Fujian

• 1. Introduction

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  Fujian sits at the southeastern edge of China, looking out across a stretch of water just 180 km wide toward Taiwan. That narrow strait has shaped everything about this province: its politics, its economy, its centuries of outward migration, and the peculiar fact that a small piece of Fujian's historic territory is still governed today not from Fuzhou, but from Taipei.

  The name itself carries meaning. Fujian combines the first characters of two cities, Fuzhou and Jianzhou, and translates loosely as "happy establishment." The first of those characters, fu, means fortune or good luck. You find it on figurines of the male god Fu, one of a trio of star gods known as Fu, Lu, and Shou. Fortune, prosperity, and longevity. It is a fitting name for a province that has, over millennia, sent its people across oceans to build new lives, and still drawn them back.

  With a population of 41.5 million, Fujian ranks 15th among China's provinces by population. Its GDP reached CN¥5.31 trillion in 2022, placing it 8th in the country. Its GDP per capita is second among all Chinese provinces, trailing only Jiangsu. By scientific research output, Xiamen ranked 38th in the world and Fuzhou 45th in 2023, as tracked by the Nature Index.

  This documentary will ask how a province described as "eight parts mountain, one part water, and one part farmland" became one of China's economic leaders, why its people speak dialects that are mutually unintelligible even to one another, and how the legacy of Fujian lives today in the ethnic-Chinese communities of Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

• 2. The Land Itself

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  Mount Huanggang in the Wuyi Mountains stands at 2,157 metres, marking the highest point in the province and the natural wall between Fujian and Jiangxi to the west. The province is mostly mountainous, traditionally described as "eight parts mountain, one part water, and one part farmland." That ratio has defined Fujian's relationship to the sea more than almost any other force in its history.

  The coastline is rugged, cut through with bays and studded with islands. The Taiwan Strait, 180 km wide, lies to the southeast. Some of the small islands in that strait belong to Fujian; others, including Kinmen and Matsu, are administered by the Republic of China. The province faces the East China Sea to the east and the South China Sea to the south.

  The Min River and its tributaries cut through much of northern and central Fujian, while the Jin and the Jiulong rivers drain other parts of the province. Uneven terrain means cliffs and rapids are common. Beneath the surface, Fujian sits on two significant fault zones: the Changle-Naoao and the Longan-Jinjiang. Both show annual displacement rates of 3-5 mm, a sign of the ongoing collision between the Asiatic Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate.

  The climate is subtropical. January coastal temperatures average 7-10°C; the hills average 6-8°C. Summer brings heat and the threat of Pacific typhoons. Annual precipitation runs between 1,400 and 2,000 mm. This combination of terrain and climate pushed Fujian's historic population toward the coast and toward the sea, and Fujian today has a forest coverage rate of 62.96%, the highest of any provincial-level administrative region in China. On Meizhou Island, roughly 1.8 nautical miles from the mainland and facing the Taiwan Strait, lies the center of the Matsu pilgrimage, one of the most active religious traditions in the entire region.

• 3. Kingdoms at the Margin

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  Archaeological work at the Keqiutou site on Pingtan Island, roughly 70 km southeast of Fuzhou, has pushed Fujian's human story back to between 7,450 and 5,590 years before the present. Stone tools, shell tools, bone tools, jades, ceramics, and spinning wheels all emerged from that site, the last of which is considered definitive evidence of weaving. The Neolithic appeared on the Fujian coast around 6,000 years before the present, according to research published by Tianlong Jiao in 2013, with a population dependent mostly on fishing, hunting, and limited agriculture.

  By the time of recorded Chinese history, Fujian was home to the kingdom of Minyue. Its royal family descended from the State of Yue, which had been annexed by the State of Chu in 306 BC, driving the royal line south into Fujian. The Qin dynasty abolished Minyue's status and imposed a paramilitary province called Minzhong Commandery in its place.

  When the Qin collapsed, the Minyue king Wuzhu aligned himself with Liu Bang in the civil war against Xiang Yu. Liu was victorious and founded the Han dynasty, and in 202 BC he restored Minyue as a tributary independent kingdom. Wuzhu built a fortified city in Fuzhou, and traces of his construction have also been excavated in the Wuyi Mountains. His kingdom extended beyond the borders of today's Fujian into parts of Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang.

  Minyue's militant tradition outlived Wuzhu. In the 2nd century BC, the kingdom launched repeated expeditions against its neighbors. The Han dynasty, expanding southward, eventually moved to eliminate the threat. In 111 BC, large forces approached Minyue simultaneously from four directions, by both land and sea. The rulers in Fuzhou surrendered, ending the first kingdom in Fujian's history. The Min River, and the name of the entire region, carry its memory forward.

• 4. Waves of Migration

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  The first great wave of northern immigrants to Fujian arrived in the early 4th century, when the Western Jin dynasty collapsed and civil wars tore through central China. Primarily from eight noble families of the Chinese heartland, these migrants brought with them the culture, scholarship, and administrative traditions of the north. Yet rugged terrain kept Fujian relatively isolated, and the population density remained low even as the north sent successive waves of people southward.

  A second major wave arrived during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, led by the Wang Brothers, Wang Chao and Wang Shenzhi. They established an independent Kingdom of Min with its capital in Fuzhou. The founding king died and left the kingdom to internal strife; it was eventually absorbed by Southern Tang. Quanzhou, under Min rule, was already blooming as a seaport.

  The Tang dynasty era, 618-907, had already seen large influxes of migrants settle in Fujian, contributing to a boom in the province's culture and economy. Political upheavals in the Tang heartland during its later years prompted even larger waves from the north.

  In 1683, the Qing dynasty conquered Taiwan at the Battle of Penghu and annexed it into Fujian as the Taiwan Prefecture. This brought more Han Chinese to Taiwan, and most Taiwanese today are descendants of Hokkien people from Southern Fujian. Fujian and Taiwan were treated as a single province until 1885, when they split into two. In the 1890s, following the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan via the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The movement of people across the strait has never fully stopped; Eastern Min-speaking people, especially from Fuzhou, have been among the major sources of Chinese immigrants to the United States since the 1990s.

• 5. A Language Landscape Unlike Any Other

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  There is an expression in Fujian: drive five miles and the culture changes; drive ten miles and the language does. This is not hyperbole. Local dialects can become mutually unintelligible within 10 km, and the cultural and ethnic composition of one area can be entirely unlike that of a neighboring valley.

  The Min Chinese language group dominates Fujian, but Min itself is not one language. It divides into Eastern Min, spoken around Fuzhou; Northern Min, in the inland north; Pu-Xian, along the central coast; Central Min, in the west; Shao-Jiang, in the northwest; and Southern Min, which includes the Amoy dialect and Taiwanese. Min dialects, Hakka, and Standard Chinese are mutually unintelligible with one another. The English word "tea" was borrowed directly from Hokkien, the Southern Min dialect; the Mandarin and Cantonese word is chá, a different sound entirely.

  Hakka is spoken around Longyan in the southwest. The She, an ethnic group scattered across the mountainous north, are the province's largest recognized minority. The official language is Mandarin, used between people of different localities, but Fujian's people still converse among themselves in their native tongues.

  The reach of Southern Min extends far beyond Fujian's borders. Descendants of Southern Min-speaking emigrants make up the majorities of ethnic-Chinese populations in Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The tea processing techniques for three major classes of tea, oolong, white tea, and black tea, were all developed in Fujian. Many well-known teas originate here: oolong, Wuyi Yancha, Lapsang souchong, and Fuzhou jasmine tea. Fujian leads China's provinces in longan production. Its most prestigious dish, Fotiaoqiang, translates literally as "Buddha jumps over the wall" and uses shark fin, sea cucumber, abalone, and Shaoxing wine among many ingredients.

• 6. Port Cities and the Sea Trade

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  Quanzhou's rise as a major seaport began under the Kingdom of Min, and the city's international character deepened across the Tang and Song periods. By the Ming era, the early naval expeditions of Zheng He staged from Fuzhou Changle, which served as a staging area and supply depot for those voyages. Further development along Fujian's coast was then severely hampered by a sea trade ban, and ports such as Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai overtook Fujian's harbors even after the ban was lifted in 1550.

  The Qing dynasty imposed another sea trade ban under the Kangxi Emperor, this one designed to cut off resources from Koxinga's Ming loyalist government in Taiwan. The ban forced coastal evacuations and left a myth that the Manchus were "afraid of water." The reality was strategic: deny the coast to deny Koxinga's supply lines. When the Qing conquered Taiwan in 1683 at the Battle of Penghu, the ban's original purpose was gone.

  From the Yuan dynasty onward, Quanzhou had been a scene of intense international commerce. Between 1357 and 1366, the Ispah Rebellion drew Muslim communities in Quanzhou into armed conflict; the rebellion advanced northward to capture Putian and Fuzhou before being crushed. In its aftermath, foreign merchants were massacred or deported, and Quanzhou lost its reputation as a welcoming international port.

  Direct transport links between Taiwan and Fujian commenced on the 15th of December 2008, opening direct flights to Xiamen and Fuzhou and upgrading port infrastructure in Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Fuzhou for increased trade. Today, the Minnan Golden Triangle of Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou accounts for 40 percent of Fujian's entire GDP. Xiamen, one of China's first special economic zones, now hosts operations by firms including Boeing, Dell, GE, Kodak, Nokia, Siemens, Swire, TDK, and Panasonic.

• 7. A Province Facing Two Futures

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  After the Chinese Civil War, the People's Republic took control of most of Fujian, but the Quemoy and Matsu Islands remained under the Republic of China. Because Fujian faced Kuomintang-controlled Taiwan across the strait, the central government invested relatively little in the province before 1978; the potential for conflict kept Fujian at the economic margins of a rapidly industrializing coast.

  Since 1978, overseas Fujianese, Taiwanese investors, and foreign companies have poured investment into the province. Fujian has grown into one of China's more affluent provinces, with industries spanning tea production, clothing, and sportswear brands including Anta, 361 Degrees, Xtep, Peak Sport Products, and Septwolves. Its GDP per capita now ranks second among all Chinese provinces. Yet development has come with costs: large influxes of population from neighboring provinces have pushed farmland, forest, and cultural heritage sites, including temples of the ancient king Wuzhu, to give way to high-rise construction.

  In 2023, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council jointly proposed making Fujian a demonstration zone for cross-strait integration, with plans to boost economic and transportation cooperation with Taiwan and make it easier for Taiwanese people to live, purchase property, access social services, and study in Fujian.

  Fujian also hosts four UNESCO World Heritage Sites, one of the highest concentrations in China: the Fujian Tulou earthen dwellings listed in 2008, Gulangyu Island in Xiamen listed in 2017, the Danxia landform in Taining listed in 2010, and the Wuyi Mountains, the first of the four, listed in 1999. The Wuyi Mountains, containing Mount Huanggang and the highest peak in the province, also hold the headwaters of the teas that gave the English language its word for the drink: a Hokkien word carried across the sea.