Zhangmutou used to be the place to go. Now, this town under the jurisdiction of Dongguan in Guangdong is the place to leave.
The once-favoured second home of many Hong Kong people is being deserted as a manufacturing hub, reeling from the global financial crisis.
Flats have been going cheaply since November - a sharp contrast with the 1990s, when Hong Kong investors rushed into the area and made up about 90 per cent of property buyers.
The 66.6 sq km town is close to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Hong Kong, and at the important intersection of the Beijing-Kowloon Railway and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway.
With Dongguan rapidly expanding in the past two decades, more than 50,000 businesspeople from Hong Kong bought homes and set up factories in Zhangmutou.
Before the economic downturn, more than 400 overseas firms had offices in the town, and more than 60 per cent of them were from Hong Kong. During holidays, more than 150,000 Hong Kong people would flood into Zhangmutou, earning the town a reputation as a 'mini-Hong Kong'.
