China · Fujian
Xiamen
A treaty port that turned into a holiday: Xiamen kept the villas, the pianos and the noodles, and left the hurry to everywhere else.
Xiamen is a subtropical island city on the Fujian coast, built around a harbour that sent generations of Hokkien emigrants to Southeast Asia and brought their money back as schools, villas and banyan-shaded streets. Its centrepiece is Gulangyu, a car-free islet of colonial mansions and pianos a few minutes offshore by ferry. The rest of the island earns its reputation more quietly: a ring road running past the beaches, a famously green university campus beside a working Buddhist temple, an old fishing harbour full of boats and coffee, and some of the best eating in southern China.
Suggested stay
3–4 days
Language
Mandarin Chinese
Currency
CNY
Timezone
UTC+8
Why you'll love Xiamen
Gulangyu A car-free islet of shuttered villas, banyan roots and piano practice drifting out of windows, and it empties out completely once the last day-trippers leave.
The southern shore One continuous stretch of beach, boardwalk and ring road, with Taiwan-held Kinmen sitting out on the horizon.
Minnan food Satay noodles for breakfast, oyster omelettes at night, sweet peanut soup, popiah rolls, and a temple kitchen that turns tofu into a banquet.
Pace A big Chinese city that somehow runs at half speed - green, salty, walkable, and far more interested in tea than in traffic.
Best time to visit
Oct-Mar
18-28° days
24.480° N, 118.085° E
UTC+8 · Asia/Shanghai
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Weather & when to go to Xiamen
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Oct-Mar
Watch for Jul-Oct typhoons risk
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Xiamen
No month is written off here - the year just has a shape. The cool half is the easy half; deep summer is hot, sticky and sits in the Pacific typhoon track, and a passing storm can stop the Gulangyu ferries for a day or two. Late spring brings sea fog and drizzle that grey out the views.
Top things to do in Xiamen
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Gulangyu - the car-free island of villas and pianos
history culture arts scenic 👍 PopularA short ferry hop lands you on a UNESCO-listed islet with no cars and no bikes, just lanes of softly decaying consulate villas and merchant mansions. Climb Sunlight Rock for the whole harbour, wander Shuzhuang Garden out on the rocks, and look in at the piano and organ museums - the island has long had more pianos per head than anywhere else in China.
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Nanputuo Temple - incense under Wulao Peak
history culture arts 👍 PopularA working Buddhist temple at the foot of a rock ridge, thick with smoke and pilgrims, and one of the most important in southern Fujian. Its vegetarian dining hall is a destination in its own right. Behind the halls a stepped path climbs through boulders carved with red characters, to a view over the campus and the sea.
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Xiamen University - the Furong tunnel and the campus lakes
history culture arts 👍 PopularOften called the prettiest campus in China: Tan Kah Kee's swallowtail-roofed halls in grey stone and red tile, ranged around Furong Lake with the hills behind. The pedestrian tunnel through the ridge is painted end to end by students. Visitor numbers are capped and entry is by advance registration with ID, so sort that before you turn up.
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Huandao Road - ride the ring road along the south shore
scenic adventure ⭐ Highly recommendedThe island's coastal road comes with its own boardwalk and cycle lane, running for miles past Baicheng and Huangcuo beaches. It is where Xiamen exercises, and it is the closest you get to Taiwan without a boat - Kinmen lies right out there across the water.
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Shacha noodles and oyster omelette - eating Minnan
food ⭐ Highly recommendedXiamen eats its own way. Shacha mian is the breakfast bowl, a satay broth built on peanuts and dried seafood poured over noodles; then oyster omelette, popiah rolls wrapped at the table, sweet peanut soup, and tusundong, a chilled jelly set from sea worms that is far better than it sounds.
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Hulishan Fortress - the Krupp gun aimed at the strait
historyA Qing coastal battery on the southern headland, built in the 1890s and still mounting an enormous German-made Krupp cannon on its turntable. The point is as much the position as the gun: this is the edge of the mainland, looking straight across at Taiwan-administered Kinmen.
