The sprawling Nangang Village covered an area of more than 1 square kilometre and included around 20 lakes and ponds. The bridge near this cache was the southeastern entry point of the village. Before the 1980s it was mostly farmland but then migrant workers from around China flooded in to the factories and industries in this perimeter location between Guangzhou and Dongguan. Housing sprang up for the migrants, providing a more lucrative and reliable revenue stream even than the highly fertile farmland. Deep in the urban village there remained a cluster of historical buildings and ancestral halls harking back to the agrarian roots of the settlement, but otherwise the village was transformed.
The village featured mazelike interior streets and was practically car-free simply because it was impossible to even fit cars on the narrow and winding village streets. (Ironically now that the village has been mostly demolished it's increasingly used for car parking in the now plentiful open spaces.)
As recently as early 2021 the village was still intact and vibrant as ever, but the writing was on the wall. Literally, in the form of the dreaded '拆' marker of demolition. The emptying out of tens of thousands of residents closely followed by the hollowing out of the buildings took place rapidly during 2021, with few people left to greet the impressive new bikeways and landscaping elements implemented in 2022.
As of late 2022 it's possible to wander around inside the village and see and even explore the husks of the buildings and some of the vestiges of village life, ranging from discarded children's toys to bits of clothing, makeshift mahjong tables, and more than a few small shrines which the demolition crews taking out all the doors, windows and railings seemed oddly loathe to smash.