清晨六点的广州荔湾芳村，薄雾尚未散尽，广州百艺城花鸟鱼虫新世界的观赏鱼一条街已然灯火通明，商户们在一排排水箱间穿梭忙碌。店主“斗鱼妹”利落地拆箱、分拣、打包，将一尾尾色彩明艳的进口斗鱼依次安顿进暂养缸中。“再过不久，这批斗鱼就会从这里出发，奔赴全国各地。”
这是广州观赏鱼流通市场每一天的序曲，也是其百年产业积淀的生动写照。依托珠三角得天独厚的地理位置和“千年商都”深厚的商业底蕴，广州逐渐培育出覆盖研发、生产、流通全链的观赏鱼产业生态，并在每一次时代浪潮中主动迭代、勇立潮头。其发展脉络，既镌刻着一座城市特有的商贸精神，也映照着中国观赏鱼产业从萌芽到走向世界的国际化轨迹。
广州，作为全国最重要的观赏鱼生产贸易中心之一，在政策引领与创新驱动下，观赏鱼产业发展呈现蓬勃态势，已构建起“种业－市场－人才－集群”的全链条发展体系。这尾承载美好寓意的游鱼，其产业脉络始终与城市发展同频共振，背后是一段跨越数百年的传承与演进史。
从庭院雅趣到世界窗口的百年演进
广州观赏鱼产业的根系，可追溯至清朝末年。彼时，芳村一带的花农于农闲时在庭院中掘池养鲤，本是点缀庭院、招徕宾客的怡情雅趣，却不经意叩开了观赏鱼商业化的大门。依托珠江水系的航运便利与广州港的商贸优势，来自广州的金鱼等观赏鱼品种不仅畅销沿海城乡，更随着商船远渡重洋，成为东西方文化交流中一抹灵动的亮色。
这份 “走出去” 的基因，早已埋下伏笔。四百年前，金鱼已从广州口岸被引入欧洲，游进阿姆斯特丹与伦敦的庭园池沼。世界最早人工培育的观赏鱼——金鱼，其一个重要品类“珍珠鳞”，便诞生于广州。被誉为“白云金丝”的唐鱼，1932年在广州白云山首次被发现后，迅速风靡国际水族界，成为来自东方的水中瑰宝。这些美丽生灵的远行，悄然铺就了广州观赏鱼通往全球的无形航路，也让广州观赏鱼的美名早早镌刻在世界水族版图上。
时光流转至20世纪90年代，自发形成的芳村 “天光墟”，让零散的交易火花汇聚成规模化的产业火炬，广州观赏鱼产业的集聚效应初现端倪。这一时期，广州的观赏鱼进出口量一度占据全国领先地位，成千上万尾观赏鱼在此“游”向全国乃至世界各地。2001年，花地湾花鸟鱼虫批发市场盛大开业，标志着产业从 “散兵游勇” 迈入集约化、专业化发展的新阶段。那条名扬业界的“金鱼街”，吸引全球客商慕名而来。这是广州观赏鱼产业堪称辉煌的黄金时期，不仅让锦鲤、龙鱼、神仙鱼等众多海外名种落地生根，成为我国观赏鱼引种的先锋，还催生了全国观赏鱼专业街，以无数个“第一”推动观赏鱼产业前行。
城市发展的巨笔，改写着产业的布局，却从未切断其传承的脉络。2017年，伴随花地湾市场搬迁启动，现代化、规模化的百艺城接过了产业发展的接力棒。2020年，花地湾圆满谢幕，三十载沉淀的商户网络、客户资源与商业底蕴，平稳注入百艺城的发展肌理，完成了一次关键的产业传承与升级。绝大部分商户、完整的供应链体系，甚至那份独有的 “人情味”，都随着搬迁的货车完整迁移，让百艺城从诞生之初，便自带广州观赏鱼贸易最厚重的历史底色与产业责任。与新加坡依托港口与精养模式的发展路径不同，广州观赏鱼市场的变迁始终与城市发展同频共振，形成了兼具韧性与活力的独特生态，也让其全国流通中心的地位愈发稳固。
如今的百艺城，占地15万平方米，是广州观赏鱼贸易的重要集聚地。2000余家商户在此汇聚，活体、水草、器材、造景一应俱全。广东省水族协会会长罗黎明笑称：“只要你能想到的，这里都有。”
全链生态与全球坐标下的产业枢纽
数字浪潮席卷之下，“买鱼”的逻辑悄然改变。但广州观赏鱼产业并未被动迎合，而是主动重塑定位——百艺城不做流量的对手，而要成为流量的“大后方”。当某款水草因头部主播“种草”成爆款，广州芳村的集货、分拣、物流能力足以迅速承接流量红利。在直播电商红利遍地的当下，广州观赏鱼产业主动进化成为稳定供给、快速响应的“中央厨房”，为一个又一个线上爆款提供坚实的供应链支撑。
线上流量不仅重塑了供给端，更激活了新的消费需求，让线下市场焕发新生机。过去养鱼多是“中老年爱好”，如今却吸引着年轻白领、女性与家庭用户。对他们而言，一尾游鱼、几株水草，是加班后的无声陪伴，是出租屋的专属风景，是办公桌旁慢下来的角落。这种情绪价值的觉醒也重塑了百艺城的生意经，不少商户推出面对面造景教学服务，和顾客一起 “抠细节”，如哪块石头做主峰，哪种沉木更有层次？——这种屏幕无法替代的沉浸式体验，让百艺城在流量时代守住不可替代的“江湖地位”，实现了传统与现代的有机融合。
会展经济的赋能，更让广州观赏鱼产业插上了国际化的翅膀。经过全面的市场分析以及与各合作方、参展企业及海外专业观众的深入沟通，中国国际宠物水族展览会（长城展）于2024年起战略启航，举办地点固定于广州，不再采用上海、广州两地轮流举办的模式。2025年，长城展持续以“赛、展、会”融合模式举办，期间汇聚1200余家优质展商，吸引来自165个国家和地区的10万余名专业观众，国际参与度较上届提升约27%，让广州的国际化流通枢纽定位愈发清晰，也为广州赢得了全球水族行业的瞩目。