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Shapowei - the old fishing harbour turned art quarter
culture arts foodThe last working inlet on the island, crammed with wooden boats, with the old fish-processing sheds behind it converted into studios, galleries and coffee. Best at dusk, when the tide is in and the sheds light up.
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Zhongshan Road - arcaded shophouses and snack lanes
food history shoppingThe downtown spine runs in qilou arcades from the old ferry piers inland, built by merchants back from Nanyang. The main street is loud and brightly lit; the reward is the lanes off it, where the local snack stalls actually are.
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Wanshi Botanical Garden - rainforest and cactus terraces
nature wildlife scenicDraped over the hills behind Nanputuo, with a misted rainforest walk, a desert house of enormous cacti, and Qing-era rock inscriptions scattered through the trees. The easiest green escape from the middle of the city.
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Xiamen Bicycle Skyway - the elevated cycle path
scenic off beaten pathA bike-only viaduct strung above the bus rapid transit line through the northern districts, said to be the longest of its kind anywhere. Unremarkable from the street, genuinely odd and rather good once you are up on it.
Best areas to stay in Xiamen
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Gulangyu (Kulangsu)
Slow travellers $$$Car-free island of shuttered colonial villas
Explore hotels in Gulangyu (Kulangsu) →
Zhongshan Road and the Lundu waterfront
First-time visitors $$Arcaded old downtown by the piers
Explore hotels in Zhongshan Road and the Lundu waterfront →
Shapowei and Xiamen University
Culture and coffee $$Old harbour, campus, galleries and coffee
Explore hotels in Shapowei and Xiamen University →
Zengcuo'an
Budget and beach $Beach village of guesthouses and stalls
Explore hotels in Zengcuo'an →
Wuyuan Bay (Wuyuanwan)
Business and families $$$Modern bayfront towers and wetland park
Explore hotels in Wuyuan Bay (Wuyuanwan) →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Xiamen
Getting to & around Xiamen
Getting there
Fly into Gaoqi (XMN), which sits on the island itself, then a short road transfer into Siming and the ferry piers.
Flight
Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport (XMN)
Gaoqi is unusually close in - it is on the north-east side of the same island as the city centre, so arriving means a taxi or airport bus of roughly half an hour down to Siming and the waterfront, longer if you hit the rush.
Train
Xiamen North Railway Station
The main high-speed stop, over on the mainland at Jimei; metro Line 1 runs from it back across the water to the island.
Train
Xiamen Railway Station
The older station, in Siming on the island itself and on the metro - handy when your service calls there.
Ferry
Wutong Ferry Terminal
The short crossing to Taiwan-administered Kinmen leaves from the island's north-east. Cross-strait sailings hang on policy and have been suspended before, so never build a plan around one.
Getting around
Metro
Covers the island and the mainland districts; Line 1 crosses the water in the open.
TBC
BRT
The bus rapid transit runs on its own elevated viaduct, so it beats the traffic below.
TBC
Ferry
The only way to Gulangyu; visitors board at a different pier from residents.
TBC
Taxi and ride-hailing
Plentiful, and app-hailed by almost everyone.
TBC
Shared bikes
Everywhere, and the reason the ring road and the skyway are usable.
TBC
Walking
The south shore from Shapowei round to Zengcuo'an goes end to end on foot.
Free
Day trips from Xiamen
Fujian tulou at Nanjing
Full dayEarthen clan fortresses
The UNESCO-listed rammed-earth roundhouses of inland Fujian, raised by Hokkien and Hakka clans as fortified villages. The Tianluokeng cluster is the postcard - four round houses ringing a square one on a terraced hillside - and Yunshuiyao's riverside banyans are usually bolted on.
Getting there
car | bus | tour | train
About 3 hr each way by road, or rail to Nanjing and then a local bus
Quanzhou
Full dayMaritime Silk Road port
The medieval superport Marco Polo knew as Zayton, now UNESCO-listed in its own right: Kaiyuan Temple under its twin stone pagodas, one of China's oldest mosques, the stone-slab Luoyang Bridge, and a Laozi carved out of the hillside.
