Every day, when I walk out onto Xianlie Central Road in Guangzhou’s Yuexiu District, I am surrounded by a classic modern megacity environment. I see high-rise apartment buildings, heavy traffic, and neon signs. It looks like a world made completely of asphalt and concrete. However, if I look closer and read this space through an ecological lens, I can see that nature is not completely gone. Instead, it is buried beneath my feet. Xianlie Central Road sits on a geographic transition zone. Historically, this is where the flat, swampy lowlands of the Pearl River Delta began to climb into the natural, forested foothills of Baiyun Mountain. By tracing the history of my neighborhood, I can see how human growth has radically reshaped the water, soil, plants, and animals of this physical space.

Pre-Contact Landscape and Early Water Management

Long before my street was paved with asphalt, this part of the Yuexiu District was a highly dynamic sub-tropical monsoon rainforest. The climate here has always been hot and humid, which originally supported a thick canopy of evergreen broadleaf trees, wild ferns, and dense sub-tropical plants (Xu et al., 2024). Geographically, Xianlie Central Road sits just north of where the ancient walled city of Guangzhou was built. Because of this hillier location, the native landscape was defined by an intricate network of small streams and natural springs that flowed directly down from Baiyun Mountain toward the Pearl River.

Before the Qin and Han imperial expansions, the indigenous Baiyue people lived in harmony with these water systems. Later, during early dynastic histories, Han settlers began to modify these natural streams into a complex system of canals. This ancestral engineering was highly sustainable. Instead of destroying the water networks, early residents used them to drain water away during the heavy summer monsoon rains and to store fresh water for farming during the dry winter months (Zheng et al., 2023). 

Wildlife: From Tigers to Urban Geckos

The animal history of my neighborhood shows a dramatic decline in biodiversity. It is hard to imagine today, but historical records show that the dense sub-tropical forests of Guangzhou and the surrounding hills were once home to large mammals. South China tigers, leopards, wild boars, and gibbons freely roamed these hillsides. The local wetlands and natural streams also supported a massive variety of water birds, such as egrets and herons, alongside native freshwater fish. As the city expanded outward and chopped down the forests, these large animals suffered from severe habitat fragmentation and eventually disappeared completely (Qian et al., 2023).

Today, the wildlife I see on Xianlie Central Road is restricted to highly adaptable, urban-resilient species. Instead of tigers, modern wildlife consists of small oriental garden lizards ,  and birds like Eurasian tree sparrows and light-vented bulbuls that nest in air conditioners. The native fish are also gone because the local streams were either buried underground or turned into concrete drainage ditches that lack the natural mud and plants needed for aquatic life.

Early Settlement, Cemeteries, and Resource Extraction

The unique name of my road—Xianlie, which translates to “Martyrs”—marks a major historical turning point in the early twentieth century. Before this time, the area outside the old city walls was used heavily for resource extraction. Humans cleared the trees for timber and dug into the hillsides for stone quarrying to build the growing city. This extraction caused severe deforestation and soil erosion by the late 19th century (Wang et al., 2025). 

By the early 1900s, the cleared hillsides along Xianlie Central Road became an area for historical memory and burials. The most famous example is the Huanghuagang Mausoleum (72 Martyrs Park), located right on my street. Interestingly, because these large commemorative parks were built here, they accidentally protected small pockets of natural soil and old trees from being entirely destroyed during the first waves of modern industrialization. However, outside these parks, the natural rolling hills were flattened, and the soil was heavily compressed to lay down roads.

Industrialization and Urban Environmental Impacts

The most radical ecological change occurred during the late twentieth century. As Guangzhou transformed into a global economic manufacturing hub, Xianlie Central Road became a highly dense urban corridor. The building of massive concrete structures and asphalt roads created a landscape dominated by impervious surfaces (Wang et al., 2021).

When heavy monsoon rains hit Xianlie Central Road today, the water can no longer soak naturally into the ground. This broken water cycle causes frequent urban waterlogging and flash flooding in low-lying sections of my neighborhood (Zhang et al., 2021). Furthermore, all this concrete has created an intense “Urban Heat Island” effect. The buildings trap solar heat, making my street significantly hotter during summer days than rural areas outside the city. During the height of industrialization, the nearby Shahe Stream (Shahe Yong) also suffered terribly from water pollution caused by domestic sewage and toxic runoff from cars on the street.

Modern Eco-Stewardship and Sponge City Actions

Fortunately, over the last few decades, the municipal government has started taking major stewardship actions to fix these environmental problems. Guangzhou is now part of China’s national “Sponge City” program, which uses green infrastructure to mimic the natural water cycle (UN-Habitat, 2021).

On Xianlie Central Road, I can see this stewardship in action. During recent sidewalk upgrades, the city installed permeable pavements—special bricks that let rainwater soak directly into the ground to reduce flooding. Furthermore, the massive Chinese banyan trees (Ficus microcarpa) lining my street are now carefully managed. Their huge green leaves provide crucial shade to lower the urban heat island effect, and their large soil boxes act as small retention systems that catch and slow down storm runoff.

Looking at Xianlie Central Road through an environmental lens shows that human history and ecological history are deeply tied together. Our urban development transformed a beautiful sub-tropical forest and stream network into a dense concrete jungle. However, modern stewardship programs like the Sponge City initiative prove that we are finally learning to work with nature rather than against it. Understanding what lies beneath the asphalt helps me realize that a healthy urban future requires respecting the ancient ecosystems that originally shaped my home.

References 

Qian, M., Huang, Y., Cao, Y., Wu, J., & Xiong, Y. (2023). Ecological network construction and optimization in Guangzhou from the perspective of biodiversity conservation. Journal of Environmental Management. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117692

UN-Habitat. (2021). UN SDGs Guangzhou voluntary local review: Sustainable urban development and the “Cloud Pathway” integration. UN-Habitat Reports. https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2021/06/guangzhou_2021_en.pdf

Wang, Y., Ho, P., & Peng, C. (2025). Ideological Enlightenment and Practices of Sustainable Afforestation and Urban Greening: Historical Insights from Modern Guangdong, China. Land. https://doi.org/10.3390/land14091850

Wang, Z. W., Meng, D., Liao, Y., Chen, Y., & Lu, Y. (2021). Analysis of impact of rapid urbanization on characteristics of urban waterlogging. Water Resources Protection. https://doi.org/10.3880/j.issn.1004-6933.2025.05.005

Xu, Z., Xu, Q., Liu, K., Liu, Y., Du, J., Yi, K., Zhou, X., Lin, W., & Li, H. (2024). Evolvement of Spatio-Temporal Pattern and Driving Forces Analysis of Ancient Trees Based on the Geographically Weighted Regression Model in Guangzhou and Foshan, China. Forests. https://doi.org/10.3390/f15081353

Zheng, Y., Nijhuis, S., & Bracken, G. (2023). Historical Canals as Urban Landscape Infrastructure in Guangzhou: Reactivating Public Life Through Water. Adaptive Urban Transformation. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89828-1_12

Zhang, Q., Wu, Z., Guo, G., Zhang, H., & Tarolli , P. (2021). Explicit the urban waterlogging spatial variation and its driving factors: The stepwise cluster analysis model and hierarchical partitioning analysis approach. Science of The Total Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143041