The Water Lily Street (Chinese: 芙蓉街; pinyin: Fúróng Jiē) is a historical business street located in the central area of the old city of Jinan, Shandong, China. With a history that can be traced back for more than 2000 years, the street formerly served as the administrative, financial, commercial, and cultural center of the city.
Water Lily Street runs through the historical center of Jinan in the north-south direction. To the north, it ends at the Fuxue Confucian Temple and to the south at Quancheng Street, a modern shopping area. The street has a total length of 432 meters and is on average 4.6 meters wide.
As the street has a long creek with clear water, it became a gathering place for business people and several wealthy residences were constructed in the surrounding area. Together with the nearby Qushuiting Street (to the north), Water Lily Street formed the most prosperous area in historical Jinan.
The street became a residential area and retail shops moved in when a yamen was established in the 5th year of the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (in the 1660s). At the beginning of the 20th century, Water Lily Street was still the administrative, financial, commercial, and cultural center of Jinan.
Many famous retail shops and services were located in the street such as the Weisheng dentist, an educational bookstore, a pharmacy, Guang Lisun's grocery.
In 2006, the city government included the renovation of the Water Lily Street among four sites selected for the renovation of the old city in keeping with its historical character, culture, business, and tourism.
Famous quotes containing the words water, lily and/or street:
“I asked, “What happens, father, when you die?”
He told where all the running water goes,
And dressed me gently in my little clothes.”
—Robert Pack (b. 1929)
“I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;
Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don’t care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)