JANVI TOURS

Located in the Liwan District of Guangzhou City, Pantang has more than nine hundred histories. Pan Tang, one of the oldest cities of Guangzhou, was originally known as Bantang. According to Qu Dajun's A New Encyclopedia of Guangdong, the name of Pan Tang(泮塘) was developed by Bantang(半塘). There are full of ponds covering almost half of areas in Pan Tang, so people named there Bantang originally. With the development of times, it is difficult for us to know why Bantang was replaced by Pan Tang. But accord to some legends, the character "ban"(半) and "pan"(泮) in Chinese is interchangeability characters, and because the character "pun" is more elegant and has propitious meaning, then the "ban" was replaced by "pan".

In the past, Pan Tang was an ocean, but to the Tang Dynasty, it gradually was formed inland because of the alluvial silt of Pearl River. With the development of the city, lots of the ponds in Pan Tang were created to a new land, which finally formed the residential areas. In 1985, under the lead of the government, the Liwan Lake in Pan Tang was built, eventually to be Liwan-Lake Park. Built around lakes, Liwabn Lake Park is formed by Xiaocui Lake, Yucui Lake, Ruyi Lake, and Wuxiu Lake, which is linked by bridges and dams. Also, scattering in jungles, there are eight pavilions, eight bridges, four corridors, three halls, a porch, and a cockloft, which shows the Lingnan features.

On account of the flat terrain, there are plenty of ponds and depressions, so the local people planted the litchi, longan, etc. nearby the ponds and lotus, water chestnut, etc. in the ponds. Therefore, Pan Tang increasingly formed the well-known "Pan Tang Five Specialties", including lotus, water chestnut, water caltrop (red caltrop), arrowhead and water bamboo.

With the flourishes of foods, Pan Tang is regarded as a food court. On 29th September 2010, Guangzhou Gourmet Paradise was opened formally. At present, about 40 food enterprises enter in it, including some of the traditional and reputable brands, such as Panxi Restaurant, Sai Kwan Restaurant, and Tangli Garden House, all of them mainly focusing on Cantonese cuisines. Similarly, there are lots of snacks, such as rice noodles and rice-flour noodles. As the main part of the gourmet paradise, people in Pan Tang pay attention to creating a brand image, "Eat in Guangzhou, taste in Sai Kwan and originated in Pan Tang."