The story starts around 196 BC, when a Han dynasty official named Lü Jia came to Guangzhou on imperial orders. After carrying out his mission, he settled in Xicun, a small village, and planted vegetables and flowers. People eventually called the place Lychee Bay —荔枝湾 — after the fruit trees that spread through the area. Whether or not the account is entirely accurate, it places the site's origins at the very beginning of Guangzhou's recorded history as a city. The lychee, a fruit of extraordinary sweetness, was already associated with this part of the Pearl River delta; the bay's name encoded both geography and taste. During the Tang dynasty, the first formal garden — the Liyuan — appeared here. Under the Nanhan dynasty that followed, the grounds became imperial, hosting multiple royal gardens. By the Ming dynasty, Lychee Bay had opened to ordinary people and earned its place on the list of Guangzhou's eight most celebrated attractions.

Lychee Bay's fortunes tracked the broader rhythms of Chinese history with uncomfortable fidelity. The Qing dynasty brought its greatest fame; the 1940s brought its first serious decline. As Guangzhou industrialized and urbanized rapidly, the area around Lychee Bay shifted from a retreat for leisured Cantonese society to housing for vegetable growers and poor migrants. Trees were cut for building material. Xicun, the old village at the northern end of the bay, became an industrial zone. The water, without the lychee forest canopy and with factories upstream, turned foul. By the 1950s, the channels were being filled one by one — first the branches, then the secondary waterways, then finally, in 1992, the last surviving reach between Punkai Restaurant and Fungyuen Bridge. A landscape that had taken dynasties to cultivate was erased in roughly forty years.

The proposal to rebuild Lychee Bay came through the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in 1999, but momentum was slow. What finally made it happen was practical: Guangzhou was preparing to host the 2010 Asian Games, and the city wanted to present a restored historic waterfront as part of its face to the world. Work began, channels were excavated, water was pumped in. On October 16, 2010, the bay was formally reopened. The restoration is not a precise recreation of what existed before — too much had been built over, too many generations had passed — but it brought water, willows, and boat traffic back to Xiguan, and with them some of the atmosphere that had made the area famous. Electric cruise boats now ply the restored channels, offering the same view of old architecture and water that the old Lychee Bay provided.

Along the restored bay, a cluster of historic structures survived the twentieth century's erasures. The Leung Ancestral Hall on Liangjiaci Street preserves the Lingnan architectural style — the regional tradition of southern Guangdong that blends Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Western influences in its carved eaves and tiled rooflines. Saikwan Mansion, a Xiguan great house (西关大屋), represents the residential type built by Guangzhou's wealthy merchant class during the Qing: deep plan, internal courtyards, carved wooden screens. The Renwei Temple, built in 1052 and dedicated to Emperor Zhenwu, stands at about 2,200 square meters and is notable for its stone, wood, and brick carvings. The Wen Pagoda — Wenta — a two-story brick-and-wood structure rising 13 meters, dates stylistically from the Qing though its exact foundation date is unknown. Cantonese opera performances and competitions are held along the waterfront, keeping alive a musical tradition that belongs specifically to this region.

Lychee Bay's food culture is as layered as its history. Guangzhou's Xiguan district — the area west of the old city walls where the wealthiest merchant families built their mansions — developed its own cuisine, and the bay's stalls and restaurants have long served as a showcase for it. Beef offal, slow-cooked with radish and Chinese herbs until richly spiced, is one of Guangzhou's classic street foods, and the versions sold along Lychee Bay are considered benchmark examples. Water chestnut cake — a translucent, slightly sweet dessert made from water chestnut starch — comes in variations including coconut and hawthorn, and is a specifically Cantonese tradition. Pickled radish, tart and refreshing, cuts through the richness of other dishes. Eating here is not just eating; it is a form of participation in Cantonese food culture, one of the most deeply developed regional cuisines in China.