About the Tenet of Gallery Inn——Looking for the Lost… I think everyone has lost something, such as job, wallet, and identity card etc. You may get it back by your efforts, but there are things like purity, happiness, love and national traditions…which are not so easy to find once you lost. Maybe you need to change your life attitude, even sacrifice another thing to exchange the lost one to come back. Sometimes the lost can not find back any longer, and what worse is the person do not realize he has lost something, then it’s too late before his understanding. Gulangyu is a nostalgic place arousing your interest, and also the best place for contemplation. Welcome to Gulangyu and stay at Gallery Inn, looking for the lost…

About the Gulangyu The most beautiful city zone in China: Gulangyu, separated from Xiamen by the 500-metre-wide Egret River, is one of the five most beautiful city zones in China published latest on CHINESE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHY. It has a comfortable climate like spring all the year all round, a large number of reefs and vegetation, long-standing cultural background and distinctively local traditions. What a beautiful and harmonious picture with natural sight, history and culture, and folk custom.
The islet’s major scenic spots of Sunlight Rock, Shuzhuang Garden, and Haoyue Park are the most prominent tourist attractions. Gulangyu Islet lies in a subtropical marine monsoon climate zone, with plenty of precipitation, four warm seasons, and more than 90 families of over 4,000 varieties of evergreen plants as well as the Piptadenia macrocarpa Benth rarely seen in China,  the largest Indian red sandalwood, and many varieties of rare and precious fruit trees transplanted from New Zealand. The islet’s vegetation has become the top plant community because of its subtropical oceanic monsoon climate. Gulangyu Islet faces Jinmen (Quemoy) Island across the sea. The area of Xiamen Bay encircling Gulangyu Islet neighbors the Chinese White Dolphins Protected Area, Lancelet Protected Area , and the Dayu Islet Egrets Protected Area. Prior to the Song Dynasty, Gulangyu was called “Round Sandy Islet” and was overgrown with vegetation and without a trace of human habitation until the end of the Song and early in the Yuan Dynasties when a fishing family surnamed Li settled on opposite Songyu Islet. By the end of the Ming Dynasty the national hero Zheng Chenggong(known abroadas Koxinga) stationed his troops and trained his naval forces on the islet. In 1662, Zheng Chenggong led his troops eastward and recovered Taiwan, which had been occupied by the Dutch for 38 years. After the Opium War, Xiamen was opened as one of the five treaty ports for foreign trade. In 1902, a Municipal Council was elected on Gulangyu, and the islet became an International Settlement and thirteen countries set up consular residences there. In the mid-19th century, with the dissemination of Christianity in China, Western musical culture became a part of Gulangyu Islet’s elegant residential environment and created the fine musical tradition that Gulangyu Islet possesses today. Today, Gulangyu Islet has more pianos per capita than any other places in China, and is home to over 100 families past and present who have been engaged in music, hence in 2002 the China Musicians’ Association decision to nickname Gulangyu as "Music Island". The center of Gulangyu,known as “Garden on the sea”, well retains many buildings with variety of Chinese and foreign architectural styles. With a population of about 20,000 people, Gulangyu covers an area of only 1.77 square kilometers.The largest regret is not to become permanent residents for the people coming here.                                                                                                                                                           

About Gallery Inn One morning in an early spring 10 years ago, I left a small town which located in the northwest of Fujian province and set foot on Xiamen where is full of the smell of salty hairtail, with an uneasy heart. It can be called “xiahai”(go into business) fashionably by that time. Looking back, I actually wore a suit on the start, because I applied a leave without pay, however, Xiamen with its special atmosphere made me settle here.
Tracing back the decade, I tasted the bitterness and acerbity of seawater, and discovered there were innumerable ripraps and abysmal silt hidden under the rippling blue waves. Now, I disembarked and found the original suit had been gone as well as the underwear.
The old slate alleys of Gulangyu drive me to search for the primitive colors…

About No.67 Fuxing Road Many legends of Gulangyu were record in its ruins. Our gallery -inn is located in NO.67 Fuxing Road, from which we can see its beautiful site prior to 80 years from its perfect renovation today. This villa’s main structure was built in 1925 , and it was renovated several times later without changing its special structure. The formation of this villa was combined Taiwanese traditional water brick as the main body with a California-style villa features , which may be traced back to the history that the first owner,Zhang’s family, believed in geomantic omen( a Chinese saying that can bring people wealth and good luck) and the early years of doing American trade business. 

In 1941, the Pacific War broke out. A that time, Gulangyu was occupied by Japan. The Zhang’s family left Xiamen to dodged the war. This Mr. Chang had no son but two daughters. One of them came back to her original ancestral home—Tai wan, the other went to Shanghai. It was peculiar both of his two daughters got great achievement in opera field. What’s more, the Performing Arts Colleague was built later just oppsite to this villa. This is perhaps just a coincidence, but more probably, it is related to the chioce that the owner built this villa at No. 67, Fuxing Road, a special position with good geomantic omen here. This is an 80-year-old story. 
 

  Gulangyu Although Aberdeen It sounds awkward that in acient times,Gulangyu was nicknamed as”Panzai area”(which means the area is very desolate and people here is poor), but before its liberation in 1945,the islet was a golden area full of geomantic omen.

Although at that time the owner Mr.Zhang was rich enough in Taiwan,his father’was a geomancer.(It is heard that the grave of former KMT Lien Chan was his choice)The geomancer traveled half of the country since the beginning of 1922 and ultimately confirmed the most rich place is Gulangyu! With an area of only 1.78 square kilometers, the islet was described by this premier geomancer as the golden place full of geomantic omen.
  
Fuxing Road, of its east near to Luerjiao beach, forms a road junction with Lujiao Road and Zhangzhou Road,. From its west and north, people can walk to Zhangzhou Road. With only a total length of 1032.8 meters, more than 80 years ago, Fuxing Road was an area where rich people lived in community. The villa in NO.67 Fuxing Road is made of l the red bricks which may not be anything special at first sight. But if you pay more attention, you can find the evidence of geomantic layout very clearly. It has a geographic feature that the villa is surrounded by seas and hills with good geomantic omen front and behind. It lies in the joint of the slope and the ground which is the right place of good geomantic omen so Zhang bought this land to build the villa for his two daughters. Many owners now build modern villas according to geomantic omen. They set backgrounds by digging wells and creating rockeries, believing that they themselves and their descendents are blessed and will act better than others in painting, music or opera.
 
But actually, the house has been renovated many times after the future generations of Zhang ‘s transferred the house to the owner named Su. So the whole housing condition now is not the same as it looks at that time. When Su owned the house, it looked ruined and old. So a profound geomancer was invited from Taiwan to reconnoiter it again. For the location of the house is slightly higher than the road ahead, the geomancer, from the magnetic direction, suggested Su to adjust the front door successively in order to defuse the unlucky pattern. In the geomantic omen, this was to enlarge the hall to take in those good atmospheres and keep out all those disasters. Granite from Mountain Tai was also laid right below the front door which means a sound foundation of future development as Mountain Tai. And the jammed well was dredged again and a most valuable object was thrown into the well as a treasure of the house.
 
On December 25, 2008, after more than three months of renovation, the Gallery-inn gathering the functions of hotels, galleries, coffee in one was open at No. 67, Fuxing Road. It has 14 rooms and each one is named after the artists of different times with elegant, skillful and unique design. And around the house, there is small garden. The building area is about 500 square meters. It is an ideal tourism and leisure place for the art lovers.