Gulangyu: Why Xiamen's Island Is Called Piano Island

Gulangyu, Xiamen's Piano Island: its history as an international settlement, Amoy Deco villas, piano museum, musicians and UNESCO World Heritage status.

A Silverfox Studios Perspective ON

October 16, 2026

· 5 min read

^{A SMALL ISLAND OFF XIAMEN THAT WAS RUN AS AN INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT AND BECAME KNOWN FOR ITS MUSIC}

Gulangyu island at dusk with its hillside buildings — Gulangyu at dusk, across the Lujiang Strait from Xiamen. Image: 周流劲火 (CC BY 2.5), via Wikimedia Commons

Gulangyu, inscribed by UNESCO under the name Kulangsu, is a small island facing the city of Xiamen across the 600-metre Lujiang Strait. After Xiamen opened as a commercial port in 1843, foreign merchants, missionaries and consuls settled on the island, and in 1903 it became an international settlement governed by a municipal council. In the early 20th century, Chinese families who had made fortunes in Southeast Asia returned and built more than 1,200 houses there, developing a local architectural style known as Amoy Deco. The island also developed a strong tradition of Western classical music, which is why it is known as Piano Island and the Island of Music, and it has a museum devoted to the piano. In July 2017 UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List as Kulangsu, a Historic International Settlement. It is reached only by ferry, and motor vehicles are banned except for emergency and service vehicles.

^{WHERE IS GULANGYU AND HOW DO YOU GET THERE}

Gulangyu lies at the estuary of the Chiu-lung River, opposite Xiamen. It has never been connected to the mainland by road or any other transport infrastructure, so it can be reached only by ferry. Motor vehicles are banned on the island except for fire, refuse collection and medical services. Getting around is on foot, through a network of lanes and roads that UNESCO lists as one of the elements of the World Heritage property, alongside its buildings, natural scenery and gardens.

The island's built fabric reflects its history as a place shared by local Chinese residents, returned overseas Chinese and foreign residents from many countries. UNESCO records 931 historic buildings in styles that include Traditional Southern Fujian, Western Classical Revival, Veranda Colonial and Amoy Deco, together with historic gardens ranging from courtyard gardens to private ones. ICOMOS notes that these gardens combine Chinese and Western layouts, and that the island's religious buildings include Buddhist, Taoist, Christian and ancestral sites. Shuzhuang Garden, which shares a ticket with the piano museum above it, is among the gardens.

^{HOW GULANGYU BECAME AN INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT}

Xiamen, called Amoy in the local Hokkien dialect, opened as a commercial port in 1843, after the Opium War of the early 1840s. Foreign traders had reached Gulangyu before then: ICOMOS cites the tomb of a Spanish sea trader named Manuel (1729 to 1759) as evidence of their presence in the 18th century. After the Opium War the island became administratively independent of the British settlement in Xiamen, though its residential growth still depended on the city. Foreign missionaries, consular and diplomatic officers and foreign workers drove its development, bringing Western and South Asian architecture and modern facilities including schools, hospitals, roads and cemeteries. ICOMOS describes the island as a point through which international culture entered China and modern Western culture and technology spread to the wider region.

The settlement was formalised at the start of the 20th century. Chinese and foreign parties signed the Land Regulations for the Settlement of Kulangsu, Amoy, in 1902, and the Kulangsu Municipal Council was established in 1903, with representatives of both foreign and Chinese residents taking part in its management. ICOMOS treats the 1903 regulations as the start of a second phase in the island's development, in which separate Chinese and foreign residential areas began to merge. By 1929 the number of Chinese seats on the council had risen from one to as many as five. In 1911 the island had about 12,000 residents, around 300 of them foreign. By 1930 there were 20,465 Chinese residents and 567 foreign settlers, 369 of them Japanese.

War with Japan reached the island in the late 1930s. Japanese forces occupied Jinmen in 1937 and Xiamen in 1938, refugees crowded onto Gulangyu, and an International Relief Society was formed to support them. ICOMOS notes that the Pacific War, which began in 1941, brought many more foreigners and overseas Chinese to the island. Once it began, Japan occupied Gulangyu itself, restructured the Municipal Council and expelled residents of other foreign countries. During the war the Eight Diagrams Mansion, now the island's organ museum, served as a shelter for refugees.

^{RETURNED OVERSEAS CHINESE AND THE AMOY DECO STYLE}

Historic colonial-era mansion with verandas on Gulangyu — A historic mansion on Gulangyu. Image: Rolfmueller (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Many families from southern Fujian had emigrated to Southeast Asia, and from the early 20th century those who returned became the main force behind building on Gulangyu, according to the ICOMOS evaluation. The island's administrative committee credits wealthy returned overseas Chinese with building more than 1,200 residences on the island between 1920 and 1930. ICOMOS notes that community facilities and infrastructure also expanded greatly in this period, and it lists the former telephone company building and water supply facility among the island's Amoy Deco examples. According to the committee, telephones arrived in 1924, electric lamps in 1928 and piped water in 1932.

Amoy Deco is the style that came out of this building boom. UNESCO describes it as a combination of early 20th-century Modernism and Art Deco, named after Amoy and first developed on Gulangyu. ICOMOS adds that it blends local building traditions, early Western and modernist influences and the culture of southern Fujian's migrants. The style was also widely adopted in Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Quanzhou, and UNESCO credits the island's hybrid architecture with influencing coastal areas of Southeast Asia, one of the two grounds on which Gulangyu was inscribed as a World Heritage Site.

