Today’s trip was a little further up the Fujian coast to Quanzhou. Quanzhou used to be an important stop on the maritime silk route and was visited by Marco Polo, who called in Zaiton and raved about it. The minibus only took about two hours to get there and the trip was incident free, which came as a relief after the last two days. Our first port of call was Kaiyuan Temple. The temple was built in the 7th century AD and originally called Lotus Temple after a Buddhist monk made all the trees bloom with lotus flowers. The temple grounds were beautiful but unfortunately we didn’t have much time there. We then visited the Maritime Museum which housed some really interesting exhibits including old Chinese ship designs and maritime technology. It was also amusing to
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