Fujian-Taiwan Kinship Museum 中国闽台缘博物馆

About Fujian-Taiwan Kinship Museum

Red brick and pale stone give the large building a distinctly Minnan material palette. Inside, exhibitions address migration, family connections, religion and shared customs; the seasonal folk-life section offers a particularly concrete way into the subject. Read the historical narrative as the museum’s interpretation and compare it with the objects, documents and domestic traditions on display.

The museum's predecessor, the History Museum of Fujian-Taiwan Relations (闽台关系史博物馆), was established in the 1980s inside the Tianhou Temple (天后宫) in Quanzhou, formally founded in 1989 after a 1985 government approval. A larger museum on a new site was decided in 2004, broke ground in February 2005, and opened on 27 May 2006, with its exhibition content drafted by scholars from Xiamen University's Taiwan Research Institute.

The museum stands in northwestern Quanzhou, backed by the Qingyuan Mountain (清源山) scenic area to the north and adjoining Quanzhou's West Lake to the south; at opening it covered 154.2 mu, with a main building of 23,332 square meters rising 43 meters. Its 'round sky, square earth' design gives the building four sloped staircases of 108 steps each, leading to a rooftop deck overlooking the city, and four floors totalling 7,355 square meters of exhibition space.

The museum holds a national first-class museum (国家一级博物馆) designation and is described in the source as the only such museum in China devoted to the history of relations between mainland Fujian and Taiwan. Its collection includes 24,560 catalogued relics, 11,456 genealogical records (谱牒) and 9,649 pieces or sets of cross-strait letters, of which some 40 percent were donated by residents of Taiwan.

What to look for

• The building’s red-brick and pale-stone exterior.
• The seasonal folk-life displays and family-history material.

The surrounding area

A city base for maritime heritage, religious buildings, old lanes and a possible performance.

Location & getting there

Getting to Fujian-Taiwan Kinship Museum

Use No 212 Beiqing East Road in Fengze District, north of Quanzhou’s West Lake. The museum is beside the Quanzhou Museum precinct; confirm the correct building and its current gallery entrance.