Quanzhou Old City (Kaiyuan Temple and West Street)

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Quanzhou: Emporium Of The World In Song Yuan China, 2021) · Quanzhou, Fujian

The old heart of Quanzhou, the Zayton of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, which in the Song and Yuan dynasties was one of the greatest ports on Earth, trading silk, porcelain and tea across the maritime Silk Road with Arabia, Persia, India and Southeast Asia. Its role won it World Heritage status in 2021 as Quanzhou: Emporium of the World, a group of sites that shows how merchants of many faiths lived side by side. At its centre stands Kaiyuan Temple, founded in 686, with two thirteenth-century stone pagodas more than 40 metres tall, carved with guardians and scenes of the Buddha's life, and a great hall whose columns bear Hindu carvings from a vanished Tamil temple. A short walk away is the Qingjing Mosque, founded in the eleventh century and one of the oldest in China, beside Guandi and Mazu temples still thick with incense. The city's oldest lane, West Street, runs past red-brick Minnan houses with swallowtail roof ridges, now filled with cafés, snack shops and teahouses. Beyond the old city lie the Song-dynasty Luoyang and Anping bridges, a giant stone Laozi on Qingyuan Mountain and Cao'an, the world's last Manichaean temple. Nanyin music, marionette theatre and fishing-village women wearing flower crowns keep old traditions vividly alive.

Kaiyuan Temple, 176 West Street, Licheng District, Quanzhou, Fujian, China

Streets open at all hours; Kaiyuan Temple free and open 6:30-18:00; Qingjing Mosque about 9:00-17:15 (November-April) or 9:00-17:45 (May-October); museums roughly 9:00-17:00 (check).

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