Getting there
train
About 1 hr by high-speed rail
Jimei School Village
Half dayWaterfront campus town
Tan Kah Kee built a whole education town here with a fortune made in Singapore, in a hybrid style that sets Minnan swallowtail roofs on Western blocks. The Turtle Garden juts out into the sea beside his tomb.
Getting there
train | walk
About 30 min by metro across the causeway
Wuyishan
2 daysTea cliffs and rafting
Northern Fujian's sandstone gorge country, where the rock oolongs grow on cliff ledges and bamboo rafts drift the Nine Bend River below the peaks. Too far, and too good, to rush in a day.
Getting there
train
Several hours north by high-speed rail
A little history of Xiamen
Xiamen began as a Ming garrison on a defensible island and became the great Hokkien port of departure: the harbour that sent people to Manila, Batavia, Penang and Singapore, and took in the fortunes they made there. Koxinga held the island as his base against the Qing before crossing to take Taiwan from the Dutch, and the British forced the port open as Amoy after the Opium War, which is why Gulangyu ended up an international settlement with a foreign-run council and more than a dozen consulates.
That emigrant money is still the city's most visible feature. The rubber magnate Tan Kah Kee spent his on schools, a university and a whole campus town at Jimei; returning merchants built the arcaded shophouses downtown and the villas out on the island. The twentieth century then put Xiamen on a front line - Japanese occupation, then decades of shelling between the mainland and Nationalist-held Kinmen a few kilometres offshore - before it was picked as one of China's first Special Economic Zones and rebuilt itself into the green, unhurried city it trades on now.
Ming coastal defences wall a garrison on the island, the settlement that grows into Xiamen
Koxinga makes the island his base against the Qing, sailing from here to take Taiwan from the Dutch
The Treaty of Nanking opens Amoy as one of five treaty ports
Gulangyu becomes an international settlement under its own foreign-led council
Tan Kah Kee founds Xiamen University with a fortune made in Singapore
Communist forces take Xiamen; the Nationalists hold Kinmen just offshore
Artillery duels across the strait turn the shoreline into a front line
Xiamen is named one of China's first Special Economic Zones
Gulangyu is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site
Know before you go
Payment
Cash preferred
English
Limited
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type A / I
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+86
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FAQs about Xiamen
▸ When is the best time to visit Xiamen?
The cool, dry half of the year is the comfortable half, and the one for walking the ring road and the island lanes. Deep summer is hot, humid and inside the Pacific typhoon season. Nothing here is unvisitable, though - the difference is mostly comfort, not access.
▸ How long do you need in Xiamen?
Three days covers it: one for Gulangyu, one for the southern shore with the temple and the campus, and a loose one for Shapowei, the old arcades and the eating. Add a fourth if you want the tulou or Quanzhou, because both are full days out.
▸ Do you need to book ahead for Gulangyu and Xiamen University?
Yes, for both. Gulangyu runs on timed ferry tickets with a daily visitor cap, and visitors board from a different terminal from residents. The university admits visitors in limited numbers by advance registration with ID. Neither is a turn-up-and-walk-in proposition.
▸ Can you see Taiwan from Xiamen?
You can see Kinmen, a Taiwan-administered island group a few kilometres off the southern shore. It is plainly visible from Hulishan Fortress and the ring road, with telescopes pointed at it. Actually getting there is a separate question of cross-strait ferry service and paperwork.
▸ Is Xiamen a beach destination?
Only loosely. Baicheng, Huangcuo and Zengcuo'an are real beaches with warm water and a continuous boardwalk behind them, but they are city beaches - busy and shallow, better for a walk, a swim and grilled seafood than for a week of lying down.
▸ What should you eat in Xiamen?
Shacha noodles first, in a satay broth built on peanuts and dried seafood. Then oyster omelette, popiah rolls, sweet peanut soup, and the vegetarian cooking at Nanputuo. Seafood is the other half of the answer, and worth going to a market street for.
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