Xiamen

Coastal Fujian island-and-mainland city. Gulangyu (UNESCO) is a car-free European-villa island; the city has clean beaches, a relaxed pace and the warmest mainland climate north of Hainan.

Xiamen (older Western name: Amoy) is among the more relaxed of mainland China's coastal cities — compact, with clean air, a culture of independent cafes and live music, and a seafront that remains relatively uncluttered. It is a Hokkien (Min Nan) cultural centre: the dialect spoken here is essentially the same as in Taiwan, Malaysia and among the Hokkien diaspora in southeast Asia, and the food, temple styles and family structures carry that lineage.

Gulangyu, the small island just off the Xiamen waterfront, was a foreign concession from 1902 and accumulated over 1,000 European-style villas in the decades that followed — Portuguese, Dutch, British, German and Spanish architectural influences all present. The island became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017. It is car-free, accessible by a five-minute ferry from Xiamen Port, and is the city's signature attraction. It is also crowded: domestic tourism has made Gulangyu one of Fujian's most visited sites, and summer weekends are very busy.

Xiamen University occupies a hillside campus on the southern shore with a lotus lake, colonial-era buildings and direct beach access — an unusual combination. The adjacent Nanputuo Temple, a Chan Buddhist monastery with a long cliff-carving tradition, is a working religious site as well as a tourist draw.

The city is also the closest mainland point to Taiwan: Quemoy (Kinmen), a Taiwanese-controlled island, is visible from Xiamen's eastern shore. The two sides have established limited direct ferry services that run subject to cross-strait relations.