Morning - the memorial hall
The Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall was designed by Lu Yanzhi - the architect of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing - and completed in 1931 on the slope of Yuexiu Hill, on the site of the presidential office Sun Yat-sen occupied as extraordinary president. It occupies 61,000 square metres of grounds; the hall itself is 48.63 metres high with a depth of 72.65 metres, and it remains the largest Sun Yat-sen memorial building anywhere. The façade borrows from Song palace architecture - blue glazed tiles over red columns and door frames, an octagonal pyramidal roof with four projecting porches - while the interior is steel and reinforced concrete, which is what makes the span possible. Your guide talks through the marriage of a Chinese exterior to an engineering interior, because that pairing is the whole idea of the building.
Late morning - Yuexiu Park and the Five Rams
Yuexiu Park occupies the hill above the hall and holds the two things a visitor should see first. The Five Rams statue, made in 1959 by Yin Jichang, Chen Benzong and Kong Fanwei, stands eleven metres high and was carved from 130 blocks of granite - the ram with the ears of rice in its mouth is the origin of Guangzhou's nickname, the City of Rams. Nearby, the section of the Ming city wall survives in the middle of the park, a reminder that this hill was the city's northern defence for centuries.
Lunch
A Cantonese lunch near the park.
Afternoon - Zhenhai Tower and the Guangzhou Museum
Zhenhai Tower sits on the Small Coiled Dragon ridge of Yuexiu Hill, five storeys high and known to everyone in the city as the Five-Storey Building, with the old reputation of being the finest view in Lingnan. It was built in 1380 by Zhu Liangzu, marquis of Yongjia, under the Ming, first named the Tower for Watching the Sea and only later the Tower Guarding the Sea. Since 1929 it has housed a museum - one of the earliest in China - and since 1950 the Guangzhou Museum, which is what it is today; the tower and the adjoining stretch of Ming wall were listed together as a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit in 2013. Inside, the city's story is told in sequence, and after a day spent on this hill the exhibits land differently: you have just walked over the ground they describe.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
