In the northwest of Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, a small town with an area of only over 50 square kilometers holds the "switch" of the global lighting market. This is the capital of Chinese lighting - Guzhen Town. About 70% of the country's lighting products and nearly 50% of the world's lighting products are sold from here to over 180 countries and regions around the world. From a family workshop imitating a sample lamp to an industrial cluster with an annual output value exceeding 100 billion yuan, the ancient town has completed an industrial legend of "small products conquering large markets" in more than 40 years. The lighting of the ancient town began with the spark of reform and opening up. Yuan Daguang, the first generation of "lighting professionals", told reporters that in 1981, he was attracted by beautiful wall lamps at a trade fair in Hong Kong. He spent HKD 80 to buy two of them and brought them back to the ancient town for research. He found that the structure was not complicated. So he mobilized five households in the village to work together and after more than two months of hard work, they produced the first batch of nearly 1000 homemade wall lamps. Yuan Daguang, who is over seventy years old, recalled with sparkling eyes, "At that time, the gross profit of each lamp exceeded 50%, and everyone's enthusiasm suddenly came up. With the advantage of being adjacent to Hong Kong and Macao, the business minded people in the ancient town brought back lighting fixtures from Hong Kong and began to dismantle, imitate, and produce them. The earliest "factories" were their own halls, and the earliest salespeople carried large woven bags filled with samples and squeezed onto green trains bound for various parts of the country. From scattered accessory processing to gradually forming the prototype of "front store, back factory", a wire, a piece of glass, and an assembled lamp quickly connected the prototype of a huge industry in the wave of marketization. The true rise of ancient town lighting lies in gathering scattered folk vitality into an organized industrial cluster. The first Guzhen International Lighting Fair was held in 1999. This exhibition, originally set up on both sides of the road, opened a window for the ancient town to face the world, upgrading it from a regional production area to a national distribution center. Nowadays, the ancient town lantern expo, which has been held continuously for 33 sessions, attracts over 350000 professional buyers annually. The government's ability to adapt to the situation is crucial. By planning professional markets, building logistics networks, and establishing industry standards, the local government injects momentum into the sustainable development of the industry. A complete industrial chain is formed accordingly: in the ancient town and its surrounding areas, you can find all suppliers from hardware accessories, glass lampshades, LED chips to drive power supplies, achieving "one-stop" procurement. This unparalleled cluster efficiency has attracted global merchants and capital. Xie Wei, a native of Shaanxi who visited the ancient town in 2003, was deeply impressed: "The lamp shops are one after another, never ending. Every day, many domestic and foreign merchants can be seen buying and selling lamps in the ancient town." He decided to stay and start his own business, starting from renting a 300 square meter factory building. Today, his enterprise has become a nationally renowned brand with over 1000 stores. Riding on the wind of joining the World Trade Organization, Guzhen Lighting has experienced explosive growth, moving from "buying and selling nationwide" to "buying and selling globally", and ultimately establishing a solid position as the "World Lighting Capital". Nowadays, over 30000 lighting related enterprises have gathered here, forming an industrial cluster covering 11 towns and streets in 3 surrounding cities with an annual output value exceeding 100 billion yuan. Despite achieving a production value of billions of yuan, Guzhen Lighting has not stopped there. Faced with consumption upgrading and global competition, technology, intelligence, and green energy conservation have become new directions for the future development of the industry. Intelligence is currently the most prominent trend. ”Zhang Gaoting, founder of Gujing Optoelectronics, turned on his phone's Bluetooth, swiped the screen lightly, and remotely turned off a smart power source. He proudly said that intelligent transformation is not only a product upgrade, but also a business model innovation, driving enterprises to transition from lighting manufacturers to "light environment service providers". Nowadays, the lighting of ancient towns has become an integral part of smart living scenes. At the 33rd China International Lighting Fair, the first AI big model platform for the lighting industry in China, "Xingyao ★ Zhihui", was officially launched, aiming to empower the entire chain from creative design to intelligent dimming with artificial intelligence. Green energy conservation has become a deeply ingrained industry consensus here. Under the "dual carbon" goal, ancient town enterprises have already surpassed the simple LED replacement stage and moved towards deeper energy conservation and environmental protection. The use of efficient heat dissipation materials such as aviation aluminum and optimized optical design to enhance light efficiency have become the common pursuit of leading enterprises. The concept of environmental protection runs through the entire process, from selecting recyclable materials, reducing packaging waste, to energy conservation and emission reduction in the production process. Green manufacturing is shaping the new competitiveness of the industry... from carrying sample bags on the shoulders to shining brightly in thousands of households around the world; From scattered stalls on the roadside to smart platforms leading the industry trend, the story of Zhongshan Ancient Town is a microcosm of the development of countless characteristic industrial clusters in China. It proves that even the most ordinary civilian products can build an irreplaceable global competitiveness through keen market intuition, cluster industrial strength, and the drive for innovation. (New Society)