Clappers set the beat, a pipa held sideways answers, and a singer in a teahouse eases into a nanyin ballad in the Quanzhou dialect. The music sounds slow and old, and it suits a city where the stone pagodas of Kaiyuan Temple rise over red-brick lanes near Qingjing Mosque.
Beyond the old town, women in Xunpu wear rings of fresh flowers in their hair, and Luoyang Bridge strides across a river mouth on granite piers. Winters are mild and damp, while summers turn hot and wet, with typhoons in some years. A Local Friend can turn your scattered list of temples, bridges and puppet shows into one day that flows, with music and sunset in the right order.
