Sunwen West Road — named for Sun Yat-sen, whose Chinese given name was Sun Wen — is Zhongshan's pedestrian shopping street and the closest the city has to a historic old quarter. The street runs east-west through the Shiqi district and is lined with restored buildings in the qilou style: shop-houses with covered arcades at street level, a common form in southern Guangdong's old market towns.
The qilou facades date mostly from the 1920s and 1930s, the boom years when Zhongshan was a major node for overseas Chinese trade. Today the arcades house chain shops alongside older traditional pharmacies and tea sellers. It is at its best in the evening when the lamps come on and food stalls fill the side streets.