China's garden island — where Gulangyu Island's car-free lanes wind between European colonial villas (built by foreign consulates 1840s–1930s) and tropical gardens in a UNESCO World Heritage Site 8 minutes by ferry from downtown, Xiamen University's red-roofed campus backs directly onto a white sand beach, the Fujian cuisine (satay beef noodles, oyster omelette, braised pork rice, seaweed soup) is a distinct regional tradition separate from Cantonese or Shanghainese, and Xiamen's piano culture (Gulangyu has produced more professional pianists per capita than any place in China) is inseparable from its colonial musical history
Xiamen (5.2 million city; metro 5.3 million) is a coastal city in Fujian Province on the southeastern coast of China, on a bay opening to the Taiwan Strait — 180 km from Taiwan across the water, a geographic proximity that shaped Xiamen's culture (Min-Nan dialect spoken in both Fujian and Taiwan), architecture (Japanese and Taiwanese influences mix with colonial European), and economy (Xiamen Special Economic Zone, one of China's first four, was established in 1980). The city occupies two main areas: Xiamen Island (the historic city, port, and Gulangyu) and the mainland area across the bridge…
The area of Xiamen was inhabited by the She and Han peoples for thousands of years — the city's Min-Nan (Southern Min, Hokkien) dialect is one of the most widely spoken Chinese dialects outside mainland China, carried by emigrants to Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia over several centuries. The Yonghe fortress (Xiamen's first military fortification) was built in 1394 CE during the Ming dynasty to defend against Japanese pirates (wokou). Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga), the same Ming loyalist who expelled the Dutch from Taiwan, used Xiamen as his base in the 1650s–1660s bef…