Tradition in Maoming holds that lychees picked from an orchard in Genzi township once travelled north by relay horse to please a Tang-dynasty emperor’s favourite concubine; today the city grows roughly one in five of the world’s lychees.
茂名有个说法，根子镇一处果园所产的荔枝，曾经由驿马接力向北送去，只为博得一位唐代皇帝宠妃一笑；如今，这座城市出产的荔枝约占全世界产量的五分之一。
The orchard, known as Gongyuan, or tribute garden, covers about 5.3 hectares in Genzi township and still holds lychee trees more than 500 years old, their trunks hollowed out but still bearing fruit each year. Local records credit the Tang-dynasty eunuch Gao Lishi, a native of the area then called Gaoliang, with picking lychees from the orchard for the imperial consort Yang Guifei.
这处果园名为”贡园”，位于根子镇，占地约五点三公顷，园内至今仍有树龄超过五百年的荔枝树，树干已中空成洞，却仍年年结果。据当地记载，祖籍高凉（今茂名一带）的唐代宦官高力士，正是从这座果园采摘荔枝进贡给贵妃杨玉环。
According to Guangdong provincial figures published in 2024, Maoming had 94,560 hectares of lychee orchards which yielded more than 502,000 tonnes of fruit worth ¥5.754 billion that year, about half of the province’s total lychee output, a quarter of China’s and a fifth of the world’s.
据广东省二零二四年公布的数据，茂名当年荔枝种植面积达九万四千五百六十公顷，产量逾五十点二万吨，产值五十七点五四亿元，约占广东全省荔枝产量的一半、全国的四分之一、世界的五分之一。
China’s Biggest Lychee Orchard, and Its Longest Beach
中国最大的荔枝产区，与它最长的一片沙滩
The Baiqiao service station on the Baotou–Maoming Expressway, shaped like a cracked-open lychee shell, is Guangdong’s first motorway service area built around lychee culture; travellers can buy lychees straight from Baiqiao village without leaving the road.
包茂高速柏桥服务区外形宛如一颗裂开的荔枝果壳，是广东省首个以荔枝文化为主题打造的开放式服务区；旅客不必下高速，便可在柏桥村买到新鲜荔枝。
Maoming’s coast has its own superlative. The No. 1 Shoal, 25 kilometres from downtown in Dianbai district, runs for 12 kilometres of fine white sand, backed by a coastal shelterbelt first planted in the 1960s and now regarded as the earliest of its kind successfully established in China; the painter Guan Shanyue used the trees as the subject of his famous work Green Great Wall.
茂名的海岸线也有一项之最。位于电白区、距市区二十五公里的”中国第一滩”，拥有连绵十二公里的洁白细沙，其外侧是一条始建于上世纪六十年代的沿海防护林带，被认为是我国第一条营造成功的人工沿海防护林；画家关山月的名作《绿色长城》，取材正是这片林带。
The beach is also a national training base for beach volleyball, and has hosted China’s first national beach volleyball championship, an Asian championship and a World Tour women’s open.
这片沙滩同时是国家沙滩排球训练基地，曾承办全国首届沙滩排球锦标赛、亚洲沙滩排球锦标赛以及世界女子沙滩排球巡回赛等大型赛事。
The PX Protest and the Corruption Scandal
PX抗议与腐败窝案
Thousands of Maoming residents gathered outside the municipal government building on 30 March 2014 to oppose a planned paraxylene, or PX, chemical plant proposed by Sinopec and the local government; the protest turned violent that night, with demonstrators overturning and burning vehicles and police using tear gas and batons to disperse the crowds. Officials said no one died and that 15 people, including four police officers, remained under medical observation; unconfirmed reports of deaths spread on social media, which the government denied.
二零一四年三月三十日，数千名茂名市民聚集在市政府大楼前，反对中石化与地方政府拟建的对二甲苯（PX）化工项目；当晚事态升级，示威者推翻并焚烧车辆，警方以催泪弹与警棍驱散人群。官方称事件没有造成死亡，共有十五人仍在接受医学观察，其中包括四名警察；网络上流传的死亡传言，则遭到政府否认。
The city government later said 24 people had been criminally detained, five of them formally arrested, and 36 given administrative punishments. Officials also promised the plant would not go ahead without broad public support; solidarity protests followed, drawing roughly 200 people in Guangzhou and about 20 in Shenzhen. Dialogue Earth argued that, although no connection between the PX project and the corruption investigations had been proven, the city’s graft scandals made rebuilding public trust considerably harder.
茂名市政府其后通报，事件中共有二十四人被刑事拘留，其中五人被正式逮捕，另有三十六人受到行政处罚。官员同时承诺，若未获得广泛民意支持，项目不会上马；随后广州与深圳分别出现约二百人与约二十人参与的声援游行。”对话地球”（Dialogue Earth）指出，尽管PX项目与反腐调查之间并无证据表明存在关联，但这座城市本已存在的腐败丑闻，让重建公众信任变得更加困难。
The scale of the scandal went far beyond a handful of senior officials. An official account later said 159 people implicated in paying bribes to buy government positions received organisational sanctions, including demotion, dismissal or reassignment. The most senior official caught up in the case was Zhou Zhenhong, Maoming’s party secretary from 2002 to 2007 and later head of the Guangdong United Front Work Department. A court in Henan province, chosen to hear the case outside Guangdong, found he had taken more than ¥24.6 million in bribes from 33 people and could not explain the source of a further ¥37 million in assets; he was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve. Two later Maoming party secretaries, Luo Yinguo and Liang Yimin, were also caught up in corruption investigations.
这场腐败窝案的规模远不止少数高级官员。官方后来通报，涉行贿买官的一百五十九人受到组织处理，包括降职、免职或调整岗位。案中职务最高的官员，是二零零二年至二零零七年间的茂名市委书记、后任广东省委统战部部长周镇宏。案件移交至广东省外的河南省法院审理，法院查明他先后收受三十三人贿赂共计二千四百六十万余元，另有三千七百余万元财产无法说明来源，最终被判处死刑，缓期两年执行。此后担任茂名市委书记的罗荫国与梁毅民，也先后被卷入反腐调查。
The lychee economy is now visible even from the motorway. In its first year of operation, the Baiqiao service area, beside one of Maoming’s historic lychee-growing areas, received more than 7.1 million visitors.
如今，荔枝经济甚至在高速公路上便可一览无余。柏桥服务区毗邻茂名历史悠久的荔枝产区之一，运营首年便接待游客超过七百一十万人次。
