"Ganzhou in a few breaths - 赣州" Ganzhou by view.finder

Ganzhou is a small city by Chinese standards, I’d say something akin to the size of Nottingham where you can see the edges from the highest points and where the central district is walkable by day. Seeing into the distance are not the beginnings of Sherwood Forest or Leicestershire border but large floating mountain peaks, reachable by electric powered bikes and city centre buses. Sometimes the local atmosphere will clog up and only rarely when the habitat sees fit does it invite you to see the greater picture and reveal this cover of nature to you. It is a special moment. They are in front of your view and behind it. China can do this all too regularly, but crucially the mountains are within reach and I expect that soon I will have gotten to know these parts of my view rather well if not personally.

What the UK-like city comparison does not give you is the sense of density within the city lines. Whereas cities in the West are planned and abiding to different arrays of laws and common sense, the sheer closeness of it’s public means that skyscrapers and apartment blocks sprout from every hectare of available space. This kind of building by numbers only exists in areas like Bank in central London and when on any Chinese highstreet extends panoramically throughout the whole of the district.

Water, Ganzhou’s very own ‘yellow’ river, cuts the city in two. The outer realms of the city are connected to the ‘mainland’ by a series of bridges giving the downtown, the inner city an island-like feel. Built up Chinese city centre’s run in pretty easy to maintain, and navigate, blocks – sometimes, it is plain to see at street level the construction work expanding literally, square by a square. At the northern most peak, the confluence of two rivers, an ancient city wall preserved from the Song Dynasty, a picturesque river side walk and bank. Coming further inland you reach busy streets shielded by lush, swooping trees that come alive with twittering and buzzing near summer’s dusk. Occasionally there are glimpses of the old China, the families that have seen much change, a particularly weathered bicycle, archetypal buildings from which may be difficult to take a line of perspective, colours and shapes in wood that are unnatural to the 21st Century. As you roll around Ganzhou on two wheels, there is an interesting dialogue going on between the mixture of red brick (from the native clay and earth that is abundant here) and the new soulless sky scrapers, just another drab “government building”.

A common sight in China

Located in the southern third of Jiangxi Proince, Ganzhou borders Hunan to the west, Guangdong to the south and Fujian to the east.

Officially, 70% of the area is forest and even more mountainous. It is within these hills that the city is currently expanding and excavating.

A humid, subtropical climate with long summers and short, mild winters.

Walk the old city wall

The Chinese characters for Ganzhou are 赣州. It is a third tier city in Jiangxi Province. Jiangxi is 江西 whilst 'Gan' refers to the river and the 'zhou' is a common character in names of Chinese cities. So don't get confused with nearby Guangzhou of neigbouring Guangdong Province. These mistakes are easily made in expat pronunciation or recognition of characters in things such as train schedules.

Like most of China, Ganzhou is mainly made up of Han Zu (Han minority) and speak putonghua (Chinese Mandarin) however an interesting facet of Ganzhou is that the city (and it's outreaches) contains the largest Hakka community in Jiangxi. (read more on Hakka origins here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people. The dialect here is slightly different to central Chinese Mandarin or the sort found in Beijing or Shanghai. The "j" sounds of "zh" resembles more of an authentic "z" (zee) here so much that i've heard some locals refer to the city as "Ganzoo". There are other complexities too I'll add when I've digested them myself.

• Pros:Untouristy, relatively small, street corners can become timewarps, low key comapred to larger cities
• Cons:Becoming rich very quickly (too quickly perhaps), proportionally far from neighbouring large cities
• In a nutshell:An intriguing smaller city in China benefiting from growing local economy and capitalising on it's native environment