Using a seven-hour night-time stopover at Guangzhou

At night, the best place to see is the Pearl River Cruise and then visit the GZ Tower.

From the airport, you can take the airport shuttle bus line 5 to reach Haizhu Square Station. Then you can walk to Beijing Road to have a look. After that walk along Beijing Road to Tianzi Dock where you can take a ferry to enjoy the Pearl River.
After the cruise, you can walk to the Haizhu Square to take the subway line 6 to Ouzhuang Station and change to line 5 to Zhujiang New Town Station. Then change to line 3 to reach GZ Tower Station. For going back to the airport from GZ Tower, you can take the local subway line 3 to reach directly. The last train is at around 23:00.

Thanks, Poppy!

Poppy, I checked the Pearl River tours boat website, and the tours are two hours long, which might be stretching things a bit (as we may have to wait at that time of night for a departure). As well as the tour boats, are there commuter ferries plying the Pearl River in the evenings, so that we could get a taste of the river without having to commit for the full two hours? If so, do they depart from the same wharf, or are there other ferry stopping places along the river? Thanks again for your help!