Xiamen city - China

Xiamen (Mandarin pronunciation: [ɕjâmə̌n]), also known as Amoy (English: /ˈæmɔɪ/), is a coastal city in southeastern China. It is administered as a sub-provincial city under Fujian province in the People's Republic of China. It looks out to the Taiwan Strait and borders Quanzhou to the north and Zhangzhou to the south.
Xiamen and the surrounding countryside are famous for being an ancestral home to overseas Chinese. It became one of China's earliest Special Economic Zones in the 1980s. It covers an area of 1 565 km² with a total population of 2.5 million. It was recently named China's 2nd 'most suitable city for living'.
Xiamen was recently voted China's cleanest city, and has many attractions for the tourist. Xiamen and its surrounding countryside provides spectacular scenery and pleasant tree-lined beaches. Gulangyu, also known as Piano Island, is a popular, peaceful weekend getaway with amazing views of the city and features many Victorian-era style European edifices. Xiamen's Botanical Garden is a nature lover's paradise. The Buddhist Nanputuo Temple, dating back to the Tang Dynasty, is a national treasure. Xiamen is also famous for its history as a frontline during the war with Kinmen (also known as Jinmen or Quemoy) 50 years ago. One attraction for tourists is to view Kinmen island, a few kilometres away and under Taiwanese control, from Xiamen island.
The local vernacular is Amoy, a dialect of Southern Min (閩南), also called Hokkien. Amoy is widely used and understood across the southern region of Fujian province as well as overseas. While it is widely spoken in and around Xiamen, the Amoy dialect has no official status, and the official language of all government business is Mandarin. Xiamen is famous for South Music, Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, puppet show, Gezi Opera and temple celebration events.
Gulangyu in Xiamen is an island of 1.78 square kilometers. Once you enter the island's residential area, you will begin to hear the soft echo of music. Gulangyu is also called "Piano Island" by locals, piano music drifts from the villas and lingers throughout the island's narrow streets, many a famous Chinese musician hails from Xiamen. Every May there's an international music festival, and piano competitions and music festivals are also frequently held. On Huangyan Lu, on the way to Sunlight Rock, there's a concert hall where classical concerts are regularly held on weekends.
Xiamen Wushipu oil painting village has been named as “the second of the world oil painting industry base” and the second batch of national cultural (art) industry base” by the China artist association and the culture property department of Culture Ministry. Xiamen has strong industry advantage in hand painted oil painting, which has two main manufacturing bases here ——Xiamen Wushipu Oil Painting Village and Xiamen Haicang Oil Painting Village. 80% market shares in European and American market is taken up by products exported from Xiamen. As the main manufacturing base of hand painted oil painting in China, Xiamen Wushipu Oil Painting Village has more than 5,000 artists. It has the ability to produce all kinds of oil paintings with different specifications and styles. With the support of Xiamen Municipal Government, it has formed a powerful industrial chain, provided related accessories such as frames, brushes and paint colors and formed stable target customers composed by hotels, villas, high-class departments, galleries and so on. As another mail manufacturing base of oil painting, Xiamen Haicang Oil Painting Village has more than 3,000 painters. The scale of Xiamen Haicang Oil Painting Village has developed rapidly in recent years, which is from originally 28 enterprises to more than 250 enterprises at the moment. The combination of manufacturing, sales and distribution makes it become true industrial base of commercial oil painting.
Xiamen comprises Xiamen Island (longitude 118° 04'04"E, latitude 24° 26'46" N.), Gulangyu Island, and larger region on the mainland stretching from the left bank of the Jiulong River in the west to the islands of Xiang'an in the north east. This region accounts for four of the municipality's six district governments; Huli District and Siming District (except Gulangyu) are on Xiamen Island.
The Gaoji (Gaoqi-Jimei) Causeway built in 1955—57 transformed Xiamen Island into a peninsula (半岛), and so it was termed in the heady propaganda of the time.
Just east of Xiamen Island are the islands of Quemoy (Kinmen, or Jinmen) and Little Quemoy (Xiao Jinmen), which are governed by the Republic of China based in Taiwan.
Climate
Xiamen has a monsoonal humid subtropical climate (Koppen Cfa), characterised by long, hot and humid summers and short, mild and dry winters. It is liable to typhoons in late summer and early autumn. The warmest month is July, at 28.5 °C (83.3 °F), and oddly, the coolest month is February, at 13.2 °C (55.8 °F). The annual precipitation is 1,350 mm (53.1 in), with substantial rainfall beginning in late February. According to the CMA, Xiamen's lowest recorded temperature is 1.5 °C (34.7 °F), and therefore snow has never been recorded here.