Quanzhou

Quanzhou grew from a coastal settlement in southern Fujian into a trading port under the Tang dynasty, and its rise came with the Song. By the 12th century it had a government office of maritime trade, shipyards building ocean-going junks with watertight compartments, and a foreign merchant quarter. Arab, Persian, Indian, Southeast Asian and later European traders lived in the city, and its exports of ceramics, silk and tea went out through a harbour known to them as Zayton, a name linked to the coral trees planted around the city, which was also known as Citong, the coral-tree city.

Under the Mongol Yuan dynasty the port reached its height, and Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta both described it as one of the greatest harbours in the world. That cosmopolitan century left an unusual religious landscape: Buddhist and Taoist temples, a mosque, Muslim tombs, Hindu carvings reused in temple halls, the Manichaean shrine at Cao'an, and Nestorian Christian gravestones now kept in the city's museums.

Decline followed. Rebellion at the end of the Yuan period, Ming restrictions on private maritime trade, silting of the harbour and the rise of other ports pushed Quanzhou to the margins by the 16th century, and the coastal evacuation ordered by the early Qing emptied its shoreline. The city instead became a source of emigrants: Minnan families from Quanzhou settled across Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, and remittances built much of what stands in the old city today. Manufacturing — shoes, clothing, sportswear and stone — made the area prosperous again after the 1980s, and in 2021 UNESCO listed a group of sites in and around the city as Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China.

Quanzhou is a stronghold of Minnan culture, and much of what defines it was carried from here across the strait and around Southeast Asia. The language is Minnan, close to Taiwanese Hokkien; the architecture is red brick with swallowtail roof ridges; and the performing arts include liyuan opera, a theatre form that originated in the city, the marionette theatre with its many strings, and nanyin, a slow chamber music played on pipa, flute and clappers that UNESCO has listed as intangible heritage.

Religion is lived at street level. Small shrines stand in ordinary lanes, incense burns outside shops, and a single neighbourhood may hold Buddhist, Taoist and folk temples within a few hundred metres, with a mosque and a Manichaean hall nearby. Mazu, the sea goddess, and Guan Yu are widely worshipped, and processions carrying deity palanquins through the streets are part of ordinary life rather than performances for visitors. That mixture of religious buildings is part of what UNESCO's listing recognises.

Local identity is strongly tied to emigration and to clan. Ancestral halls, lineage records and connections to relatives in Taiwan and Southeast Asia matter, and families returning for festivals fill hotels and temples. The women of Hui'an and Xunpu are known across China for their dress — headscarves, wide trousers and, in Xunpu, crowns of fresh flowers — and tea drinking in the gongfu style punctuates every transaction and conversation.

About 8.8 million people live in the municipality, which takes in the old city, the industrial cities of Jinjiang and Shishi, coastal Hui'an and mountainous inland counties. The historic centre itself is modest in scale and quieter than the surrounding districts, where most of the population and nearly all the factories are.

Private manufacturing drives the economy. Jinjiang and Shishi produce a large share of China's sports shoes and casual clothing, several well-known sportswear brands are based here, Hui'an supplies carved granite across the country, and Dehua has made porcelain for a thousand years. Migrant workers from inland provinces fill the factories, and overseas Chinese investment remains significant. Fishing and oyster farming continue on the coast, and tourism has grown quickly since the UNESCO listing.

Everyday rhythms are slower than in the Pearl River Delta. Mornings begin with beef soup or rice noodles and a pot of tea, temples fill on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month, and evenings are spent outdoors on the streets and squares. Traffic in the old lanes, pressure from rising visitor numbers on the historic quarter, factory orders and the cost of housing for migrant workers are the common local concerns.

Quanzhou's cooking belongs to the Minnan tradition, built on seafood, pork, sweet potato and light broths. The dish most eaten here is beef soup — clear stock with thin slices of beef, ginger and coriander, taken with rice or noodles at any hour. Oyster omelette, haolijian, fries small local oysters with egg and sweet potato starch into something soft and chewy, and oysters also go into rice porridge and soups, thanks to the farms along the shore at Xunpu.

Miansian hu, a thick soup of fine wheat noodles with shellfish or liver, and Quanzhou's version of lurou fan, braised pork over rice, are everyday food. Rousong pork floss, sweet potato starch dumplings filled with pork and mushroom, salty rice puddings, peanut soup and glutinous rice cakes are sold from small shops in the old lanes. Puffed sweet potato snacks and sweet peanut brittle are the usual gifts to carry away.

Tea is the constant. Anxi, an hour inland, is the home of Tieguanyin oolong, and gongfu brewing — a small pot, tiny cups, many short infusions — is offered in shops, offices and temples. Dehua porcelain from the same municipality has supplied the cups for centuries. Sugarcane juice, herbal grass jelly and four-fruit soup cool the summer, and returning emigrants have brought back coffee habits and Southeast Asian flavours such as satay and curry.