Kulangsu Gallery of Foreign Artifacts from the Palace Museum Collection(Gu Gong Gu Lang Yu Wai Guo Wen Wu Guan 故宫鼓浪屿外国文物馆)

This spectacular new branch of the Palace Museum in Beijing’s Forbidden City opened in May 2017, after a long, ambitious renovation of a foreign hospital from 1898 (jiu shi yi yuan 救世医院). The museum showcases 219 beautiful, unique, and interesting treasures from foreign countries that were moved here from the Palace Museum. It’s the first branch […]

Pianist Yin Chengzong’s house (Yin Cheng Zong Zhai 殷承宗宅)

Kulangsu’s most famous pianist, Yin Chengzong, still owns and periodically visits this hilltop house. It is one of the island’s most beautiful private homes, now inhabited by the pianist’s brother, Yin Chengdian, who is a first-rate musician in his own right and the former dean of the Xiamen Music School. In 1924, Yin’s father bought the […]

Gulangyu Piano Museum (Gulangyu Gang Qin Bo Wu Guan 鼓浪屿钢琴博物馆)

One of the top tourist attractions of Kulangsu Island is the world’s largest and most impressive collection of pianos, all of which reside in a sprawling series of red-roofed houses that pay heritage to the island’s European-Chinese fusion classical music tradition. When you think about the difficulty of transporting so many grand pianos from all […]

Yanwei Hill Time Cannon (Yan Wei Shan Sheng Tai Gong Yuan 燕尾山生态公园)

The Yanwei Hill Time Cannon Emplacement was set up by Xiamen Customs toward the end of the nineteenth century. The cannon used to fire once at twelve noon every Saturday so customs officers and passing vessels could synchronize their timepieces. The time cannon adopted the standard time in accordance with the clock on the Xiamen […]

Shuzhuang Garden (Shu Zhuang Hua Yuan 菽庄花园)

After the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government ceded Taiwan to the Japanese, and Taiwanese magnate Lin Erjia moved to Kulangsu with his family. In 1913, he built a garden on the slope of Kulangsu’s Caozai Hill and named the Garden after his “courteous name” of “Shuzhuang,” which is pronounced similarly in the Southern Fujian Dialect. […]