Fuzhou was capital of the Kingdom of Min, birthplace of opium commissioner Lin Zexu, and site of China's first modern navy yard. Three days here trace Tang pagodas, Song timber halls, a Sino-French war cemetery and treaty-port streets.
The Great Hall was raised in 964 AD under the Wuyue kingdom and is the oldest surviving wooden building south of the Yangtze. Its unpainted columns and fan-shaped bracket sets predate the Song building manual Yingzao Fashi. Open 08:30–17:00.
Shrine to Wang Shenzhi (862–925), who ruled Fujian as King of Min and doubled Fuzhou's walls. The courtyard holds the 906 AD Tang stele recording his deeds, carved in characters still legible after eleven centuries. Open 09:00–17:00.
The seven-storey Chongmiao Baosheng pagoda was begun in 799 and rebuilt in dark granite in 941 by the Min court. The hill above carries Tang and Song cliff inscriptions cut into the basalt along the old temple path. Open 06:00–18:00.
The whitewashed Dingguang pagoda dates from 904 and faces its black twin across the old city. Below it the Qi Gong Ci honours Qi Jiguang, the Ming general who broke the wokou pirate raids on Fujian in 1562. Grounds open till 18:30.
Built on the 1866 Fuzhou Navy Yard founded by Zuo Zongtang and Shen Baozhen, China's first modern shipbuilding complex and naval academy. Five floors of engine drawings, cadet rosters and models of the cruiser Yangwu. Closed Mondays.
A stone pagoda first raised in 1178 and rebuilt in 1596, standing where the Min River meets the sea. Foreign captains marked it on Admiralty charts as the China Tower — the last landmark before Fuzhou's tea clippers turned upriver.
On 23 August 1884 the French squadron destroyed the entire Fujian Fleet here in under half an hour. The hall lists 796 dead sailors by name; the hillside burial mounds behind hold nine collective graves from the battle.
After the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, seventeen consulates and trading houses built on this Cangshan slope. The 1861 granite St John's church, the former British consulate and the Amoy-brick villas of Letian Ridge survive along Lejun Road.
Home of Lin Juemin, executed at 24 after the 1911 Guangzhou uprising, whose farewell 'Letter to My Wife' is memorised by Chinese schoolchildren. The same courtyard house later sheltered the writer Bing Xin. Open 08:30–17:00.
Yan Fu (1854–1921) trained at the Fuzhou navy yard, studied at Greenwich, then translated Huxley and Adam Smith into Chinese, giving the language its words for evolution and liberty. He died in this three-hall house in 1921.
Fuzhou's Ming and Qing trading quarter on the old Min River bank, where tea, timber and paper were transhipped. Fourteen provincial guild halls once stood here; the Yongde hall and the Chen Wenlong temple still front Longling Road.
A Song-era lane along the walled Anmin Creek, quieter than the western alleys and lined with Qing scholar-official compounds. The largest belonged to Sa Zhenbing, admiral of the late Qing navy, who lived until 1952.