China's Gateway Across the Taiwan Strait — where the Three Lanes and Seven Alleys historic quarter has the finest intact Tang-Song street grid in China, the Mawei Shipyard launched China's first steam warships, and the Fujian banquet tradition invented the imperial dish so fragrant Buddhist monks leaped walls to eat it
Fuzhou (福州) is the capital of Fujian Province — the coastal province directly opposite Taiwan, with which it shares a dialect (Hokkien/Minnan), food culture, and population of overseas migrants. The city sits where the Min River meets the sea, its historic core built on a grid established in the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) that survives in the Three Lanes and Seven Alleys (三坊七巷, Sanfang Qixiang) — ten streets of preserved Tang-Song residential architecture considered by Chinese historians the most complete surviving example of an imperial-era urban neighbourhood, China's equivalent of Prague's…
Fuzhou's history as a maritime gateway predates the Tang Dynasty — the Min River's estuary was used for coastal trade with what are now Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines from at least the Han Dynasty. The city became significant in the Song Dynasty (960–1279) as a major export port for Chinese silk, porcelain, and tea. Marco Polo described it as one of the world's greatest commercial cities when he passed through in the 1270s. The First Opium War (1839–1842) began in Fuzhou's waters — it was one of five treaty ports opened to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanjing, and the British consu…