Gulangyu: A treasured island in the eye of a foreigner

With giant banyan trees shading its graceful European mansions, Gulangyu looks like a Mediterranean island in the South China Sea.

The historical international settlement of pedestrianonly Gulangyu Island, in the bay of Xiamen, was made a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site at the 41st United Nations World Heritage Committee meeting in Krakow, Poland on July 8.

I first saw Gulangyu (known in the local dialect as Kulangsu) through the eyes of my partner, Yang Jing, a concert violinist who grew up on this 1.88 square kilometers islet. It's just an islet, officially, a small village of about 4,000 households and 14,000 people living on a small island in the shadow of the larger, newer island of Xiamen city.

Gulangyu, the small sea island off the coast of Xiamen in Fujian province, boasts many 19th-century buildings as it was once clustered with Western religious groups, international institutions and foreign consulates. [Photos by Hu Meidong/China Daily and provided to China Daily]

Yang's family has been in Gulangyu for three generations. Before I set foot on the island, I had heard her CD Kulangsu: Through the Strings of Time - which combined classical music with natural sounds recorded from around the island - and Yang had explained to me that there were no cars or bikes allowed on the island.