Xiamen

Xiamen grew from a fishing and salt-trading island in the bay of the Jiulong River. A walled garrison was built in the late 14th century under the Ming to guard the coast against pirate raids, and the island's fine deep harbour made it a natural smuggling and trading base. In the 1650s the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong, known in the West as Koxinga, made Xiamen and the neighbouring islands his headquarters against the new Qing dynasty, and sailed from here in 1661 to take Taiwan from the Dutch.

The Treaty of Nanking that ended the First Opium War in 1842 opened the port, which Westerners called Amoy, to foreign trade and residence. Merchants, consulates and missions settled on the islet of Gulangyu, which became an international settlement administered by a council of the foreign powers, one of only two in China alongside Shanghai's; its villas, churches and gardens date from those decades. The port's main export became people: through the 19th and early 20th centuries hundreds of thousands of southern Fujianese left through Xiamen for Southeast Asia, and their remittances built schools, roads and whole neighbourhoods at home. The rubber magnate Tan Kah Kee, who made his fortune in Singapore, founded Xiamen University and the Jimei schools with the proceeds.

Japanese forces occupied the city from 1938 to 1945. After 1949 Xiamen sat on a tense front line; the Kinmen islands, a few kilometres offshore, are administered by the Republic of China (Taiwan) and claimed by the People's Republic, and artillery exchanges continued into the 1970s. In 1980 Xiamen was named one of China's first Special Economic Zones, and the city rebuilt itself around electronics, trade and tourism, adding bridges and tunnels to the mainland, a new port at Haicang and a metro network.

Xiamen belongs to the Minnan, or Hokkien, cultural world that stretches across southern Fujian and over the strait to Taiwan. Hokkien is spoken at home and in markets, and it carries its own opera — gezaixi — its puppet theatres and the slow chamber music called nanyin, listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage. The temples follow the same pattern: brightly tiled roofs crowded with ceramic dragons, the sea goddess Mazu honoured in harbour shrines, and ancestral halls that families abroad still fund.

The emigrant connection shapes the city. Overseas Chinese money built Xiamen University, the Jimei school village and much of Gulangyu's architecture, and returning families brought back Southeast Asian tastes in food, coffee and building style. Gulangyu's other legacy is music: pianos arrived with the missionaries and consuls, the island produced an unusual number of Chinese concert musicians, and it is often called the island of pianos.

Everyday manners are gentle and unhurried by Chinese urban standards. Tea is the social medium, brewed strong and small in the gongfu style and offered to anyone who sits down. The city is proud of its cleanliness and of its reputation as one of the most liveable places in China. At Mid-Autumn, offices and families spend evenings rolling dice for mooncakes, a local game said to date from Koxinga's garrison.

About 5.4 million people live in the municipality, a large share of them on Xiamen Island itself and the rest in the mainland districts of Jimei, Haicang, Tong'an and Xiang'an, which have taken most of the recent growth. Housing on the island is among the most expensive in China relative to local wages, so a large share of workers commute across the bridges and through the tunnel each morning.

The economy rests on the container port, electronics and machinery manufacturing, chemicals, trade with Taiwan and Southeast Asia, higher education and tourism. Domestic visitors arrive in great numbers, especially in summer and during the national holidays, and the wedding photography, guesthouse and snack trades on the southern shore depend on them. Fishing continues on a much reduced scale from harbours such as Shapowei.

The daily rhythm is coastal and outdoor. Mornings begin with markets and bowls of noodles or peanut soup, afternoons empty out in the summer heat, and evenings fill the seafront paths, the lake shore and the university beaches. Typhoon preparation is a seasonal routine — Typhoon Meranti, which came ashore here in September 2016 as one of the strongest typhoons recorded to make landfall in Fujian, is still a local reference point — and traffic on the bridges, school places and the cost of island housing are the common complaints.

Xiamen cooking is Minnan cooking: seafood, light stocks, sweet-savoury sauces and a great many snacks. The dish most associated with the city is shacha mian, noodles in a soup enriched with shacha sauce, a peanut, dried shrimp and spice paste brought back by emigrants from Southeast Asia, served with squid, pork liver or prawns. Haolijian, the oyster omelette bound with sweet potato starch, is eaten at market stalls, as is tusun dong, a cool jelly set from the collagen of sea worms dug from the tidal flats, dressed with garlic and vinegar.

Peanut soup, sweet and served hot with a raw egg dropped in, is a breakfast and late-night standard. Bobing, or popiah, wraps shredded vegetables, pork and crushed peanuts in a thin skin, and is eaten at family gatherings. Satay-flavoured kebabs, curried dishes and coffee culture all reflect the Southeast Asian connection.

The markets set the tone: the old lanes behind Zhongshan Road sell fish landed that morning, dried scallops and shrimp, seasonal crab and razor clams, and stalls frying oyster cakes and spring rolls. Tea is Tieguanyin oolong from Anxi, an hour or two inland, brewed in small pots. Snack gifts travel well from here — pork floss, dried squid, peanut brittle and the flaky pastry cakes that visitors carry home by the boxful.