Zhongshan Road is one of the earliest commercial streets in Nanning. Recently a night market of quite considerable scale has developed along it. Although there have been outbreaks of disease, this has not prevented the Zhongshan Road night market from manifesting own cultural characteristics, and even becoming the place par excellence for people from other areas and foreign tourists to make contact and experience local flavors and local life. In the process of urban development and social transformation, the reconstruction of public space and public life has brought the populace broad smooth streets, new facilities, a relatively 'civilized' urban appearance, and new forms of entertainment in keeping with the times, but the question is whether all these will come at the price of people gradually losing the relative stability that came with the transmission of traditional culture and life styles from generation to generation, and if so, what responses will the population make to this? This article investigates the cultural and symbolic significance of the Zhongshan Road night market through a description of its spatial characteristics.