^{WHY IS GULANGYU CALLED PIANO ISLAND?}

Trinity Church on Gulangyu with its cross-shaped plan and portico — Trinity Church on Gulangyu. Image: Siyuwj (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons

The name Piano Island comes from international press coverage of Gulangyu. A 2007 NPR report, titled Tourism Threatens China's Piano Island, described it as having the highest per capita concentration of pianos in China, and a 2017 CNN Travel feature used the same name, explaining it by the island's piano music and its musical prodigies. In English, the island's administrative committee calls it the Island of Music and the Capital of Music. According to NPR, the first pianos arrived in the mid-1800s, brought by Christian missionaries for their churches. Church music is still part of island life: the committee notes that the singing of the Trinity Church choir can be heard around the island.

Many of China's leading pianists were born or raised on Gulangyu, NPR reported, and the tradition survived a break during the Cultural Revolution, when playing Western instruments and music was forbidden. The pianist Yin Chengzong was born on the island in 1941. In spring 1950, aged nine, he gave a solo piano concert at a girls' middle school on the island, and in 1962 he took second place in the second International Tchaikovsky Competition for piano. In 1970 he was among the creators of the Yellow River piano work, adapted from the Yellow River Cantata, and he later composed a series of piano solos in a national style, including Shi Mian Mai Fu and Chun Jiang Hua Yue Ye.

Xu Feiping, born on the island in 1952, grew up in a Christian household: his father was a priest and his mother a church pianist. He could play hymns accurately at five and gave a public performance at six at Sanyi Church (Trinity Church) on Gulangyu. At 18 he became the chief piano soloist of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1979 he went to the United States to study. CNN names Xu, with the violinist Jing Yang, as examples of the island's prodigies. The island's girls' schools also educated the musician Zhou Shu'an.

^{THE GULANGYU PIANO MUSEUM AND ORGAN MUSEUM}

Antique pianos displayed in the Gulangyu Piano Museum — Historic pianos on display at the Gulangyu Piano Museum. Image: xiquinhosilva (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons

The Gulangyu Piano Museum stands above Shuzhuang Garden, and one ticket admits visitors to both. Its collection is housed in two separate buildings and ranges from miniature children's pianos to unusually long grand pianos, including grands with coloured inlaid-wood decoration and built-in candelabras. More pianos are visible through plate-glass windows on the steps between the museum and the garden. The island's administrative committee describes it as the world's largest collection of pianos, and on most days a pianist plays Gulangyu Zhi Bo, regarded as the island's unofficial theme song, on one of the historic instruments.

The Kulangsu Organ Museum occupies the Eight Diagrams Mansion, designed in 1907 by John Abraham Otte, a Dutch American who was director of Hope Hospital, for the Taiwanese businessman Lin Heshou. Lin went bankrupt before the building was finished and returned to Taiwan. Music on the island is also organised around regular events, including the Kulangsu Piano Festival, the Kulangsu Four-Season Music Week, and family, courtyard and salon concerts. In July 2017 the Kulangsu Music Festival, with performances by international artists, lectures and master classes, marked the World Heritage inscription.

^{KULANGSU AS A UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE}

UNESCO inscribed Kulangsu, a Historic International Settlement, on the World Heritage List at its 41st session on 8 July 2017, under criteria (ii) and (iv). Under criterion (ii), the island shows an exchange of Chinese, Southeast Asian and European architectural and cultural traditions, which produced a hybrid style that influenced coastal Southeast Asia. Under criterion (iv), it is the origin and best representation of Amoy Deco. The inscribed property covers 316.2 hectares, with a buffer zone of 886 hectares. UNESCO also describes the island as having been an ideal home for overseas Chinese and for elites active across East and Southeast Asia.

Protection predates the listing. China's State Council recognised the island as a National Scenic Area in 1988, a Conservation and Management Plan was adopted in 2011 and has been implemented since 2014, and guidelines controlling commercial activity were adopted in 2014. Within the property, 51 representative sites are protected: 19 as national, 8 as provincial and 24 as county heritage sites. Visitor numbers are managed too. A 2017 capacity study set an optimum of 25,000 people a day and an absolute maximum of 50,000, including residents and commuters, and the effective limit is 35,000 visitors a day, including on peak days. Demand had grown quickly before the listing: ICOMOS records visitor numbers rising from about 5.75 million in 2009 to 12.46 million in 2014.

^{MUSIC AND HOUSES AT HYATT CENTRIC OCEANFRONT XIAMEN}

Hyatt Centric Oceanfront Xiamen, designed by Silverfox Studios — Hyatt Centric Oceanfront Xiamen, China

Hyatt Centric Oceanfront Xiamen, completed in 2025, is a full-scope hotel by Silverfox Studios on the Xiamen coast beside Ceng Cuo An (Zengcuo'an) Food Street. The design draws on local street scenes and lanes, kiln-fired local bricks, local craftsmanship and music culture. Music is central to the ground floor, where the House of Music is the focal point for live evening music that carries across the floor. The hotel is planned as a series of connected "houses".