The word Beihai means “north of the sea”. It is sometimes referred to as the pearl cities, because it harvest so many pearls. This is a street in Old Town Beihai. Today the old foreign architecture still stands and makes up much of the Old Town. The area here is around Beibuwan Street where you can see Portuguese architecture in this section. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to introduce Western Civilization to Beihai. Europeans that followed maintained the same, Portuguese African Moorish architecture, design that had been used earlier by the Portuguese, as it was probably best suited for hot humid climate of Beihai. Much of this town was destroyed during World War II. It was latter restored with the help of Western European Church groups. - See more at: Beibuwan Street.

It was against this background and the People’s Cultural Revolution, which followed that young Yingpan was born into. She would be growing up during the decade of the 1970’s in an environment where the old was being quickly replaced with the new. For more information check the Chinese Government web site at Beihai China. © October 19, 2015