Quanzhou

The city features a humid subtropical climate. Quanzhou has four distinct seasons. Its moderate temperature ranges from 0 to 38 degrees Celsius. In summer, there are typhoons that bring rain and some damage to the city.

Major earthquakes have been experienced in 1394[27] and on 29 December 1604.[28]

Wang Guoqing (王國慶) used the area as a base of operations for the Chen State before he was subdued by the Sui general Yang Su in the AD 590s.[29] Quanzhou proper was established under the Tang in 718[16] on a spit of land between two branches of the Jin River.[7] Muslim traders reached the city early on in its existence, along with their existing trade at Guangzhou and Yangzhou.[30]

Map of Qingyuan Circuit

Map showing the location of Qingyuan Circuit

In the early period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Quanzhou was a part of Min state. After Min was destroyed by the Southern Tang, the Qingyuan Circuit rose up in the original southern territory of Min. The Qingyuan Circuit was a de facto independent entity that lasted 29 years (949-978) with 4 rulers. Its territory included present-day southern Fujian and Putian, with Quanzhou as its capital. Its founder, Liu Congxiao, the Prince of Jinjiang and Jiedushi (military governor) of Qingyuan Circuit, vigorously expanded overseas trade and city development. Erythrina trees were planted throughout Quanzhou city, so Quanzhou was called Erythrina City.[31][32] In 964, the circuit was renamed the Pinghai Circuit. In 978, Chen Hongjin, the Jiedushi of Pinghai Circuit, was forced to surrender to the Northern Song to avoid war and ravage.[33]

Already connected to inland Fujian by roads and canals, Quanzhou grew to international importance in the first century of the Northern Song.[34] It received an office of the maritime trade bureau (shibosi, 市舶司) in 1079[35] or 1087[16][36] and functioned as the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road into the Yuan, eclipsing both the overland trade routes[37] and Guangzhou. A 1095 inscription records two convoys, each of twenty ships, arriving from the Southern Seas each year.[34] Quanzhou's maritime trade developed the area's ceramics, sugar, alcohol, and salt industries.[34] Ninety per cent of Fujian's ceramic production at the time was jade-colored celadon, produced for export.[38] Frankincense was such a coveted import that promotions for the trade superintendents at Guangzhou and Quanzhou were tied to the amount they were able to bring in during their terms in office.[39] During this period it was one of the world's largest and most cosmopolitan seaports.[lower-alpha 4] By 1120, its prefecture claimed a population of around 500,000.[40] Its Luoyang Bridge was formerly the most celebrated bridge in China[7] and the 12th century Anping Bridge is also well known.

Trade routes in Southeast Asia during Quanzhou's heyday.

Quanzhou initially continued to thrive under the Southern Song. A 1206 report listed merchants from Arabia, Iran, the Indian subcontinent, Sumatra, Cambodia, Brunei, Java, Champa, Burma, Anatolia, Korea, Japan and the city-states of the Philippines.[34] One of its customs inspectors, Zhao Rugua, completed his compendious Description of Barbarian Nations c. 1225, recording the people, places, and items involved in China's foreign trade in his age. Other imperial records from the time use it as the zero mile for distances between China and foreign countries.[41] Tamil merchants carved idols of Vishnu and Shiva[42] and constructed Hindu temples in Quanzhou.[43][44] Over the course of the 13th century, however, Quanzhou's prosperity declined due to instability among its trading partners[34] and increasing restrictions introduced by the Southern Song in an attempt to restrict the outflow of copper and bronze currency from areas forced to use hyperinflating paper money.[45] The increasing importance of Japan to China's foreign trade also benefited Ningbonese merchants at Quanzhou's expense, given their extensive contacts with Japan's major ports on Hakata Bay on Kyushu.[34]

