By the end of August, after returning to work from family leave, every day had been swallowed by one nonstop task after another. I had not even sorted out the notes and photos from the Yunnan trip a month earlier. When the National Day holiday finally arrived, staying home never really felt like an option. After talking it over, we settled on Quanzhou.
From Shantou, it is only about a four-hour drive, so it seemed manageable with two children. We had wanted to go the previous National Day but canceled because of work, and then tried again during Spring Festival, only to give it up because of the pandemic. This time, we finally made it.
I was so buried in work before departure that I barely had the energy to look up any travel tips. Hillway booked four nights at the 7 Days Inn Quanzhou Jiangnan branch in advance. Even during the holiday, the price stayed at 97 yuan per night, 388 yuan total. The room only had one 1.8-meter bed, which was clearly too tight for two adults and two small children, so we brought a folding bed from my workplace, a sleeping bag, and even the inflatable tub we had bought earlier so the kids could soak at night.
October 2: Shantou to Quanzhou — Kaiyuan Temple, West Street, Zhonglou, Xiaoxicheng
We left around 9:30 in the morning with both kids. We stopped once at a service area around noon. Nobody was especially hungry, and the fried rice and porridge we had packed in insulated containers were barely touched. We reached the hotel at about 2 p.m., tired and starting to feel hungry.
After a short rest, we drove to Kaiyuan Temple. The roads nearby were clogged and parking was hard to find, so in the end we left the car at Kaiyuan Plaza parking lot. On the way there, Little Piglet started fussing. When we touched her forehead, she felt warm, though she had no other symptoms yet.
Before this trip, what I remembered most about Quanzhou was that it had a great many temples and a lot of street food. Kaiyuan Temple is one of the larger temple sites in the city. Entry required queuing, temperature checks, health code checks, and masks.
To be honest, the temple itself did not feel particularly remarkable. Temple architecture tends to look similar from place to place. The most distinctive feature was the pair of east and west pagodas, though you could only view them from outside. Even so, the place was crowded, which made me think this was probably one of the main things visitors came to Quanzhou for.
Right beside the temple is West Street. As evening fell and we got hungry, we bought two cups of bubble milk tea for 5.6 yuan, then joined a long line for the much-talked-about Wu’s handmade mochi. We bought two boxes, ten pieces for 20 yuan. They were made fresh, so the wait was a bit long. They tasted good, with a crisp filling inside, though after two pieces I was already done.
That day was also my thirty-fifth birthday. To celebrate, Hillway treated us to dinner at Chun Ge Teppanyaki. The system there was simple: pick ingredients yourself, pay first, then sit and wait for everything to be cooked. We used a 100-yuan voucher that had cost 92 yuan. The two kids were unusually enthusiastic in front of the refrigerator display and loaded up a basket until it felt impressively heavy. At first I assumed the food would be charcoal grilled, but after peeking into the kitchen I realized it was all being fried on flat iron griddles in an assembly-line setup. Because of the children, we asked for no chili. The flavor was good and not overly salty, and all of us ended up stuffed.
West Street itself is full of low, old-style buildings selling snacks and cheap goods, the kind of street nearly every city seems to have now. It may be repetitive, but it was still packed with people. We took turns carrying Little Piglet and holding Little Bear’s hand through the crowd, then wandered into Xiaoxicheng nearby. The kids touched every toy they saw in the small shops. By then Little Piglet still felt warm, and it was getting late, so we headed back.
Parking at the lot came to 17 yuan. Before leaving, we checked Little Piglet’s temperature at a mall and it was 37.3°C. We dug through our old prescription records, compared them with the medicine we had brought, and stopped at a pharmacy on the way back to buy oseltamivir granules for 68 yuan. We did not get back to the hotel until nearly 10 p.m., and by then the parking area was full. After waiting outside for more than half an hour with no vacancy, we had to leave the keys at the front desk and ask them to move the car in later if a space opened up.
October 3: A sick child, a missed museum, West Lake Park, and the puppet show accident
The medicine reduced Little Piglet’s fever overnight, and she slept fairly steadily. But in the morning, when she coughed, there was a rough whistling sound in her throat and airway. Hillway worried it might have reached her lungs.
