Guangzhou, a provincial capital of Guangdong, is the largest and most prosperous city in southern China. It is situated in the mouth of the Pearl River Delta, with the Baiyun (White Cloud) Hill in the north and the Zhujiang (Pearl) River Delta Plain in front. The city is 125 kilometers northwest of Hong Kong on the Pearl River.
The spoken language of Guangzhou - Cantonese - is incomprehensible to most northern Chinese, who typically speak Mandarin. A word in Cantonese has nine tones instead of the four tones in the Mandarin dialect. (The area around Guangzhou was overcrowded even 200 years ago, and many peasants from the region emigrated to Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe; as a result, Cantonese is the most common dialect among early overseas Chinese.)