Under the Mongolian Yuan dynasty, a superintendent of foreign trade was established in the city in 1277,[46] along with those at Huating (华亭, headquartered in modern Songjiang, Shanghai), Ningbo, and Guangzhou.[10] The former Song superintendent Pu Shougeng, an Arab or Persian Muslim,[47] was retained for the new post, using his contacts to restore the city's trade under its new rulers.[46] He was broadly successful, restoring much of the port's former greatness,[48] and his office became hereditary in his descendants.[46] Into the 1280s, Quanzhou sometimes served as the provincial capital for Fujian.[10][lower-alpha 5] Its population was around 455,000 in 1283, the major items of trade being pepper and other spices, gemstones, pearls, and porcelain.[16] Marco Polo recorded that the Yuan emperors derived "a vast revenue" from their 10% duty on the port's commerce;[49] he called Quanzhou's port "one of the two greatest havens in the world for commerce"[49] and "the Alexandria of the East".[50] Ibn Battuta simply called it the greatest port in the world.[10][lower-alpha 6] Polo noted its tattoo artists were famed throughout Southeast Asia.[49] It was the point of departure for Marco Polo's 1292 return expedition, escorting the 17-year-old Mongolian princess Kököchin to her fiancé in the Persian Ilkhanate;[51] a few decades later, it was the point of arrival and departure for Ibn Battuta.[12][41][lower-alpha 7] Kublai Khan's invasions of Japan[16][41][52] and Java sailed primarily from its port.[53] The Islamic geographer Abulfeda noted, in c. 1321, that its city walls remained ruined from its conquest by the Mongols.[8] In the mid-1320s, Friar Odoric noted the town's two Franciscan friaries, but admitted the Buddhist monasteries were much larger, with over 3000 monks in one.[8]

When we had crossed the sea the first city to which we came was Zaitun. There are no olives in it, or in the whole of China and India, but it has been given this name. It is a huge and important city in which are manufactured the fabrics of velvet, damask and satin which are known by its name and which are superior to those of Khansa and Khan Baliq. Its harbour is among the biggest in the world, or rather is the biggest; I have seen about a hundred big junks there and innumerable little ones. It is a great gulf of the sea which runs inland till it mingles with the great river. In this city, as in all cities in China, men have orchards and fields and their houses are in the middle, as they are in Sijilmasa in our country. This is why their towns are so big.[54]

— Ibn Battuta

In 1357–1367, the Yisibaxi Muslim Persian garrison started the Ispah rebellion against the Yuan dynasty in Quanzhou and southern Fujian due to increasingly anti-Muslim laws. Persian militia leaders Sayf ad-Din (賽甫丁) and Amir ad-Din (阿迷里丁) led the revolt. Arabic official Yawuna (那兀纳) assassinated Amir ad-Din in 1362 and took control of the Muslim rebel forces. The Muslim rebels tried to strike north and took over some parts of Xinghua but were defeated at Fuzhou. Yuan provincial loyalist forces from Fuzhou defeated the Muslim rebels in 1367.[55] Sayf ad-Din and Amir ad-Din fought for Fuzhou and Xinghua for five years. They both were murdered by another Muslim called Nawuna in 1362 so he then took control of Quanzhou and the Ispah garrison for five more years until his defeat by the Yuan authorities.[56]

Zayton as imagined by a 15th-century European illustrator of The Travels of Marco Polo

Nawuna was killed in turn by Chen Youding. Chen began a campaign of persecution against the city's Sunni community—including massacres and grave desecration—that eventually became a three-days anti-foreign massacre. Emigrants fleeing the persecution rose to prominent positions throughout Southeast Asia, spurring the development of Islam on Java and elsewhere.[47] The Yuan were expelled in 1368,[16] and they turned against Pu Shougeng's family and the Muslims and slaughtered Pu Shougeng's descendants in the Ispah rebellion. Mosques and other buildings with foreign architecture were almost all destroyed and the Yuan imperial soldiers killed most of the descendants of Pu Shougeng and mutilated their corpses.[57]

The Ming discouraged foreign commerce other than formal tributary missions. By 1473, trade had declined to the point that Quanzhou was no longer the headquarters of the imperial customs service for Fujian.[41] The Japanese or dwarf pirates, who came from many different ethnicities, including Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, forced Quanzhou's Superintendency of Trade to close completely in 1522.[58] During the Qing Dynasty, the Sea Ban did not help the city's traders or fishermen: they were forced to abandon their access to the sea for years at a time and coastal farmers forced to relocate miles inland to inner counties like Yongchun and Anxi. Violent large scale clan fights with the thousands of non-native families from Guangdong who were deported to Quanzhou city by the Qing immediately occurred.[59]