都市现代农业和国际贸易中心的新标杆
作为都市现代农业高质量发展的重要突破口，广州观赏鱼产业通过创新构建消费场景、拓展市场渠道、建设人才体系、打造产业集群四大核心支撑的特色发展体系，走出了一条兼具规模效应与内涵价值的产业升级之路。
2025年11月，广州市印发《广州市加快建设都市现代农业强市规划（2024—2035年）》，明确构建农业对外合作公共服务体系，打造全球观赏鱼进出口交易中心。广州作为国家“贸易强国”战略的关键落点，承续“千年商都”基因，重塑更高能级的开放格局，为观赏鱼产业注入战略动能。未来广州观赏鱼将依托规划引领、科技赋能、人才集聚与文化输出，推动广州从商贸枢纽跃升为全球品牌、服务与创新中心。
广州观赏鱼产业不仅是一方水土的产业符号，更是一座城市的时代注脚。它让繁华的商都基因、厚重的岭南文脉，在方寸鱼缸间获得具象化的生长与延续，也见证了广州从传统农产品贸易枢纽向高附加值农业服务贸易枢纽的跨越升级。
从芳村庭院的一池春水，到吞吐全球的产业动脉；从花地湾的岁月沉淀，到观赏鱼国际贸易中心的崭新蓝图，广州观赏鱼产业百年间在珠江水系的滋养中萌芽，在千年商都的开放中成长，在城市变迁中续写传奇。
当水光潋滟处万鱼游弋，世界看到的不仅是一个特色产业的生生不息，更是一座城市以商为媒、拥抱世界的从容姿态。
这，就是广州的“鱼”众不同。
English
At six in the morning the mist is still on Fangcun, and the ornamental-fish street at Baiyi City is already lit. The shopkeeper called Betta Sister unpacks, sorts, and settles imported fighters into holding tanks. Soon, she says, they leave for the rest of the country.
That is the daily opening of the trade, and a picture of an industry a century old. On the Pearl River Delta, and on the habits of a trading city, Guangzhou built a chain from breeding to the shop, and kept rewriting it each time the market moved. The line of that growth is the city’s own way of doing business, and it is also the path of China’s ornamental fish, from a beginning to a trade that faces the world.
Guangzhou is one of the country’s main centres for producing and trading these fish. Policy and new practice have both pushed the industry, and the chain now runs from seed stock to the market, to people, to a cluster. The fish carries a wish for good fortune. The industry has kept time with the city, across a history of several hundred years.
From a courtyard hobby to a window on the world
The roots go back to the end of the Qing. Flower growers in Fangcun, in the slack of the farm year, dug pools in their courtyards and kept carp. It was a pleasure for guests. It also opened a trade. On the Pearl River, and through the port, goldfish from Guangzhou sold along the coast and left on merchant ships, a small bright thing in the exchange between east and west.
