Current Time in Changle, China

Changle lies on the coast of Fujian Province in south-eastern China, at the mouth of the Min River where it empties into the Taiwan Strait. Once an independent county and then a county-level city, it became a district of Fuzhou, the provincial capital, in 2017, and it now houses roughly three quarters of a million people across a landscape of estuary flats, low green hills, sandy beaches and a rapidly expanding new city district.

Changle's history is inseparable from the sea. Its harbours sheltered the fleets of Zheng He, the Ming dynasty admiral whose enormous expeditions reached South East Asia, India, Arabia and East Africa in the early fifteenth century. The fleet assembled and waited here for the north-east monsoon before each voyage, and before the last expedition the crews erected a stone tablet recording their journeys and thanking the sea goddess for protection. That inscription is one of the most important primary sources on the voyages, and a park and memorial hall on Nanshan hill commemorate the connection.

Later centuries saw the coast fortified against pirate raids, and the walled Ming garrison village of Meihua still preserves parts of its layout. From the nineteenth century onwards, and especially in recent decades, Changle became one of the great sources of Chinese emigration. Families from these villages formed the core of the Fuzhounese community in New York City, and remittances from abroad have paid for schools, temples, ancestral halls and the ornate multi-storey houses that stand throughout the district.

The modern economy is industrial. Changle is one of China's leading centres for chemical fibre and textile production, spinning and weaving on an enormous scale, and it also has steel, food processing and shipping industries. Since the 1990s the district has been transformed by the development of Fuzhou's coastal new town, which has brought government offices, technology parks, a major national health data centre and new residential districts to what was farmland a generation ago.

Fuzhou Changle International Airport, the main gateway to the province, stands on the coast within the district and connects the region to cities across China and to destinations in Asia. A metro line, expressways and a coastal railway link Changle to central Fuzhou, about thirty kilometres upriver.

Visitors come for the beaches around Dongluo and the coastal dune parks, for the temples and gardens of Nanshan, for the Zheng He memorial, and for the seafood, which is outstanding even by Fujian standards, with clams, razor shells, oysters and fish soups a local speciality. Traditional Min opera, lantern festivals and lineage celebrations remain strong in the villages.

Universities and vocational colleges have opened campuses in the new district, giving Changle a growing student population.

Maritime history, a global diaspora and rapid modern development make Changle a fascinating corner of coastal Fujian.