Xiamen
Xiamen, historically romanized as Amoy, is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, Haicang, and Xiang'an. All together, these cover an area of with a population of 5,163,970 as of 2020 and estimated at 5.35 million as of 31 December 2024. The urbanized area of the city has spread from its original island to include most parts of all six of its districts, as well as 4 Zhangzhou districts, which form a built-up area of 7,284,148 inhabitants. This area also connects with Quanzhou in the north, making up a metropolis of nearly ten million people. The Kinmen Islands administered by the Republic of China lie less than away separated by Xiamen Bay. As part of the Opening Up Policy under Deng Xiaoping, Xiamen became one of China's original four special economic zones opened to foreign investment and trade in the early 1980s.
Xiamen Island possessed a major international seaport. The port of Xiamen is a well-developed first-class trunk line port in the Asia-Pacific region. It is ranked the 7th-largest container port in China and ranks 14th in the world. It is the 4th port in China with the capacity to handle 6th-generation large container ships. On 31 August 2010, Xiamen Port incorporated the neighboring port of Zhangzhou to form the largest port of China's Southeast. Ever since the 12th century, Xiamen was also an important origin for many migrants to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The overseas Chinese used to support Xiamen's educational and cultural institutions. Xiamen is classified as a Large-Port Metropolis.
Xiamen is one of the top 40 cities in the world by scientific research as tracked by the Nature Index. The city is home to several major universities, including Xiamen University, one of China's most prestigious universities as a member of the Double First Class Universities, Huaqiao, Jimei, Xiamen University of Technology and Xiamen Medical College.
Name
Xiamen had always been known as Tong'an County since antiquity until Republic of China Era of the 20th century, followed by administrative zoning restructures and naming changes.Tong'an County first appeared in Han dynasty records. Xiamen Island was described as Jiahe Islet of Tong'an County during the Song dynasty. It received its present name from the Xiamen Defense Castle erected on the island by Zhou Dexing in 1387 during the Ming dynasty to meet the needs of coastal defense. The name was formerly written using, s=, and then changed into s= or "Gate of China".
After the fall of the Ming dynasty, Zheng Chenggong, or Koxinga, a Ming loyalist and general, occupied Xiamen island as an anti-Qing base. In 1650, the seventh year of Emperor Shunzhi of the Qing dynasty, Zheng set a military base in Xiamen island and changed its name into s=, meaning "Remembering the Ming".
When its port prospered under the Qing, especially during the reign of Emperor Kangxi, the island's name was changed to s= again.
The island's name of 思明 was in return restored after the Xinhai Revolution that inaugurated the republic in 1912.
The island's name of 廈門 was restored in 1933, along with Xiamen being administratively planned as a city, the first of its kind in Fujian province. 思明 continues to be used as the name of one of its districts.
Xiamen is the atonal pinyin romanization of the characters' pronunciation in Mandarin. It has also been romanized as Hiamen. The older English name "Amoy" was based on the same name's pronunciation in the Zhangzhou dialect of Hokkien, Ē͘-mûi.
Geography
Xiamen is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian whose urban core grew up from the port of Xiamen on southern Xiamen Island, now located within Siming District. It now also includes Gulangyu Island and the rugged coast of the mainland from the northeast bank of the Jiulong River in the west to the islands of Xiang'an in the east. Xiamen Island lies about one degree north of the Tropic of Cancer. It is divided between Huli District in the north and Siming District in the south. Siming also includes Gulangyu. Its mainland territory is divided among Haicang, Jimei, Tong'an, and Xiang'an districts.In the 19th century, Xiamen's harbor on Yundang Bay was considered one of the world's great natural harbors. Land reclamation has since been used to fill in the mouth of this inlet, turning it into Siming District's Yundang Lake. The municipal government is located on other reclaimed land beside it.
The nearest point of Liehyu in the Kinmen Islands, Republic of China, lies only off Xiamen Island.
Xiamen Island is the fourth largest island in Fujian province. It became a peninsula after the completion of the seawall in 1955. Xiamen waters include Xiamen Port, Outer Harbor Area, Maluan Bay, Tongan Bay, Jiulong River's estuary area and the waterway on the east side. Outside the Xiamen Port, Big Kinmen, Little Kinmen, Dadan, Erdan and other island are arranged in a horizontal line. Inside, it has Xiamen Island, Gulangyu Island and other island barriers, making it a good natural port protected from storms.
