{"id":10108,"date":"2016-08-11T15:30:58","date_gmt":"2016-08-11T07:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/?p=10108"},"modified":"2016-08-11T10:35:20","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T02:35:20","slug":"short-trip-to-gulangyu-the-piano-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/short-trip-to-gulangyu-the-piano-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Short trip to Gulangyu, The Piano Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently we realised\u00a0that we hardly travel in China anymore… and that is a shame as this country has so many wonderful places to discover. That’s why we decided\u00a0to go to Xiamen, a city in Fujian region, an hour fly away from Shanghai.<\/p>\n

\"xiamen-city-map\"<\/p>\n

The airport is located in\u00a0Xiamen Island<\/strong>, the island in the south of the city. Take a ferry and in 5 minutes\u00a0you reach\u00a0Gulangyu Island<\/strong>, which is even smaller. This is where we spent our weekend.
\nGulangyu<\/strong> is a small island of 2.5 km2 absolute charm: there is no cars,\u00a0the architecture reflects the ancient colonies\u00a0and nature, which gradually took over, literally merges with the mark of civilization.<\/p>\n

Gulangyu<\/strong> is also called The Island of Music<\/em>. The Chinese name of the island has musical resonances:\u00a0 gu<\/em> lang<\/em> means \u00ab\u00a0drum waves\u00a0\u00bb, because of the sound generated by the sound of waves hitting the rocks, and yu<\/em> means \u00ab\u00a0small island\u00a0\u00bb. The island is also called \u00ab\u00a0piano island\u00a0\u00bb because it is a very popular instrument among the population. There are more than 600 piano for\u00a020,000 citizen living in the island. There is even a \u00a0piano museum!
\nJust one detail about this island : it is a very popular tourist destination in China … so there are a lot of Chinese tourists who come to visit. They even have to limit the amount of visitors :\u00a0only 60 000 visitors are allowed to come\u00a0every day. So you better book your ticket in advance!<\/p>\n

If you are willing to fight\u00a0the crowds, then I will take you to Gulangyu!<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu22\"
\nOur hotel was located on the\u00a0north of the island in a quiet street away from the noise\u00a0of seafood restaurants, vendors and crowd. We enjoyed\u00a0our little balcony for a long while before exploring the island.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu02\"<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu01\"<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu03\"
\n\"gulangyu07\"
\nOn the road, we stopped regularly to take pictures of\u00a0the magnificent colonial facades. Bougainvillas take over the gates, vines and other climbing plants cover\u00a0walls and balustrades. The vegetation seems uncontrollable and blend beautifully with the architecture of another time.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu47\"<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu18\"
\n\"gulangyu16\"
\n\"gulangyu10\"
\n\"gulangyu23\"
\nThere is one thing we noticed : the gigantic ficus that shade the pedestrian streets. Most of them are\u00a0more than 200 years old! Their roots are knotted in the walls. Some have grown aerial roots to the ground to better support their large branches.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu41\"<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu40\"
\n\"gulangyu30\"
\n\"gulangyu43\"
\n\"gulangyu34\"
\nSome buildings are\u00a0completely abandoned and disappears under the vegetation. They look like haunted houses.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu-41\"
\nOthers\u00a0are well kept and became\u00a0hotels.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu11\"
\n\"gulangyu48\"<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu04\"
\n\"gulangyu37\"
\nOn every corner, vendors offer all sort\u00a0of juices\u00a0: mango, coconut or passion fruit that you can drink with a straw planted in it. It’s\u00a0impossible to resist : the\u00a0weather is too hot and it’s delicious!<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu38\"
\n\"gulangyu17\"<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu21\"
\n\"gulangyu42\"
\nWe tried the oyster omelet, or as known as the \u00ab\u00a0Oh-Ah-Chian \u86b5\u4ed4\u714e\u00a0\u00bb in the Hokkien dialect. It is a\u00a0famous dish in Fujian(as well as Taiwan and South East Asia). Yummy!<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu05\"
\n\"gulangyu14\"
\n\"gulangyu51\"
\nTourists, again and again…<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu09\"
\n\"gulangyu24\"
\nStreet-food is everywhere. It’s cheap and so good! I loved these egg-shrimp balls.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu45\"
\nThese fish balls are the best I ever had.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu06\"
\n\"gulangyu35\"
\nWe found a high point\u00a0of view\u00a0from where we could admire a 360 \u00b0 panorama. From there, you can see\u00a0the intense vegetation that makes the island so\u00a0beautiful.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu15\"
\nFrom the east coast of the island, we can see the modern Xiamen<\/strong>, there are skyscrapers and the highway built above the sea, contrasting with the historic charm of Gulangyu<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu33\"
\nThe island is surrounded by beaches. Nice,\u00a0isn’t it? But despite the heat, we didn’t go to swim\u00a0: the sea is dirty. On the sand: bottles, plastic bags, rubber gloves, packets of laundry and other miscellaneous garbage was swept away by the waves. We hate\u00a0seeing that, we went away cursing this horrible invention : plastic.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu44\"
\nThe huge statue of Zheng Chenggong<\/strong>, a Chinese hero who liberated Taiwan from the grip of the Dutch, facing the sea.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu32\"
\nIn the small streets, workers were pulling\u00a0heavy wheelbarrows loaded with bottles of water, construction tools, stone blocks … Without any cars, they\u00a0must find other ways of transportation…<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu39\"
\n\"gulangyu46\"
\nGulangyu<\/strong>, but especially Xiamen<\/strong> are well known\u00a0for their seafood. So, we\u00a0indulged ourselves with\u00a0delicious sea view dinners.<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu12\"<\/p>\n

\"gulangyu13\"
\n\"gulangyu29\"
\n\"gulangyu50\"
\nThe last day, we tried to get away from\u00a0the crowd, discovering \u00a0small streets where nobody dare to venture… much like the two Chinese guys under their umbrella.<\/p>\n

We enjoyed these three days a lot.\u00a0The scenery, the sea air, the sun pleased us very well. We went back home\u00a0– after a few setbacks\u00a0: a flight canceled and another one delayed because of a typhoon – very excited about our trip. So,\u00a0would you like to visit The Piano Island?<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently we realised\u00a0that we hardly travel in China anymore… and that is a shame as this country has so many wonderful places to discover. That’s why we decided\u00a0to go to Xiamen, a city in Fujian region, an hour fly away from Shanghai. The airport is located in\u00a0Xiamen Island, the island in the south of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1726,2104],"tags":[1986,2323,2325,2321,2319,2327],"class_list":["post-10108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trips","category-china-en","tag-chine-en","tag-gulangyu-en","tag-holiday-en","tag-travel","tag-trip","tag-xiamen-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lucie-guyard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}