Historic Quanzhou

Quanzhou was one of the great ports of the Song and Yuan periods, and the World Heritage listing covers a scatter of sites across the city and its hinterland rather than a single old quarter. Kaiyuan Temple is the centre of it, with two tall stone pagodas carved with figures and a hall whose beams rest on winged sprites. Elsewhere there is a stone mosque built by sea traders, a large seated Laozi cut from a boulder on a hillside, kiln sites, an old customs point, and the Luoyang Bridge, a long stone beam causeway crossing a tidal estuary on oyster-crusted piers. The maritime museum ties the pieces together.

What you actually see

• Kaiyuan Temple - the twin stone pagodas and the main hall with its carved timber sprites.
• Luoyang Bridge - a long stone beam causeway on boat-shaped piers across the tidal flats.
• The Laojun statue - a large seated stone figure carved from a boulder on the hill outside town.
• The maritime museum - ship timbers, anchors and trade goods recovered from the port.

When to go

Spring and autumn are best; summer is hot, humid and exposed to typhoons. The sites are spread out, so plan two days or accept a lot of taxi time. Kaiyuan Temple is busiest on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month, when local families come to burn incense, which is also when it feels most alive.

Honest expectations

There is no single walkable core, and the listed sites are individually modest: a bridge, a statue, kiln foundations. Without reading up first, several will look like ordinary temples. The old lanes around Xijie have been smartened up and are crowded at weekends. English signage is patchy and the outlying sites are awkward without a car.

Nearby

Xiamen is an hour south by train, and the tulou clusters lie inland to the west.