Guangdong is more or less triangular, with a base curving slightly along the South China Sea and two sides rising to an apex in the Nan Ling Mountains at the Hunan(6) border. But the northern side has two zig-zags following mountain ranges, and the southwest corner dangles a peninsula, Leizhou, that points to Hainan. That large island is approximately a parallelogram, tilted northeast, and is separated from the mainland by the Qiongshou Strait.
The province's centerpiece is the Pearl(7) River system. At the center of the provincial coast is the Pearl: the name of the shared delta of the West(8), North(9) and East(10) Rivers, plus other small streams. The West enters the western provincial border, the North is all but contained in the province, originating in the Nan Ling. And the East enters the province from Jiangsi(11). Guangdong's other main river is the Han, in the northeast.
Much of the province is hills, low mountains or low plateaus. The chief exceptions are the Pearl River delta and--around the lower Han and nearby rivers--the Chaoshan Plain. The southwestern plateaus, and much of Hainan, is volcanic tablelands studdled with old cones.
The majority speak Yue Chinese(12), also called Cantonese, after its most common dialect. Many coastal communities speak Min(13) Chinese, including people in the Chaoshan Plain and in central Hainan. Kejia or Hakka ('guest') dialects are spoken by scattered agricultural communities, expecially in northeastern Guangdong, in Hong Kong's New Territories and on Hainan. The three Chinese groups probably constitute more than 95% of the population, with the minorities of northwest Guangdong and southern Hainan accounting for less than one in twenty of the area.
Religion follows the national pattern: aetheism is encouraged, so non-observance, willing or not, is common. Theists practice a syncretic blend of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and folk practices.
There are 23 metropolises with more than one million people including: Xiangangdao (Hong Kong) with more than eight million, Canton(14) with almost six million and Swatow(15) with more than a million. Hong Kong is centered on the island of the same name, with Kowloon(16) opposite it on the mainland. The metropolis and nearby lands rejoined China in the last decade of the 20th century when the United Kingdom reliquished control.
Canton is over 2000 years old, has a 7th century mosque and was one of the five cities forced open to foreigners for the benefit of British drug pushers and other merchants in the 19th century.
Swatow, on the Han delta, is an industrial port, which only gained prominence starting from the imperial intrusions on China in the 19th century.
It has been speculated that a hypothetical language group, Austro-Tai, was spoken where rice cultivation was practiced 3000 years ago: in this area and far to its north and west. This group embraced the Austronesian, Kadai(17) and Miao-Yao groups. The first of these developed northeast of this area, and the Miao-Yao may have developed mostly west of Guangdong, but the Kadai group probably developed locally as well as to the west and southwest. This group includes Tai languages like Zhuang, which were probably always mostly spoken further west, but probably were spoken in more of Guangdong than at present. Other memebers of the group are still spoken on Hainan, and Sui speakers were only expelled from Guangdong in the 18th century.
The ancesters of Sino-Tibetan languages, including Chinese, probably developed in part here, though mostly further northeast. In any case the non-Chinese branches of the group moved westward.
Chinese state authority arrived more than 2000 years ago, and--whatever the linguistic change they wrought--transformed religious practices. These followed the national pattern, Confucianism mixed with folk practices, later admitting Taoism, and even later--and without state support--adding Buddhism. The Chinese communist revolution promoted aetheism, but older patterns persist.
Large numbers of migrants left from this area to other parts of the world. Yue speakers are thus the majority of American and British Chinese.
European imperialism left few vestiges. Chinese Coast pidgin English was once widely learned but has disappeared here.
north, from the province's northwest
north, from the province's north center
northeast
south of non-peninsular Guangdong, and east and south of Hainan
southwest of Guangdong, and northwest of Hainan
west
(1) Zhongguo or Chunghua in transliterated Chinese; it can be translated as the Middle Kingdom or the Middle Land.
(2) An alternative transliteration from Chinese is Kuang-tung. Also called Kwangtung and Yue. It can be translated as Wide East. Included here are the Dongsha (Tungsha) Islands proper--Phatas Island and its immediate neighbors.
(3) Called Qiong for short. I am excluding from this area both the Xisha and Zhongsha (Paracel) Islands, and the Nan- or South- Sha Islands (Spratleys).
(4) Officially Xianggang.
(5) Officially Aomen.
(6) Could be translated from the Chinese as South of the Lake.
(7) Zhu in Chinese.
(8) Xi in Chinese.
(9) Bei in Chinese.
(10) Dong in Chinese.
(11) Also transliterated from Chinese as Chiang-hsi and sometimes called Kwangsi. It can be translated as River West.
(12) All forms of Chinese share a written language, so many consider it a single language.
(13) One dialect is called Swatonese.
(14) Guangzhou in transliterated Chinese, and also called Kwangchow.
(15) Shantou in transliterated Chinese.
(16) Jiulong in transliterated Chinese. It includes Kowloon proper and New Kowloon.
(17) Also called Tai-Kadai, Dai-Zhuang, and Zhuang-Dong.