Photo shows a villager pins a flowery headwear for a tourist at Xunpu Village of Quanzhou City, southeast China's Fujian Province.
BEIJING, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- As one of the most renowned historical and cultural cities in China, Quanzhou City in southeast China's Fujian Province, has seen a boom in cultural prosperity inspired by growing cultural confidence.
The cultural prosperity of the city was vividly recorded in many historical materials and "The Travels of Marco Polo", which recounts the journey of the Italian explorer to the East.
As China's maritime trade center during the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties, Quanzhou saw agricultural civilization and maritime civilization fuse in here, creating a city landscape where Eastern and Western cultures coexisted harmoniously.
Nowadays, the city is home to one world heritage site and 44 key historical and cultural sites under national-level protection.
Besides, Quanzhou boasts six world-class intangible cultural heritage projects and 36 national-level intangible cultural heritage projects.
In 2021, UNESCO accepted "Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China" as a cultural property on its World Heritage List.
Since then, Quanzhou's ancient charm has become widely known. In 2023, Quanzhou received a total of 86.5297 million domestic and foreign tourists with the total tourism income exceeding 100 billion yuan (about 14.06 billion U.S. dollars).
Though Quanzhou is obviously ancient, the city is also modern and energetic.
At present, Quanzhou boasts nine hundred-billion-level industrial clusters. As many as 115 listed companies at home and abroad and more than 1.52 million market business entities have settled in the city. In 2023, the city's total economic aggregate output reached 1.22 trillion yuan, making it a famous "capital of brands" in China. (Edited by Yang Yifan with Xinhua Silk Road, yangyifan@xinhua.org)
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