After breakfast nearby for 18 yuan, we took her to the community clinic across the street. The doctor said it was bronchitis and that her tonsils were badly swollen. We left with five kinds of medicine, costing 92 yuan total. One bag appeared to be loose penicillin tablets. The other four were pediatric cough syrup, pediatric expectorant granules, azithromycin granules, and cefixime granules, each with its own dosage instructions.
Back at the hotel we hurried to give her the medication. With one child sick, nobody really had the mood for sightseeing. We watched TV for a while and ended up resting until nearly 3 p.m. Then we went out and ate two bowls of Lanzhou noodles nearby for 24 yuan as a late lunch. Little Piglet had no appetite and complained that her stomach hurt, so Hillway carried her back to the hotel. After Little Bear finished eating, I went back too.
Since Little Piglet also said she did not want to use the toilet, we tried heading to the Fujian-Taiwan Kinship Museum. Parking there was free, but by the time we arrived it was already near 4:30 and the museum was closing. I had been so occupied with work that I had not even thought about reservation requirements, and it genuinely had not occurred to me that museums in Quanzhou would fill up during the holiday. That attempt was wasted, so we went instead to nearby West Lake Park.
West Lake Park felt much like the sort of city park found elsewhere. Neither especially beautiful nor unpleasant, just ordinary. There was a garden area in a Jiangnan style that made me imagine the lives of wealthy families in older times, living in courtyards like that while servants handled all the practical burdens. It is the kind of park that probably works well for local residents spending a weekend afternoon, but not somewhere worth traveling far to see. We left around 5 p.m.
One thing we had definitely planned for Quanzhou was to take the children to a local string puppet performance. The show is considered a local specialty and has reportedly won international awards. Performances start at 7:30 p.m. each night in the small theater on Quanshan Road, with tickets at 20 yuan per person.
With two hours to spare, we walked nearby for dinner at Lao Bo Jia, a place with strong online reviews. We ordered braised pork rice, black rice served in a steamer basket, and crispy meatball soup for 37 yuan. Little Bear ate some of everything. Little Piglet still had almost no appetite.
Worried that the puppet theater might be full like the museum had been, I suggested Hillway ride a shared bike ahead to buy tickets while we stayed behind and then have him come back for us. It turned out to be completely unnecessary. The theater only had a few rows of people and there was no need at all to buy tickets in advance. The whole round trip just exhausted him and made us late.
Then things got worse. Because we were in a hurry and it was already dark, Hillway hit a motorcycle coming the wrong way while turning near the theater entrance.
The sound of the collision made my heart jump. Fortunately, the woman on the motorcycle did not try to cause trouble. She sat there holding the scrape on her left foot and groaning for a moment, then told us it was only a skin injury and not serious. She even refused compensation. Feeling awful, Hillway took out all the cash he had on him, 73 yuan, and tried to give it to her. She still would not accept it, so we tucked it into her bag, and she rode off.
We entered the puppet theater about ten minutes late. The second act was already underway, a local opera sung in dialect that we could not understand at all. The third was a modern piece that left me puzzled, with dubbing that felt oddly eerie. The highlights were "Drunken Zhong Kui" and a Lantern Festival piece. "Drunken Zhong Kui" in particular looked technically demanding, and the puppet quick-change sequence in the Lantern Festival show, where an older woman transformed into a young girl, was fresh and genuinely impressive. If all the chaos beforehand had not happened, the performance would have felt quite worthwhile.
But with Little Piglet unwell, the late arrival, and the traffic accident, nobody had any mood left to wander around afterward. We went straight back to the hotel. On the drive, Little Piglet became upset again, and because we were unfamiliar with Quanzhou’s roads, we took a wrong turn and may even have run a red light. Everyone was frayed.
I used to think traffic in Shantou was chaotic, with motorcycles darting everywhere. Quanzhou felt worse. Many roads had no central divider and no curbside parking. Roundabouts were especially confusing, with complicated traffic light setups that were easy to misread. Some places we assumed were public parking lots turned out to be areas where someone on a motorcycle would ride up and charge a fee.
