1843 January, “Journal of Occurrences: dispatches from Kiying: arrival of I'lipu; shipwrecked Japanese”, in The Chinese Repository, volume XII, number 1, Canton, page 56:
Pirates have of late become so bold and murderous in their attacks upon the small sailing craft found in the delta of the Pearl river, and the islands interjacent, as to arouse the Chinese government to take strong measures to suppress and disperse them.
The task of directing thousands of pushcarts and tiny handicraft shops and millions of tiny farms and of controlling the flow of crucial supplies created headaches for officials everywhere and the Pearl River Delta area was justly famous for the flowering of tiny enterprises.
1976 April 25, L. Chen, “Mao's word is unanimous vote?”, in Free China Weekly, volume XVII, number 16, Taipei, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 3:
A Chinese-language broadcast from Moscow said the Tienanmen crowds were indeed against Mao but the burning of vehicles and building was started by the Maoists to provide themselves with excuses for stepped-up suppression. We don’t know whether this was the case, but we have learned that some 50,000 Peiping students have been sent to rural and frontier areas since the incident, that corpses have been floating down the Pearl River from Canton, and that the Maoists have been crying out savagely.
2021 November 19, “China Evergrande resumes construction on 63 projects in Pearl River delta”, in Reuters, archived from the original on 19 November 2021:
Debt-laden real estate developer China Evergrande (3333.HK) has resumed construction of 63 projects in the southern Pearl River delta, a regional subsidiary said on Friday.