Quanzhou — The Most Underrated City in China

In the Song and Yuan dynasties, Quanzhou — Zayton to the Arab and European traders who used it — was plausibly the busiest port on earth. Marco Polo rated it above Alexandria. Ships left here for the Persian Gulf and East Africa, and the people who came the other way stayed.

UNESCO listed the city in 2021 for exactly this: twenty-two sites documenting a medieval trading emporium. And yet it remains, by a wide margin, the most under-visited great historical city in China.

Four religions in a twenty-minute walk

This is what makes Quanzhou singular. Merchants brought their faiths with them, and the buildings survived.

Kaiyuan Temple — a Buddhist complex from the 7th century with twin stone pagodas, and, remarkably, Hindu carvings reused as columns in the main hall, salvaged from a Tamil temple that once stood in the city.

Qingjing Mosque — founded in 1009, the oldest surviving Arab-style mosque in China. Now roofless, but the granite gate and prayer hall walls are original and unmistakably Middle Eastern.

The Islamic tombs and Nestorian stones — burial markers of Arab, Persian and Syriac Christian traders, some with inscriptions in three scripts.

Laojun Rock — a Song-dynasty stone Laozi, five metres tall, sitting on a hillside with an expression of complete amusement. The oldest and best Daoist sculpture in the country.

Plus Tianhou Temple, dedicated to Mazu, the sea goddess whose cult spread from this coast across the whole Chinese maritime world.

The old city

Zhongshan Road and the lanes off it are the walking. Stone-and-brick shophouses, arcaded pavements, temples wedged between shops, and the constant smell of incense — the density of small neighbourhood shrines here is higher than anywhere else in urban China.

Two things to hear rather than see:

Nanyin (南音) — one of the oldest surviving Chinese musical traditions, played on instruments held the way Tang-dynasty paintings show them held. Small teahouse performances are the way to encounter it.

Marionette theatre — Quanzhou’s string puppets have over thirty strings each and the puppeteers are extraordinary. Also UNESCO-listed, also still performed for local audiences.

Xunpu

Take a taxi to Xunpu (蟳埔), a fishing village on the edge of the city, for two things.

The women wear flower crowns — zanhuawei, circlets of fresh jasmine, chrysanthemum and gaudy silk blooms wound into the hair, worn daily, by grandmothers as much as anyone. The custom is locally said to trace back to the Indian Ocean trade.

And the older houses are built with oyster shells set into the walls — from ballast brought back on returning ships, and superb at resisting salt air.

Around the city

• Luoyang Bridge — a Song-dynasty stone sea bridge over a kilometre long, built on a foundation of cultivated oysters. Still walkable.
• Chongwu — a Ming granite-walled coastal fortress town, intact.
• Beaches and fishing harbours along the coast, where the boats work rather than pose.

Practical notes

Getting there: high-speed rail from Xiamen (under an hour) or Fuzhou. Jinjiang airport serves the city.

When: October to April. Summer is hot, humid and typhoon season — see when to visit China.

Eat: this is one of China’s best food cities and almost nobody says so. Oyster omelette, ginger duck, beef soup, tusundong (sea-worm jelly, better than it sounds), peanut soup, and the region’s tea culture. See our food guide.

If your timing is lucky: the city’s ritual calendar is dense. See the city that burns gold for what a Quanzhou festival day looks like, and temple parades in remote Fujian for the countryside version.