Foshan

Fóshān is the pinyin romanization of the city's Chinese name 佛山, based on its Mandarin pronunciation. The Postal Map spelling "Fatshan" derives from the same name's local Cantonese pronunciation. Other romanizations include Fat-shan and Fat-shun. Foshan means "Buddha Mountain" and, despite the more famous present-day statue of Guanyin (or Kwanyin) on Mount Xiqiao, who isn't a Buddha, it refers to a smaller hill near the centre of town where three bronze sculptures of Buddha were discovered in AD 628. The town grew up around a monastery founded nearby that was destroyed in 1391.

Foshan remained a minor settlement on the Fen River for most of China's history. It developed around a Tang-era Buddhist monastery that was destroyed in 1391. The Foshan Ancestral Temple, a Taoist temple to the Northern God (Beidi) that was rebuilt in 1372, became the new focus of the community by the 15th century. Foshan had grown into one of the four great markets in China, primarily on the strength of its local ceramics but also on account of its metalwork. Soon its harbor on the Fen River was limited to ships of a thousand tons' burden but it remained well connected with Guangdong's other ports. By the 19th century, Foshan was considered by the English as the "Birmingham of China", with its steel industry responsible for the consumption of the majority of the province's iron production. Foshan was connected to Guangzhou and Sanshui by rail in the early 20th century. …

Foshan lies on the Fen River in the estuaries making up the west side of the Pearl River Delta. Guangzhou lies 25 kilometers (16 mi) to the northeast, Zhongshan to the southeast, Jiangmen to the south, Qingyuan to the north, and Zhaoqing to the west. Foshan experiences a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa).