Zhangzhou Ancient City

Winner of a UNESCO Asia-Pacific heritage conservation award, this district lines its streets with Baroque arcades alongside southern Fujian red brick and upturned eaves.

First built in the Song and rebuilt in the Ming, this rare all-timber hall has a double-eaved hip-and-gable roof, and Zhu Xi lectured here while prefect of Zhangzhou.

A shrine of just a few square meters, billed as the smallest temple anywhere, sits beside a center keeping Zhangzhou's nationally listed glove puppetry alive.

Two massive Wanli-era arches of granite and bluestone, carved to imitate timber, stand on Hong Kong Road and are protected as national cultural relics.

Part of Zhangzhou Ancient City's history: Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism. Southern Song Neo-Confucian whose Collected Commentaries on the Four Books became the set text of the civil examinations from the Yuan onward

Part of Zhangzhou Ancient City's history: Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism. Southern Song Confucian teacher known as Master Xiangshan, who held that the mind is principle and argued with Zhu Xi at Goose Lake in 1175

Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism

The official ideology that shaped East Asian intellectual elite's spiritual world for seven centuries.

In 1190, Zhu Xi became prefect of Zhangzhou and pursued reforms associated with his program of public ethics and local education.

In 1605, the Shangshu-Tanhua Arch on Hong Kong Road in Zhangzhou was erected for Nanjing Minister of Rites Lin Shizhang, commemorating his top-third palace-exam degree and official career.