The former treaty port offers a wealth of things to do, including shopping for antiques, handicrafts and jade
The Americans, British, Dutch, French, Germans, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish have all left their mark on Xiamen, one of the five original treaty ports opened to British trade following the opium war in 1842.
Xiamen was also one of the four original special economic zones set up after Deng Xiaoping
announced his historic reforms in the early 1980s.
Formerly known in the west as Amoy, Xiamen - a city of more than 1.3 million people - dates back to the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279), when it was an isolated farming community. It was transformed into a front line of coastal defence against foreign invaders and pirates during the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644). It was officially established as a city in 1394.
Zheng Chenggong (1624 - 1662), more popularly known locally and in the west as Koxinga, launched an attack on the Dutch, who had occupied Taiwan in 1624, from a base on Gulang Island .