October 4: Finally getting into the museums
That morning no one had much appetite, and there was nothing nearby we wanted to eat, so we just made instant noodles at the hotel and then went to the Fujian-Taiwan Kinship Museum and the Quanzhou Museum, both reserved in advance from the day before.
The most interesting sections were the ones with reconstructed scenes and displays about local customs and everyday life, and those were where we lingered longest. One thing I learned there was about a Lantern Festival folk performance in Quanzhou in which people dance bare-chested, known as the "chest-beating dance."
After the museums, the midday sun was harsh, so we returned to eat lunch near the hotel for 31 yuan and then slept in the room until around 6 p.m. Since we had come all the way to Quanzhou and still had not really tried one of its classic foods, we drove to Shuimen Guozai for mianxian paste.
Again, parking was difficult, but luckily we found a private lot run by an older woman, charging 5 yuan per hour. We ordered two bowls of mianxian paste for 21 yuan, adding pork intestine and vinegar pork, with fried dough sticks on the side. Halfway through, Little Piglet announced she needed to poop, so I took her around asking for a public restroom and got several mosquito bites in the process. We had also planned to try steamed soup dumplings in nearby Yanzhi Lane, but they were sold out, so we went back.
We were back at the hotel by 8:30, still too early for bed, so we spent another hour walking around the nearby night market while carrying Little Piglet and holding Little Bear’s hand. We stopped by the same community clinic from the day before and had the doctor listen to her lungs again. He said the inflammation lower down had gone away and she was improving. That was enough to let us relax a little.
For the past two days Little Piglet had hardly eaten. Traveling with two children already slows everything down, and with one child sick, we ended up resting a great deal. As a result, our efficiency for checking off sights each day was very low.
October 5: Temples, another disappointment, and a city that never really clicked
I did not fall asleep until after 5 in the morning, so we got moving late. Around 11 a.m. we ate breakfast near the hotel for 36 yuan and then went to Quanzhou Southern Shaolin Temple, where parking cost 10 yuan.
Inside the grounds, there were signs saying there would be a martial arts performance at 2:30 p.m., but no further information. Since the scenery itself was not especially memorable, we thought waiting for a local performance might at least be worthwhile. But just before the show, a group of monks led us from the outdoor square to an indoor performance hall and only then started selling tickets: 30 yuan for adults and 15 yuan for children, with no exemption for children under 1.2 meters. The show would only last half an hour. I had originally planned to take both children in by myself, but when I saw the front seats were full and we would have to sit at the very back, I gave up.
After leaving Southern Shaolin Temple, we spent the afternoon on the temple-and-church route we had not yet finished. We parked in the same private lot as the night before and first ate at the Yanzhi Lane soup dumpling shop next door. One basket of ten dumplings cost 18 yuan, and we also ordered a bowl of what was said to be a local specialty, "seven-color soup," for 6 yuan.
Honestly, the food was underwhelming. Not only did it feel a bit overpriced, it also was not especially delicious. The so-called seven-color soup was basically a home-style vegetable soup made with several ordinary ingredients. If I had gone in with no expectations, it would have been fine. With expectations raised too high, it was disappointing. Little Bear ate a few dumplings, skipped the soup, and Little Piglet still had no appetite.
After lunch we went first to the very busy Guandi Temple, then lined up again to enter Qingjing Mosque, where the ticket was 6 yuan. After that we made our way through the lanes to Huaxiang Catholic Church. On Goldfish Lane we also passed the internet-famous fried chicken leg shop that had a crowd inside and several young people outside photographing the storefront with DSLR cameras.
I had assumed the Confucian Temple would stay open later and saved it for last, but when we walked back close to 6 p.m., the gates were already shut tight.
Of the places we saw that day, Qingjing Mosque was the most distinctive. The others felt more interchangeable, not unlike religious sites in many other cities. One thing that stood out was how many of the people at these recommended sights and trendy restaurants were young travelers.
Little Piglet, despite not feeling well, became strangely enthusiastic in the temples. Every time she saw others kneeling in front of the altar, she would run over and copy them, kneeling and pressing her hands together while counting quietly to herself. Other visitors found her adorable and patted her head.
