Quanzhou (泉州) is a coastal city just North of Xiamen in Fujian Province China.

Understand

The city was once the Eastern terminus of the Maritime Silk Road and home to a large (100,000 by some estimates!) international community, mostly Arabs but also including Persians, Indians and others. Marco Polo sailed home from Quanzhou. He described it as the world's busiest port, with Alexandria a distant second.

After the emperor cut off foreign expeditions, destroyed the records and let the great ships rot in the 1420s, Quanzhou declined considerably. Today it is less well-known than the provincial capital Fuzhou or Special Economic Zone Xiamen, and certainly gets fewer tourists than either. However, it definitely has its own attractions, notably interesting architecture and good shopping.

Like most Chinese cities, Quanzhou has some of the standard ugly 8-storey concrete apartment blocks. However, there are far fewer of those than elsewhere and whole districts are much prettier. The city government has policies that require new buildings to follow certain architectural conventions. Downtown, there are many new 4 to 6 floor buildings with the traditional Chinese tile roofs with points on the corners. Near the old mosque there are new buildings with Islamic themes in the architecture. The rebuilding of the Zhongshan Road shopping area got a UNESCO award[1].

Get in

Quanzhou has an airport with flights to Hong Kong and various mainland cities. Nearby Xiamen has a more important airport with good domestic connections and quite a few international flights.

There are frequent busses from Xiamen (¥27, 1.5 hours) or Fuzhou (¥46 to ¥65, 2.5 hours).

There are also direct overnight busses to/from more distant places such as Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Zhuhai, in the ¥300 range.

Get around

Taxis start at 6 RMB and you can go almost anywhere in town for under 20.

See

The town has an assortment of religious buildings, some quite old. Only one Mosque of the many that used to exist survives, but it is worth seeing. There are Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian temples, as anywhere in China, plus Christian churches. There are also Hindu and Zoroastrian temples, and the world's only surviving Manichean temple.

The "Old Saint", an enormous statue of Lao Tse, the founder of Taoism, outside town attracts people from all over China.

Quanzhou is famous for puppets. There is an excellent free puppet museum.

Do

Buy

There is large area of antique and curio shops on the North side of the mosque. They sell mainly to locals. Quality, variety and price are all better than most tourist areas. You do have to bargain fiercly, though.

White pottery from the village of Dehua outside Quanzhou has been a export item for a couple of centuries, known in Europe as "Blanc de Chine". Other ceramics are also made in the area.

Eat

Drink

Blenz Coffee on Nanjun Lu is good.

Sleep

Contact

The area code for Quanzhou is 0595. When calling from overseas, dial +86 0595 XXXX-XXXX

Get out

There is a train a couple of times a week to Wu Yi Mountain.