Reconstructed Linzhang Gate

In the 19th century, the city walls still protected a circuit of 7–8 miles (11–13 km) but embraced much vacant ground.[7] The bay began to attract Jardines' and Dents' opium ships from 1832. Following the First Opium War, Governor Henry Pottinger proposed using Quanzhou as an official opium depot to keep the trade out of Hong Kong and the other treaty ports but the rents sought by the imperial commissioner Qiying were too high.[58] When Chinese pirates overran the receiving ships in Shenhu Bay to capture their stockpiles of silver bullion in 1847, however, the traders moved to Quanzhou Bay regardless.[58] Around 1862, a Protestant mission was set up in Quanzhou. As late as the middle of the century, large Chinese junks could still access the town easily, trading in tea, sugar, tobacco, porcelain, and nankeens,[7] but sand bars created by the rivers around the town had generally incapacitated its harbor by the First World War. It remained a large and prosperous city, but conducted its maritime trade through Anhai.[4]

After the Chinese Civil War, Kinmen became disconnected from Quanzhou with the Nationalists successfully defended Kinmen in battle from a Communist takeover attempt.

Qingjing Mosque

Kaiyuan Temple, 2014

Medieval Quanzhou was long one of the most cosmopolitan Chinese cities, with Chinese folk religious temples, Buddhist temples, Taoist temples and Hindu temples; Islamic mosques; and Christian churches, including Nestorian and a cathedral (financed by a rich Armenian lady) and two Franciscan friaries. Andrew of Perugia served as the Roman Catholic bishop of the city from 1322.[8] Odoric of Pordenone was responsible for relocating the relics of the four Franciscans martyred at Thane in India in 1321 to the mission in Quanzhou.[16] English Presbyterian missionaries raised a chapel around 1862.[7] The Qingjing Mosque dates to 1009 but is now preserved as a museum.[50][62] The Buddhist Kaiyuan Temple has been repeatedly rebuilt but includes two 5-story 13th-century pagodas.[50] Among the most popular folk or Taoist temples is Guan Yue Temple (通淮關岳廟) that is dedicated to Lord Yue and famous Lord Guan, the God of Martial who is honored for his righteousness and the spirit of brotherhood.[50] Jinjiang also preserves the Cao'an Temple (草庵寺), originally constructed by Manicheans under the Yuan but now used by New Age spiritualists, and a Confucian Temple (文庙, Wenmiao).[50]

Locals speak the Quanzhou variety of Min Nan essentially the same as the Amoy dialect spoken in Xiamen, and similar to South East Asian Hokkien and Taiwanese. It is unintelligible with Mandarin. Many overseas Chinese whose ancestors came from the Quanzhou area, especially those in Southeast Asia, often speak mainly Hokkien at home. Around the "Southern Min triangle area," which includes Quanzhou, Xiamen and Zhangzhou, locals all speak Minnan languages. The dialects they speak are similar but have different intonations.

New housing developments near the city center

Quanzhou has been a source for Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Some of these communities date to Quanzhou's heyday a millennium ago under the Song and Yuan dynasties.[63] About 6 million overseas Chinese trace their ancestry to Quanzhou and Tong'an county. Most of them live in Southeast Asia, including Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, and Thailand.

Quanzhou Jinjiang International Airport is Quanzhou region's airport, served by passenger flights within Fujian province and other destinations throughout the country.

Quanzhou has two kinds of railway service. The Zhangping–Quanzhou–Xiaocuo railway, a "conventional" rail line opened ca. 2001, connects several cargo stations within Quanzhou Prefecture with the interior of Fujian and the rest of the country. Until 2014, this line also had passenger service, with fairly slow passenger trains from Beijing, Wuhan, and other places throughout the country terminating at the Quanzhou East Railway Station, a few kilometers northeast of the center of the city. Passenger service on this line was terminated, and Quanzhou East railway station closed 9 December 2014.[67]

Since 2010, Quanzhou is served by the high-speed Fuzhou–Xiamen railway, part of the Hangzhou–Fuzhou–Shenzhen high-speed railway, which runs along China's southeastern sea coast. High-speed trains on this line stop at Quanzhou railway station (in Beifeng Subdistrict of Fengze District, some 10 miles north of Quanzhou city center) and Jinjiang railway station. Trains to Xiamen take under 45 minutes, making it a convenient weekend or day trip. By 2015, direct high-speed service has become available to a number of cities in the country's interior, from Beijing to Chongqing and Guiyang.

Long-distance bus services also run daily/nightly to Shenzhen and other major cities. Quanzhou bus station operated from 1990 to 2020.