Quanzhou is easy to underestimate. Today it is a busy, rather industrial Fujian city, but a thousand years ago it was Zayton, one of the busiest ports in the world, and merchants from Persia and Arabia settled here to trade silk, ceramics and spices. The two Islamic tombs sit on a hill east of the centre, close enough to the city, about four kilometres, that the neighbourhood is a mix of apartment blocks and old stonework.
The tombs hold, according to tradition, two followers of the Prophet Muhammad who travelled to China and died here, and the Lingshan site has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries. They are simple, open-air graves under a covered stone colonnade, quiet in a way the surrounding city is not. Next to them are carved gravestones in Arabic and Persian, a reminder that Quanzhou once had a large foreign community. Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta both passed through, and both marvelled at the harbour. The city's Qingjing mosque, dating from the early eleventh century, is another sign of how long Islam has been part of this coast.
Riding here is a city-and-ring-road affair, so think of it as a visit rather than a drive. Traffic is dense and full of electric scooters, so keep your eyes up and your speed down. The best time is early in the morning, when the air is cooler and the site is almost empty. Summers are hot and humid and typhoon season can bring heavy rain between July and October. Spring and autumn are the pleasant seasons.
Fuel, food and rest are no problem in a city of this size, and Fujian cooking has a lot to offer, from oyster omelettes to peanut-soup desserts. A caveat for travellers: rules for foreign motorcyclists in mainland China are strict, and you should check licensing and permit requirements well in advance of any plan to ride.