fortunately, the Guangdong Provincial Civil Affairs Bureau has caught wind of the problem (albeit a few decades late), and plans to carry out a thorough investigation of geographical names in the next two years, retitling roads where necessary.
Until then, enjoy the occasional thrill of finding the right Zhongshan Lu on your first try.
Thought that last sentence applied to you? Sorry, we were talking about the Zhongshan Lu in Jiangmen. Or was it Zhanjiang? No, definitely the one in Yunfu…
[Graphic data via Dayoo]
READ MORE: Guangzhou Then and Now: How Infrastructure Has Altered the Shape of the City
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