Pearl River Delta’s poorer cities plan big changes in ‘Greater Bay Area’ push
Jiangmen, famous for its dried tangerine peel, sets sights on becoming industrial powerhouse
The smell of tangerines wafts across Jiangmen’s Xinhui district on a late autumn day, as it has done for centuries.
But ambitious urbanisation plans for the city on the west bank of the Pearl River, part of the Chinese government’s “Greater Bay Area” drive, mean it may not do so for much longer.
Chen Mei, in her 60s, makes extra money this time of the year by carefully removing tangerine peels. Her wrinkled hands can remove thousands of peels, in one piece, from about 300kg of tangerines a day, for which she earns about 80 yuan (US$12).
The peel, known as chenpi, is then dried for at least three years to gain a special flavour that makes it a popular ingredient in Cantonese cuisine. The best tangerine peel is from Xinhui and chenpi that is 10 years old can sell for as much as 2,000 yuan a kilogram.
The townspeople have been processing chenpi for centuries, and, on a recent visit, as they spread fresh tangerine peels on the road to dry, a sweet aroma filled the town.
However, the local government wants to transform the semi-rural landscape by building a 340 sq km Yinhu Bay New Town, full of apartment blocks, office towers and modern factories, as part of Beijing’s Greater Bay Area plan, which aims to forge an urban cluster in southern China that can rival America’s Los Angeles Bay area and the Tokyo Bay area in Japan. It also plans to create a 3,240 sq km Greater Guanghai Bay Economic Zone, encompassing several of its county-level cities.
