Guangzhou

Guangzhou is the capital and the sub-provincial city of Guangdong Province in the southern part of the People's Republic of China. The city is also known by an older English-language name, Canton, which is based on a French language transliteration of the name of the province in Cantonese. It is a port on the Pearl River, navigable to the South China Sea. As of the 2000 census, the city has a population of 6 million, and a metropolitan population of 12.6 million,[citation needed] making it the most populous city in the province and the third most populous metropolitan area in China. The Chinese abbreviation of Guangzhou is Sui (穗; pinyin: sùi; Jyutping: seoi6; Yale: seuīh) or sometimes GZ. The city has the nicknames of Wuyangcheng (City of Five Rams), Yangcheng (City of Rams), Huacheng (City of Flowers), or Suicheng (City of Wheats). The city can also be referred to as the MuMianCheng (City of Wood Wools), a reference to a tall, native tree that produces wool fiber in its red blossoms. "Canton" was the convenient Portuguese romanisation of "Guangdong" Province, and the city Guangzhou is the capital of the province and frequently referred as 廣東省城 ("the Canton Province Capital City") or simply 省城 ("the Province City") by Cantonese people. The city naturally represents the province and thus was erroneously used as the city's name. It may have been more convenient for Europeans who during the colonial period generally did not understand Chinese nor the written logographic characters (see exonym and endonym). When the term "Canton" is pronounced in Portuguese it provides a closer oral rendering of the name in its original Cantonese[citation needed]. Guangzhou is the pinyin romanisation of the Mandarin name for the city. area code: 20