Fuzhou: the city of parks, old lanes and a language of its own

Fuzhou (福州) is the capital of Fujian Province in China, known in older romanisation as Foochow. About 4.4 million people live in the city and 7.1 million in the whole prefecture. Fuzhou is known in China as a city of parks, plazas and man-made green space, laid out to make up for its extensive sprawl and the heat of concrete and asphalt; research papers and case studies have been written on how its green space has evolved. This overview follows the Wikivoyage guide.

A temple in the West Lake park. Photo: Lennartbj, CC BY-SA 4.0.

City and prefecture

"Fuzhou" can mean the city or the whole prefecture, and the officials of Fuzhou administer the entire prefecture, which is divided into urban districts and more rural counties. The person called the "mayor of Fuzhou" in English is in fact the prefecture's chief administrator. The city itself has four districts: Cangshan, south of the river; Gulou and Taijiang, the downtown areas on the river's north bank; and Jin'an, north of those. The guide says district names rarely matter to travelers, though they appear in addresses. The rest of the prefecture includes Mawei, the port area downstream; Changle, a coastal town with the airport; Fuqing, an industrial coastal town; Pingtan, an island off the coast; and Minhou, a large partly suburban region southwest of downtown where several universities have campuses.

History and character

Fuzhou is an old port city and has been an administrative center since the Qin Dynasty (221 to 206 BCE). Marco Polo visited around 1290. In the era of tea clippers it exported more tea than any other Chinese port, much of the best coming from the Wuyi Mountain area up the river. Today it is the provincial capital and a major center for light industry, and it is right across the strait from Taipei, with fairly heavy Taiwanese investment. The city lies on the Min River a few kilometers inland, and the actual port is the downstream suburb of Mawei, a shipbuilding center for several hundred years. In 1884 the French destroyed a dockyard there, sinking a good part of the Chinese navy and killing hundreds, and a museum commemorates the event.

Zhongzhou Island at night. Photo: Lennartbj, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The region has its own culture and an architectural style distinct from the rest of China and Fujian. The city has the oldest wooden structure in South China, Hualin Temple, and one of the largest historic downtown districts in China, "Three Lanes and Seven Alleys", with over 200 residences from the Ming and Qing dynasties. Fujian has always looked outward: people in more or less every overseas Chinese community can trace ancestry to the area, and Fuzhou people are a majority of the Chinese community in Malaysian cities such as Yong Peng, Setiawan, Sibu and Miri, and the second largest group after Cantonese speakers in New York City.

Language

Locals speak Fuzhou Hua, part of the Mindong branch of the Min family. It is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin or with any other Chinese dialect, not even other Min dialects. It is also spoken in overseas communities in New York and Southeast Asia, where it is called Hokchiu or Foochow, and on the Matsu islands. Today it is mainly spoken by older and middle-aged people, and most younger locals cannot speak it unless they grew up with grandparents or in the countryside. Mandarin is widely spoken and has long been the only language of government and education. The metro announces stops in Mandarin, Fuzhou Hua and English.

Getting there and around

Fuzhou Changle International Airport is a secondary hub for XiamenAir, with links to most major Chinese cities and some international flights from other Asian cities. The Binhai Express metro line runs from the airport to Fuzhou Railway Station, and an airport express bus also serves it. Overnight sleeper buses link Fuzhou with Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Fuzhou has two railway stations: the older Fuzhou Station, used by conventional overnight trains and a few high-speed ones, and Fuzhou South, exclusively for high-speed trains on the main coastal line and on lines from the interior. Metro Line 1 serves both.

Map of the Fuzhou Metro. Photo: SCJiang, CC BY-SA 4.0.

In town, taxis are cheap, and the guide warns that almost all of them refuse to stop near traffic cameras, so a taxi stand is the better place to wait. Buses run often and everywhere but get crowded, and service stops at 22:00. The metro has several lines open, with extensions of Lines 2 and 6 expected by the end of 2026, according to the guide. Bags go through X-ray checks at stations, and liquids may be inspected.

What to see

Three Lanes and Seven Alleys at night. Photo: Lennartbj, CC BY-SA 4.0.

• Three Lanes and Seven Alleys (三坊七巷): a historic district in the heart of the city with about 268 residences from the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368 to 1911), mostly in the typical Foochow style found only in the east and northeast of Fujian. It was extensively restored around 2007. Ten of the finest residences charge admission, and many of the rest are private homes that need the residents' permission to enter.
• Zhongzhou Island: in 2003 the city and foreign investors built a "fairytale island" of European architecture, but no shops or restaurants moved in, and it has been a wholesale market since 2006. Lit at night, it is a good photo spot, though the guide calls it not worth visiting otherwise.
• Yantai Mountain and Shangxiahang: the former trading area of Western nations, whose buildings and layout partly remain, and a historic commercial district that first emerged in the 11th century and peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
• Hualin Temple: built in 964 AD, it is the oldest wooden architecture extant in South China, now a small museum rather than a place of worship, rarely visited despite its importance.
• Fuzhou Confucius Temple: the oldest Confucius temple in Fujian Province, first built in the Tang Dynasty and destroyed three times by fire. The current buildings date from the Qing Dynasty, and side buildings have exhibitions on the imperial examination system.

Fu Forest Trail. Photo: Lennartbj, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Parks, mountains and museums

The Fu Forest Trail (Fudao) is an elevated urban forest trail on metal bridges, 19 km in total and crossing Jinniu Mountain. Gu Mountain has a Taoist temple that houses nationally important archives written in monks' blood, and can be climbed or reached by cable car. Qi Mountain National Forest Park has waterfalls, a suspension bridge and monkeys to feed. West Lake Park, on an island in the lake, has boats to rent and walking paths. Wu Mountain has stone-carved calligraphy, one piece written by the Emperor Kangxi on a visit.

Fujian Museum, Nature Museum. Photo: Lennartbj, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Fujian Museum covers five millennia of the province's history, with major signs translated into English, and its Nature Museum next to it on a West Lake island has dinosaur skeletons and is described as a good place to take children. The Lin Zexu Memorial Museum is on the site of the former residence of Lin Zexu (1785 to 1850), a Fuzhou native who as Imperial Commissioner seized and burned a large supply of opium in Canton, which provoked the First Opium War. Blamed for some of the loss, he was exiled to Xinjiang, and his reputation was later restored; he is now considered a national hero. Wu Qingyuan (1914 to 2014), born in Fuzhou, is considered by many to be the best Go player of the 20th century.

Food and crafts

Yu Wan fish balls. Photo: Lennartbj, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Fuzhou's specialties include fish balls (鱼丸), a local delicacy of minced meat inside a fish-flour wrapper in thin broth; boiled shark soup; rouyan, a boiled pork dumpling in a local skin; oyster pancakes; and a rice-batter-and-broth breakfast dish. Buddha Jumps Over the Wall is a soup of abalone, shark fin, Jinhua ham, dried scallops and sea cucumber, named for the idea that it smells good enough to tempt even a vegetarian monk, and it usually must be ordered several days ahead. The area is famous for Shoushan stone, a kind of alabaster used for name chops and carving, and for bodiless lacquerware, one of the three treasures of Chinese arts and crafts. The guide warns that many "local" crafts are resold goods marked up for tourists.

Sources

• Wikivoyage, "Fuzhou" (https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Fuzhou), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Photographs by Lennartbj and SCJiang, each under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changed here: condensed and rewritten in hubnx's own words, with the guide's phone numbers, opening hours, listings of shops, restaurants and hotels, and passages on smuggling left out. This page stays under CC BY-SA 4.0.