Qualla: Qi'ao Island

Qi'ao Island: Introduction

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. The oldest things on Qi'ao Island are broken pots. In the ancient ruins of Housha Bay and Dong'ao Bay, archaeologists have found colored pottery and white pottery dating back 4,500 to 5,000 years — the earliest evidence of human habitation in what is now the city of Zhuhai. Dong'ao Bay has been identified as the most complete gravel-bed ruin site in the Pearl River Delta. The pottery predates the Song dynasty temples and the Qing dynasty palaces and the socialist-era heroes and the artist's reunion statue by so many centuries that it reframes everything else on the island: all of it happened in the blink of an eye, geologically speaking, on a piece of land that people have been returning to for a very long time.

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

Qi'ao Island: Twenty-Three Square Kilometres of Quiet

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charlie fong, CC BY-SA 4.0. Qi'ao Island covers 23.8 square kilometres in the northeast of Xiangzhou District, 13 kilometres from Zhuhai's urban center. About 1,900 people live there. Forest coverage reaches 90 percent — which means that almost the entire island, except for its villages, its farms, and its ...

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Image: Charlie fong | CC BY-SA 4.0

Qi'ao Island: Seventeen Temples and a Long Memory

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. Qi'ao Island has 17 temples. That number, for an island of fewer than 2,000 people, suggests a particular kind of community relationship with religious practice — dense, local, persistent across dynasties. The oldest, Cundong, began construction during the Song dynasty (960–1279 ...

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

Qi'ao Island: The Qi'ao Cun Event and the Patriotic Thread

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N509FZ This photo was taken with iPhone 8 Plus, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1833, an event took place on Qi'ao — referred to in historical records as the Qi'ao Cun Incident — that the island community remembers as an act of resistance. The details of the incident are part of what led, in 2000, to twenty members of the Chinese People's Political Consul...

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Image: N509FZ This photo was taken with iPhone 8 Plus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Qi'ao Island: Pan He's Reunion

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Uvacavmatt at wts wikivoyage, Public domain. Pan He is the sculptor who made Zhuhai's Fisher Girl in 1982 and the companion piece Mother River in 2015. In between, to commemorate the 1999 handover of Macau from Portugal to China, he installed a 9.9-metre statue called Reunion on Qi'ao Island. The work's Chinese title is 重逢 ...

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Uvacavmatt at wts wikivoyage | Public domain