Where to stay in Quanzhou

Quanzhou is a prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, People's Republic of China. It is Fujian's most populous metropolitan region, with an area of 11,245 square kilometers (4,342 sq mi) and a population of 8,782,285 as of the 2020 census.

About a millenium ago, the city was the main eastern terminus of the Maritime Silk Road and home to a large (over 100,000 by some estimates) international community, mostly Arabs but also including Persians, Indians and others. At one time, the city had seven mosques; the only one surviving today is the Great Mosque, built in 1009 CE. Quanzhou was one of the main bases for the great Chinese treasure ships that routinely traded in Southeast Asia and India and sometimes reached at least as far as Persia and Aden.

Quanzhou is not a tourist-oriented city and there are relatively few hotels. By 2015, a fair number of Quanzhou hosts have registered with airbnb.com. There is a hotel attached to the main bus station; turn right as you come out of the station and look for the London/Moscow/Beijing/... row of clocks in the reception area. There are several more hotels along the (fairly long, but walkable) street that leads west from there toward the center of town. On Wenling Road or Chongfu Road are several cheap business hotels, for ¥50-100.

Getting around

Taxis start at ¥8 and you can go almost anywhere in town for under ¥20. Be warned about local traffic! Traffic anywhere in China often horrifies visitors (see Driving in China), but Quanzhou is worse than most places. On some travel blogs, even Chinese complain about Quanzhou traffic.

Wikivoyage contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0; excerpted.