Chenpi — dried mandarin orange peel — is what Xinhui is known for in China. The process is simple and the timeline is not: the peel of locally grown mandarin oranges is dried and then aged, sometimes for years, before use. Xinhui chenpi carries a certification of geographical origin, meaning only peel produced in the district can carry the name. In Cantonese cooking, it contributes a complex citrus fragrance that fresh peel cannot replicate — earthy, slightly medicinal, aromatic in ways that deepen with age. Traditional Chinese medicine has used chenpi for centuries as a digestive aid.

The oranges grow in the alluvial soils the rivers built, which may partly account for the peel's distinctive character. Whatever the cause, the reputation is old and the market is large: Xinhui chenpi is exported throughout China and to overseas Chinese communities across the world, a small product carrying an outsized amount of local identity.

The geography of Xinhui is an ongoing geological argument between the Tan River and the West River. Both deposit sediment at their mouths; over millennia, those deposits built the present alluvial plain. The district sits at the southwestern edge of the Pearl River Delta, bordering the South China Sea and positioned close enough to Macao and Hong Kong to make trade and emigration natural rather than exceptional.

Yinzhou Lake and the Yamen Channel — 65 square kilometers of water with depths of 8 to 13 meters and gentle currents — have made port development viable. Tianma port, inside Yamenkou on Yinzhou Lake, has been designated a regional hub port for the western Pearl River Delta, with logistics and harbour industries developing in the surrounding area. The water that built the land is also shaping the district's economic future.

Xinhui is part of the Siyi (四邑) region, the cluster of counties that produced a disproportionate share of the overseas Chinese diaspora. Over the past two centuries, more than 600,000 people from the district migrated to Hong Kong or abroad, settling primarily in the Americas, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The scale of this departure — from a district whose current population is around 909,000 — is remarkable. Nearly as many people left as now live here.

The emigration created communities abroad and, through remittances and return visits, transformed the communities left behind. Ancestral halls were maintained and sometimes expanded with overseas funding. Mount Chishi, the district's notable scenic area, draws both local visitors and diaspora returnees connecting to their family geography. The movement of people across oceans did not sever ties — it complicated and extended them.

Xinhui's most celebrated native son was Liang Qichao (1873–1929), the scholar, journalist, and reformist whom historians have called 'The Mind of Modern China.' His influence on Chinese intellectual life in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China was vast — his writings on political reform, nationalism, and modernity helped shape how an entire generation of Chinese thinkers approached the question of what China should become. His son, Liang Sicheng, became the foundational figure of modern Chinese architecture, documenting ancient buildings before they were lost and designing new ones in dialogue with the tradition.

Beyond the Liang family, Xinhui has produced an extensive diaspora of prominent figures — politicians including Judy Chu, the first Chinese American woman elected to the U.S. Congress; entertainers such as Andy Lau and actor Lai Man-Wai, known as the father of Hong Kong cinema; and businesspeople who built some of the Pearl River Delta's major financial institutions. The list is long enough that the connection between Xinhui and the world feels less like coincidence than like the natural consequence of a place that has always been oriented outward.