Quanzhou - Quanzhou, China
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Quanzhou - Wikipedia
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Quanzhou (also known as Chinchew) is a port city at the prefecture level on the Jin River's north bank, near the Taiwan Strait, in southern Fujian, China. It is Fujian’s largest metropolitan area, covering an area of 11,245 km (4,342 sq mi). The 2020 census recorded a population of 8,782,285 in the region. It is home to 6,669 711 people. This includes the Licheng and Fengze urban districts, Jinjiang, Nan'an and Shishi cities, Hui'an County, and the Quanzhou District of Taiwanese Investment. China's 12th largest extended metropolitan area was Quanzhou in 2010.
Quanzhou was China’s main port for foreign traders. It was also known as Zaiton [a] in the 11th to 14th centuries. Both Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta visited it. They both praised it for being one of the most beautiful and prosperous cities in the world. It was the base naval for the Mongol attacks against Japan and Java. It is also a cosmopolitan city with Buddhist and Hindu temples and Islamic mosques. There are also Christian churches and religious churches including a Catholic cathedral. In 1357, the city's foreign community was massacred after a failed rebellion. Economic dislocations--including piracy and an imperial overreaction to it during the Ming and Qing--reduced its prosperity, with Japanese trade shifting to Ningbo and Zhapu and other foreign trade restricted to Guangzhou. Quanzhou was an important opium-smuggling hub in the 19th Century, but its harbor's siltation prevented larger ships from trading with it.