Three Lanes and Seven Alleys

Three Lanes and Seven Alleys (Sanfang Qixiang) is Fuzhou's most important historical district — a neighbourhood of Ming and Qing dynasty courtyard houses covering about 40 hectares in the city centre. The architecture is southern Chinese timber-frame construction: white-painted walls, curved grey-tile roofs, and carved wooden screen doors. The whole area has been restored and pedestrianised and is now the city's main cultural attraction.

The lanes and alleys contain museums, teahouses, antique shops, and workshops producing Fuzhou's traditional crafts — lacquerware, paper umbrellas, and Shoushan stone carving. The Lin Zexu Memorial Hall and the Lin Juemin residence (a revolutionary hero of the 1911 uprising) are among the notable buildings open to visitors. It gets busy at weekends but the residential lanes off the main axis are quieter.

things to do sight architecture
A story
The neighbourhood takes its name from a simple grid: three lanes running east-west and seven alleys running north-south, preserved from the Tang dynasty layout. Among the families who lived here were several who shaped modern China — Lin Zexu, who destroyed the British opium at Canton and triggered the First Opium War, was born within a block of here.