Quanzhou, the Medieval Port of Zayton, Joins the World Heritage List
UNESCO listed 22 sites in the Fujian port on 25 July 2021, recording the city Marco Polo knew as Zayton, where Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Manichaeans lived side by side.
Quanzhou, a port on the coast of Fujian province, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List on 25 July 2021 under the title Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China. The inscription covers 22 sites in and around the city that together record its life as one of the great seaports of the medieval world.
Between the 10th and the 14th centuries, under the Song and Yuan dynasties, Quanzhou was the eastern end of the maritime trade routes that linked China with Southeast Asia, India, Persia and the Arab world. Foreign merchants knew it as Zayton. Marco Polo, who sailed from it, and the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta both described it as one of the largest harbours they had seen. Silk, porcelain and tea left through it, and spices, incense and gems arrived.
The listed sites show how such a city worked. There are the remains of the Maritime Trade Office, established in 1087 to tax and regulate shipping; docks, a pagoda that served as a beacon for ships, and long stone bridges, among them Luoyang Bridge, built across a tidal estuary in the 11th century; and kilns and ironworks in the hills that produced goods for export.
Most striking are the monuments of the communities that lived here side by side. Kaiyuan Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in Fujian, has two stone pagodas of the 13th century and carved columns from a vanished Hindu temple. Qingjing Mosque, founded in 1009, is one of the oldest in China, and Islamic tombs stand on a hill outside the old city. A stone statue of Laozi, the Taoist sage, sits at the foot of Mount Qingyuan, and in a small temple at Cao’an is a carved image of Mani, a rare surviving monument of Manichaeism. At Jiuri Mountain, inscriptions cut in the rock record the ceremonies at which officials prayed for favourable winds.
Quanzhou’s old town remains one of the best preserved in southern China, with lanes of red-brick houses, shrines in constant use, puppet theatre and nanyin music, and a food culture of its own. It is an hour from Xiamen by high-speed train and has few hotels of international standard, which is part of its character. It belongs among the destinations described in OKYTO’s feature on China beyond the big cities.