FoshanFoshan (UKfou'shaen, US-sha:n), alternately romanized as Fatshan, is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong Province, China. The entire prefecture covers and had a population of 9,498,863 as of the 2020 census. The city is part of the western side of the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone whose built-up (or metro) area was home to 65,694,622 inhabitants as of 2020 (excluding Hong Kong not conurbated yet), making it the biggest urban area of the world.
County-level cityA county-level municipality (), county-level city or county city, formerly known as prefecture-controlled city (1949–1970: ; 1970–1983: ), is a county-level administrative division of the People's Republic of China. County-level cities have judicial but no legislative rights over their own local law and are usually governed by prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by province-level divisions. A county-level city is a "city" () and "county" () that have been merged into one unified jurisdiction.
ShaoguanShaoguan (; Hakka: Seukoan) is a prefecture-level city in northern Guangdong Province (Yuebei), South China, bordering Hunan to the northwest and Jiangxi to the northeast. It is home to the mummified remains of the sixth Zen Buddhist patriarch Huineng. Its built-up (or metro) area made up of Zhenjiang, Wujiang and Qujiang urban conurbated districts was home to 1,028,460 inhabitants as of the 2020 census. Shaozhou was a prefecture under the Tang and Song.
JiangmenJiangmen (), alternately romanized in Cantonese as Kongmoon, is a prefecture-level city in Guangdong Province in southern China. It consists of two urban districts (Pengjiang, Jianghai), Heshan, and the more rural Siyi (Xinhui, Taishan, Kaiping, and Enping), which is the ancestral homeland of approximately 4 million overseas Chinese. As of the 2020 census, the entire prefecture has a total population of about 4,798,090 inhabitants; its urban region (Pengjiang, Jianghai, plus Heshan being conurbated) has 2,657,062 inhabitants, which can also be considered part of the Guangzhou–Shenzhen metro conurbation with 65,565,622 inhabitants.
KaipingKaiping (), alternately romanized in Cantonese as Hoiping, is a county-level city in Guangdong Province, China. It is located ín the western section of the Pearl River Delta and administered as part of the prefecture-level city of Jiangmen. The surrounding area, especially Sze Yup (), is the ancestral homeland of many overseas Chinese, particularly in the United States. Kaiping has a population of 688,242 as of 2017 and an area of . The locals speak a variant of the Sze Yup dialect.
Matteo RicciMatteo Ricci (matˈtɛːo ˈrittʃi; Matthaeus Riccius; 6 October 1552 – 11 May 1610) was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters. On the 17 December 2022 the Apostolic See declared its recognition of Ricci's 'heroic virtues', thereby bestowing upon him the honorific of Venerable. Ricci arrived at the Portuguese settlement of Macau in 1582 where he began his missionary work in China.
