The Southern Coast of Fujian Province in China is a populous region that has been doing foreign trade for centuries and is the ancestral home for many overseas Chinese.

• Putian, between Quanzhou and Fuzhou
• Quanzhou was historically the great port of the region. The prefecture includes other towns:
  • Anxi, home of a famous tea
  • Hui'an, an industrial suburb
  • Chongwu, a walled town with beaches
  • Dehua, source of "blanc de chine" pottery
  • Jinjiang, right across the river from Quanzhou
  • Shishi, near Xiamen, many clothing factories
• Xiamen, booming Special Economic Zone, with its suburbs:
  • Gulangyu, a scenic island near downtown
  • Haicang
  • Jimei
  • Tong'an
  • Xiang'an
• Zhangzhou, inland from Xiamen

• Gulangyu, an island in Xiamen that had the consulates and merchants' homes in the era of tea clippers, and is now a major tourist area.

This region has always been outward-looking. It has been doing foreign trade since the days of the Maritime Silk Road, when Quanzhou was one of China's most important ports. In the era of tea clippers, two of China's five treaty ports, Xiamen and Fuzhou, were in this region and Fuzhou shipped more tea than any other city. Today all those cities are prosperous and still much involved in international trade; Xiamen is a special economic zone with particularly fast development.

The region has also been a major source of immigrants — any Chinatown on Earth will have some people who trace their ancestry to this area. In particular, many overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and Taiwan are descended from people from this region.

As in most areas of China, Mandarin is very widely spoken and English is not.

Most of the area has Minnan Hua (South Fujian speech) as the local language, but the region around Putian has its own Puxian dialect.

Xiamen has the main airport of the region with connections to all major Chinese cities, quite a few elsewhere in Asia, and even flights to Amsterdam. See Xiamen#By_plane for discussion.

Jinjiang (just across a river from Quanzhou) also has an airport with a number of domestic flights plus some to Hong Kong and Manila.

There is a high-speed rail line running North-South near the coast with stops in the main cities of this area — Putian, Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou. It connects north to Fuzhou and on toward Shanghai. Going south, it goes along the coast to Shantou and Shenzhen in Guangdong province.

An additional high-speed link is due to go into service in late 2013, going inland to Nanchang in Jiangxi.

The high-speed rail line (see above) is now the most convenient way of getting between the major cities. There are also good highways, and busses that go more-or-less everywhere.

This is a coastal area, both fishing and fish farming are important industries, and local cuisine emphasizes seafood. Specialties include abalone and eels, both of which are exported to Japan and to other areas of China in large quantities.

The larger cities, especially Xiamen, also have a range of restaurants serving various sorts of international cuisine.

The area produces a number of teas. Probably the best-known is an Oolong tea called tie guan yin from Anxi. This has been exported for centuries; it was the tea pitched overboard at the Boston Tea Party.

The general advice at China#Stay_safe applies here.

The Taiwan-controlled island of Kinmen is near Xiamen; both governments consider the area sensitive and keep substantial military forces there, and travellers should not stray into military areas or do anything that might be taken as provocative. This is not nearly as big a deal as it once was — there has not been artillery fire across that strait since the 1970s and China-Taiwan relations are currently excellent — but it is still worth considering.

In this area, typhoons are possible at any time May to November, with the highest risk in July and August.

Adjacent areas of Fujian are (with main tourist attractions shown in brackets):

• Northern Coast (Fujian) (Fuzhou, provincial capital and historic city)
• Inland Fujian (Mount Wuyi and Hakka Tulou, both on the UNESCO World Heritage List)

It is also easy to head South into Guangdong province; the nearest major city is Shantou. As of early 2013, travel to Guangdong is best done by bus but a high-speed train line is expected to go into service late in the year.