Wenzhou has once been a famous town of the Eastern Ou ( the eastern part of the Oujiang River valley ) with a brilliant culture. In 192 BC it was the capital of the Kingdom of the Eastern Ou, and in AD 323 it became Yongjia Prefecture. As legend has it，while the city was being built, a white deer circled it with a flower in its mouth, and it has thus been called the City of White Deer as well. In AD 675, it began to be named Wenzhou, its name to this day. Historically, Wenzhou has been a city renowned for its handicrafts and celadon ware, with papermaking, shipbuilding, silk, embroideries, lacquerware, shoes and leather products being fairly eminent. During the period of the Southern Song Dynasty(1127-1279), it opened up as a foreign trade port, enjoying a reputation as a prosperous coastal city comparable to Hangzhou. Wenzhou is the hometown of Nanxi Opera or the Southern Opera. The Tale of the Pipa by Gao Ming, a famous Wenzhou playwright in the mid - fourteenth century, has been translated into a number of foreign languages and achieved worldwide renown. Wenzhou has given birth to many outstanding figures and great scholars. Among the most famous were the philosophers of the Yongjia School as represented by Ye Shi, and the poets of the River and Lake School as represented by Yongjia ' s four distinguished poets during the Southern Song Dynasty, as well as Sun Yirang, Xia Nai, Xia Chengtao, Su Buqing and others of the modern era. They are influential in the Chinese intellectual, literary and scientific history.

Intangible cultural heritage

Wenzhou boasts a long history and rich culture, including Ouyue culture, and landscape and national cultures. Its traditional Chinese opera, art, drama, dance, crafts and arts, as well as folk literature and customs all have profound cultural significance and unique values. The city has established a normative and complete intangible cultural heritage (ICH) protection system with 5-tier (UNESCO, national, provincial, municipal and county) ICH lists. Up yo now, Wenzhou has had 4, 35, 159 and 779 projects inscribed on the UNESCO, national, provincial and municipal ICH protection lists respectively, the number of the projects ranking in the forefront of Zhejiang Province. The city totally owns 37 national, 230 provincial and 933 municipal representative ICH inheriting individuals, with 14 representative ICH inheriting groups and 20 inheriting mass organizations; it boasts 72 bases for provincial-level ICH education, higher education institutions’ ICH research, and its publicity and productive protection. In addition, there are 202 municipal ICH inheritance bases and 48 ICH experience ones in the city.

Cultural relics protection units

As of now, there are 931 cultural relics protection units at all levels in the city, including 33 national key cultural relics protection units, 111 provincial and 787 county-class ones.

The city boasts 80 A-class tourism scenic areas, including two national 5A-class and 21 national 4A-class ones. Besides, it owns 8 provincial-class all-for-one tourism demonstration counties (county-level cities or districts), 4 national red tourism classic scenic areas, and 249 Zhejiang Province 3A-class scenic villages.