Xiamen

Xiamen ([ɕjâmə̌n]), also historically known as Amoy (/əˈmɔɪ/, POJ Hokkien ε̄-mûiⁿ, Ē-mn̂g), is a major city on the southeast (Taiwan Strait) coast of the China. It is administered as a sub-provincial city of Fujian province, with an area of 1,699.39 square kilometres (656.14 sq mi) and population of 3,531,347 at the 2010 Census. The city's urban area includes the old urban island area and covers all six districts of Xiamen (Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, Haicang and recently Xiang'an), and has a total urban population of 1,861,289. It also borders Quanzhou to the north and Zhangzhou making this a unique built-up area of more than five million people. The Jinmen (Kinmen) Islands administered by the Republic of China are less than 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away.

Being one of the major Hokkien-speaking cities in China, Xiamen and the surrounding southern Fujian cities and counties such as Zhangzhou and Quanzhou are the ancestral homes to large communities of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, especially Singapore, various parts of Malaysia as well as the Indonesian Riau Province. The city was a treaty port in the 19th century and one of the four original Special Economic Zones opened to foreign investment and trade when China began economic reforms in the early 1980s. It is endowed with educational and cultural institutions supported by the overseas Chinese diaspora. In 2006, Xiamen was ranked as China's second "most suitable city for living", as well as China's "most romantic leisure city" in 2011.