At Guandi Temple we noticed some worshippers holding two crescent-shaped wooden pieces, murmuring something and then tossing them to the ground. When we asked, we were told the shape they landed in was meant to convey the deity’s answer. As for which result meant what, we still did not really understand.
We paid 15 yuan for parking as dusk fell and returned to the hotel. Hillway ordered two chicken cutlet rice takeaways for 20 yuan. Little Piglet was still coughing, and then Little Bear started coughing too. I also began to feel like I was catching a cold, with a headache, stuffy nose, and dizziness.
To make things worse, the hotel had been booked right next to a KTV. At night, there was singing from outside, Hillway’s snoring inside the room, and people talking in the corridor after checking in late. The sleeping conditions were awful. I had been sleeping on the folding bed we brought, placed in the corridor space just inside the door. For short naps it was tolerable, but after full nights I discovered the mattress was too soft. My lower back hurt in the mornings, and every time I turned over, the bed made a loud creaking sound.
October 6: Wudian City, then home
At last it was the day we planned to drive back.
We had not stayed in Quanzhou for very long, but by then I already had a strong urge to go home. At the same time, there was also the feeling that since we had come all this way, we should at least see a few more places, because it might be many years before we returned. Both children were coughing, and I had no energy myself, so we gave up the idea of Qingyuan Mountain.
In the morning, or really closer to noon, we ate at a Wallace fast-food place near the hotel. There was only one staff member working, so everything was made to order and took quite a while. Since we were more used to KFC, it felt unfamiliar. We ordered a pile of burgers, fried chicken, and fries for 45 yuan. Because I had started with very low expectations, it actually tasted somewhat better than I expected.
Before leaving the area for good, we decided to visit one more nearby attraction. Around 11 a.m. we set off for Wudian City in Jinjiang.
The name sounds as if it might refer to a district or town, but it is really a commercial pseudo-historic street lined with the same snacks and small goods you can find almost anywhere. We wandered around for one or two hours, paid 7 yuan for underground parking, and then took turns driving back to Shantou.
On the way home, Little Piglet fell asleep in the car and wet not only her pants but also the child safety seat. We had to stop at a highway service area to change her into clean pants and remove the car seat.
We got home at 6:10 p.m. Hillway’s mother had specially come over to cook dinner for us. Home food felt better. Home bedding felt better. Home, in general, felt better.
This trip to Quanzhou did not really feel like we ate well, slept well, or played well. Maybe it was because Quanzhou is not far from Shantou, and the customs and atmosphere felt somewhat similar. Maybe the scenery simply did not impress me much. Maybe I was still a little travel-weary after Yunnan and too lazy to throw myself fully into another trip. I did not even take many photos.
There were also plenty of places we skipped: Qingyuan Mountain, Chengtian Temple, Yuanmiao Temple, Tianhou Temple, Li Zhi’s former residence, Xunpu, Chongwu Ancient City, Luoyang Bridge, the Cai clan old residences, Shishi Gold Coast, Yongning Ancient City, and Jinjiang Anping Bridge.
What we brought
- Folding bed, sleeping bag, Bear electric cooker, notebook, pens
- 2 ID cards, 1 household register, 2 driver’s licenses
- 2 phones, 2 phone chargers, 1 power bank, phone straps
- 3 sun hats, 3 pairs of sunglasses, 2 sun-protection jackets, sun sleeves, 2 umbrellas, sunscreen and sunscreen spray
- 2 suitcases, 1 crossbody bag, 2 backpacks, 3 water bottles, travel notes, house keys, cash and coins
- Pajamas, underwear, socks, sneakers, towels, disposable slippers and flip-flops
- Children’s toothbrushes, many packs of tissues and wet wipes, hair ties, disposable masks, mosquito repellent, alcohol cotton balls, band-aids, backup medicines
Trip cost
Total spending came to 1,311.4 yuan.
- Fuel: about 200 yuan
- Hotel: 388 yuan
- Parking: 54 yuan
- Food: 390.4 yuan
- Medical expenses: 160 yuan
- Tickets: 46 yuan
- Other: 73 yuan
For a family road trip with two children, it was inexpensive. But cheap and satisfying are not the same thing, and this one never quite became the trip we had imagined.