The Gulangyu History Museum documents the island's transformation from a fishing settlement into an international concession and its subsequent history through the Republican period, the Japanese occupation, and the return to Chinese administration after 1945. The collection draws on photographs, maps, and objects from the concession era that give a visual record of what the island looked like when it was genuinely cosmopolitan rather than a tourist attraction.
The museum occupies a restored colonial building and curates its exhibits with more sophistication than is typical for Chinese local history museums. The photographs of the foreign community in the 1910s and 1920s — missionaries, consular staff, merchants, their families — are the most humanizing section. The maps tracing the changing ownership of specific buildings across the 20th century illustrate the island's complex ownership history, in which properties changed hands multiple times as political circumstances shifted.