Discover Xiamen
Shapowai and the Fishing Harbour
沙坡尾
Xiamen's original harbour, a horseshoe of water where the wooden fishing fleet used to shelter, now ringed by the Shapowai Art West Zone in old warehouses. The city's most convincing young neighbourhood.
The story
What makes this place special
Shapowai is the old typhoon shelter and fishing harbour of Xiamen, tucked into the shore just west of Xiamen University — the sheltered inlet from which the port of Xiamen actually worked, and the last working fishing basin on the island. As the fishing fleet shrank and the city grew, the quayside warehouses and the artists' and students' presence around it turned the area into a cultural quarter, and it has been redeveloped in stages into galleries, cafés, craft shops and bars around the water, with the old harbour basin and its wall kept as the centre of it.
What you’ll discover
A horseshoe of water with the harbour wall around it, old fishing boats still moored in the basin, and the quayside buildings behind now holding coffee roasters, independent shops, small galleries, bars and graffiti walls. The Shapowai Arts Western District occupies converted warehouse buildings. It is small — an hour or two — and the mix of working boats and espresso is the point. From the harbour mouth you look out at the strait and across to Gulangyu.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- This is where Xiamen's own twenty-somethings go, as opposed to Zengcuo'an, where visitors go. The coffee, the bars and the record shops here are the real thing and the prices are local.
- Walk the harbour wall round the basin. It is the only place left on the island where you can look at working fishing boats at close range, and it is five minutes from a university campus.
- Go into the converted warehouse blocks rather than staying on the waterfront — the galleries and studios are inside and are not visible from the quay.
- Evening is when it works: the bars open, the lights come on in the basin, and the quay fills up. By day it is quiet and several places are shut.
- It is a ten-minute walk from Xiamen University's gate and from Nanputuo, so it is the natural place to end a day on the south shore rather than a destination in itself.
When to come
Evening, from about six onwards, when the bars and shops are open and the harbour is lit. Autumn and winter; the quay has no shade and is airless in high summer.
Getting around
Fairly good. The quayside and the path around the harbour basin are flat and paved with level access from the street, so the harbour itself and the waterfront bars are manageable in a wheelchair. Individual shops in the converted warehouses often have a step or a narrow door, and some venues are on upper floors with stairs only. Crowds in the evening are the main constraint.
Worth knowing before you go
This is where to eat shacha noodles and oyster omelette without the Zengcuo'an queues - try the lanes off Daxue Road.
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