Gulangyu Island is located at the mouth of Jiulong River in Fujian, facing Xiamen Island across the Lujiang Strait. Gulangyu World Cultural Heritage includes Gulangyu and its coastal waters, with a total area of 3 16.2 hectares. Gulangyu buffer zone covers two adjacent islands, Dayu and Monkey Island, and extends to the coastline of Xiamen Island, with a total area of 886 hectares. From 65438 to 0903, Gulangyu gradually formed a historical international community with multicultural development on the basis of traditional settlements. Gulangyu Island now has 93 1 of historical buildings, gardens, natural landscapes and historical road networks, showing different local and international features, reflecting the integration of modern human settlement concept and local traditional culture.
According to the World Heritage Committee, Gulangyu Island is the witness of China's modernization in the early days of globalization, with remarkable cultural diversity and modernized quality of life. The development of Gulangyu Island is a unique display of modern human settlement concept from the middle of19th century to the middle of 20th century. Gulangyu Island reflects the extensive cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries in all aspects. Well-preserved historical sites truly and completely record their tortuous development process and vivid style changes, and truly reflect the history of fierce changes in that era. The development of Gulangyu clearly recorded the spread of foreign culture in China and the basic characteristics of early modernization of Minnan people who returned from overseas.
Gulangyu Island embodies the history of mutual understanding and common development among different cultures and values in the world, and provides reference for the integration and development of different cultures in China and other regions. Gulangyu's unique decorative architectural heritage records the blending of material and culture, forming a representative new architectural movement in Southeast Asia.
Gulangyu is a special case of cross-cultural communication, which witnessed the convergence, collision and integration of various values in the early days of Asian globalization. Gulangyu's organic urban texture clearly retains the traces of its development and changes, and has witnessed the process of multicultural integration into the original culture for decades. Xiamen's decorative style rising from Gulangyu Island is the most prominent proof of this cultural integration.