South China · Guangdong · Shantou (Chaoshan)
A treaty port since 1860: inside China's largest qilou arcade quarter you'll find same-day-butchered beef hotpot, midnight "fish rice" stalls — and over 100,000 letters home from the Chaoshan diaspora.
Why it's special
You come for the food. What makes you stay is the life under the arcades — and a hundred thousand letters home.
Shantou opened as a treaty port in 1860 under the Treaty of Tientsin, and spent the next century as one of South China's busiest harbors. The Xiaogongyuan quarter, radiating from the Zhongshan Memorial Pavilion, holds what's billed as China's largest surviving cluster of qilou arcade architecture — still being restored block by block. It is also the heartland of the Chaoshan diaspora: from the mid-1800s, emigrants to Southeast Asia sent home qiaopi — letters folded around remittances — and over 100,000 of them now fill China's first qiaopi museum, inscribed in UNESCO's Memory of the World register in 2013. As for the food: same-day-butchered beef was born here, the late-night daleng stalls serve cold seafood with into the small hours, and the first World Chaoshan Cuisine Congress convened in Shantou in 2024.
The treaty-port quarter
Chaoshan's table
Qiaopi & the diaspora
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