The habit of going out was already there. Four hundred years ago goldfish left the port for Europe and turned up in garden pools in Amsterdam and London. The pearl-scale, an important kind of the first ornamental fish people bred, was born in Guangzhou. The white cloud mountain minnow, found on Baiyun Mountain in 1932, quickly became a name in the international hobby, a jewel from the east. Those journeys laid a quiet route, and put Guangzhou on the map of the aquarium world early.
By the 1990s the dawn market that grew up on its own in Fangcun had gathered scattered deals into something with a scale, and the cluster began to show. For a time Guangzhou led the country in imports and exports, and thousands of fish left from here for the rest of China and beyond. In 2001 the Huadiwan wholesale market for flowers, birds, fish, and insects opened, and the trade moved from scattered stalls into a denser, more specialised stage. Goldfish Street drew buyers from abroad. It was the bright period: koi, arowana, angelfish, and other foreign names took root here, and Guangzhou was early in bringing them in. It also produced the country’s specialist street, and a run of firsts.
The city redrew the map and did not cut the line of the trade. In 2017, as Huadiwan began to move, Baiyi City, larger and more modern, took the baton. In 2020 Huadiwan closed. Thirty years of shop networks, customers, and commercial habit moved into Baiyi City, a handover and an upgrade at once. Most of the traders, the supply chain, and even the particular warmth of the place went with the trucks. Baiyi City was born already carrying the heaviest history of the Guangzhou trade, and the responsibility that comes with it. Unlike Singapore, which grew on a port and on careful farming, the Guangzhou market has moved with the city. The result is an ecology that bends and still has life, and a firmer place as the country’s centre of circulation.
Baiyi City now covers 150,000 square metres, a main gathering place of the trade. More than 2,000 shops are here: live fish, plants, equipment, and the materials of a landscape. Luo Liming, president of the Guangdong Aquarium Association, laughs and says that if you can think of it, it is here.
A full chain, and a hub on a world map
Once the trade moved online, the logic of buying a fish changed. Guangzhou did not simply follow. Baiyi City chose not to compete with attention, and to be the storehouse behind it. When a plant becomes a hit because a leading host recommends it, Fangcun can gather, sort, and ship fast enough to take the rush. In a time of livestream selling, the industry has turned itself into a kitchen that supplies steadily and answers quickly, the chain under one online hit after another.
Online attention did not only change the supply. It woke a new kind of buyer, and the physical market came back to life. Keeping fish used to be a hobby of middle age and after. Now it draws younger office workers, women, and families. A fish and a few plants are company after overtime, a view in a rented room, a corner of a desk where the day slows down. That change rewrote how Baiyi City sells. Many shops now teach a landscape face to face, and argue the details with the customer: which stone is the main peak, which piece of wood has more layers. A screen cannot do that. It is how the market keeps a place that cannot be replaced, and how the old trade and the new one sit in the same room.
The fair gave the industry a further reach. After a full reading of the market, and long talks with partners, exhibitors, and professional visitors from abroad, the China International Pet and Aquarium Exhibition, the Great Wall show, set its course in 2024 and fixed the venue in Guangzhou, instead of alternating with Shanghai. In 2025 it still ran as contest, exhibition, and meeting together: more than 1,200 exhibitors, and more than 100,000 professional visitors from 165 countries and regions. International participation was up about 27 percent on the previous edition. Guangzhou’s place as an international hub of the trade is clearer, and the global aquarium business is looking here.
A new mark for city farming, and for trade
As a way through for high-quality urban farming, the industry has built four supports: new scenes for buying, wider channels, a system for people, and a cluster. The upgrade has both scale and a content of its own.
In November 2025 the city issued its plan, for 2024 to 2035, to build a strong city of modern urban agriculture. It calls for a public system of agricultural cooperation with the outside, and for a global centre of ornamental-fish import and export. Guangzhou is a key point in the national strategy of a trading power. It keeps the gene of a trading city a thousand years old, and it is opening at a higher level. The plan, the technical work, the gathering of people, and the culture that goes out with the fish are meant to lift Guangzhou from a hub of goods to a centre of brands, services, and new practice.
The industry is a mark of this soil, and a footnote of the city in this time. The gene of a busy trading capital, and the older Lingnan line, grow on in a tank the size of a hand. It is also the record of Guangzhou crossing from a hub of ordinary farm goods to a hub of agricultural services that carry more value.
From a spring pool in a Fangcun courtyard to an artery that takes in the world; from the years settled at Huadiwan to a new drawing of an international trading centre: in a hundred years the industry sprouted on the Pearl River, grew in the openness of an old trading city, and kept writing itself as the city changed.
Where the light is on the water and the fish are moving, the world sees an industry that keeps going, and a city that meets the world through trade, without hurry.
That is how Guangzhou’s fish are not like the others.