Quanzhou Things to Do

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The museum has four exhibition halls: Quanzhou Overseas Communications, Quanzhou Religious Sculpture, Ancient Chinese Sailboats Models, and Quanzhou Customs and Culture. The Maritime Museum gives an excellent portrayal of the city throughout the ages.

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If you like sacred mountains, Qingyuanshan is an interesting option. Of course it not as spectacular as Huangshan or Taishan, but the atmosphere is quieter: no crowd, no harrassing steet vendors, a kind of spirituality. You have also good views on Quanzhou. By climbing, you cross some Buddhist temples, Daoist shrines and Islamic tombs. At the top you find a lake (dam) with a restaurant. The climb is a bit tough.
At the bottom of the mountains there a big statue of Lao Tse (Laozi), worth to see.

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As almost everywhere in Chinese cities, the ancient houses were destroyed and replaced by modern, but not very exciting, buildings. In Quanzhou a little group of ancient houses remain and it's a nice place to wander. Some of the houses are inhabited by a Muslim local minority.

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A Mosque that survived the destroying forces - but very ruined in fact. It is 1000 years old and it's quite fascinating because completly un-chinese. It offers the possibility to dream about the ancient harbour of Quanzhou when it was the starting point of the maritime silk road.
A little museum details the history of Islam in Quanzhou.
When you wander the ruins you'll notice an amusing chinese-islamic architectural mix.

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It dates from AD 686 and is flanked by two pagodas built much later. It is a very busy temple where many locals come to prey. It stands in big garden and has a large courtyard.
It is at hiis best at the end the day when the sun rays animate the sculpture on the pagodas.

If you visit China during the Chinese New Year, you'll experience the festive spirit everywhere. Crackers, fireworks, peddlers with the traditional haw candies, street games and happy people decked in their best (clothes and mood)

This one was mentioned in Lonely Planet's 2002 China guide. Hey, if a writer in the Lonely Planet book tells you to go see some tree then it must be a truly remarkable tree worth a good look. Right?

Actually there is a legend behind the tree that Lonely Planet does not tell you, perhaps because the accompanying sign does not have an English translation.

The story has it that a wandering monk approached Huang Shougong, a wealthy Quanzhou man who owned a mulberry orchard, asking him to donate the garden as land on which to build a temple. The rich man, who was a stingy old miser, replied that only when his mulberry trees bloom with lotus flowers would he give away his land to construct a temple. (It was basically the ancient Chinese version of "when Hell freezes over") Much to his dismay, three days later the tree sprouted lotus blossoms and the rich man had to keep his promise. Now it is called the 'Mulberry Lotus Tree" and it is still there, enclosed in a little walled garden plot and propped up by a pillar.

This celestial guardian of the Kaiyuan Temple pagoda looks like he is not happy that you have chosen to bypass the extra 50 Yuan ticket to ascend the pagoda's interior stairwell.

The internal structure of these two pagodas is different from other pagodas in China with winding or vertical staircases. I've been in enough of them already as I am a big fan of pagodas. The staircases in Kaiyuan Temple's two pagodas were not built along the walls. Instead, in faithful imitation of the original wooden pagodas, staircases were installed through a square hole on one side of the central pillar.