Climate
Xiamen has a monsoonal humid subtropical climate, characterised by long, hot and humid summers and short, mild and dry winters. The warmest month is July, with a 24-hour average of, and the coolest month is January, averaging ; the annual mean is. Extremes since 1951 have ranged from on 24 January 2016 to on 9 August 2019. Spring, both by humidity and percentage of sunshine, is the dampest season but typhoons in late summer and early autumn can make the latter period wetter overall. Summer and autumn are marked by comparatively sunny conditions, while autumn is warm and dry. The annual rainfall is. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 29% in March to 58% in July, the city receives 1,893 hours of bright sunshine annually. Frost occurs very rarely, and the last snowfall in the city took place in January 1893, when snow also fell at Guangzhou, Macau, in the inland parts of Hong Kong and in the hills of Taipei.The area is known within China for its relatively low pollution.
History
The area of Xiamen was largely bypassed by the Qin and Han conquests and colonization of Guangdong, which passed west of Fujian down the Lingqu Canal between the Xiang and Li rivers. It was first organized as Tong'an County in AD282 under the Jin, but it lost this status soon afterwards. Tong'an County was again established in 933 under the Later Tang.The settlement on the southeastern shore of Xiamen Island developed as a seaport under the Song, although legal foreign trade was restricted to nearby Quanzhou, which administered the area. In 1387, attacks by the "Japanese" or "dwarf" pirates—many of them actually disaffected Chinese—prompted the Ming to protect the harbor with the fortress that gave Xiamen its name. The Portuguese first reached Xiamen in 1541. After the fall of the Ming to the Qing in 1644, Southern Ming loyalists including Koxinga used Xiamen as a base from which to launch attacks against the invading Qing-aligned Han Bannermen from 1650 to 1660. In 1661, Koxinga drove the Dutch from Taiwan and moved his operations there. His base on Xiamen fell to a combined Qing and Dutch invasion in 1663. The East India Company traded extensively with the port, constructing a factory there in 1678. It was raised to the status of a subprefecture in 1680, but the taxes and other restrictions placed on traders compelled the British to relocate to Canton and Fuzhou the next year. Trade resumed in 1685 and continued until the imposition of the Canton System. However, despite the Canton system which restricted Western trade to the port of Guangzhou, the Spanish were still allowed to trade in Xiamen. However, the Spanish rarely used this privilege as Chinese traders would ship their goods from Xiamen to Manila and vice versa, which was more profitable for both sides.
By the 19th century, the city walls had a circumference of around, with an inner and outer city divided by an inner wall and a ridge of hills surmounted by a well-built fort. The inner harbor on Yundang Bay was also well fortified and these defenses were further strengthened upon the outbreak of the First Opium War. Nonetheless, Xiamen was captured in 1841 between Guangzhou and Zhoushan. Rear Adm. Parker bombarded the Qing position to little effect, but the assault by the men under Lt. Gen. Gough caused the Chinese to flee their positions without a fight. The city was abandoned during the night and fell the next day on 27 August. The Chinese had spirited out the entire treasury of sycee bullion under the nose of the British by disguising it inside hollow logs. Xiamen being too large to garrison, a small force was left to hold Gulangyu. The next year, the Treaty of Nanjing made Xiamen one of the first five ports opened to British trade, which had previously been legally restricted to Guangzhou. Subsequent treaties opened the port to other international powers.
As the primary international port for Fujian, particularly Zhangzhou and its hinterland, Xiamen became a center of China's tea trade, with hundreds of thousands of tons shipped yearly to Europe and the Americas. Its local dialect influenced [|a variety of translations of Chinese terms]. Its principal exports during the period were tea, porcelain, and paper; it imported sugar, rice, cotton, and opium, as well as some manufactured goods. Xiamen was also a center of Protestant missionaries in China; the missions operated the city's two hospitals. The merchants of Xiamen were thought among the richest and most entrepreneurial and industrious in China, but the city was widely accounted the dirtiest city in China. Owing to local belief in feng shui, the streets were "as crooked as ram's horns" and averaged about in width to keep out sunlight and control public disturbances. Its population was estimated at 250,000 in the 1870s; by that point the island was largely barren and full of roughly 140 villages, with a total population around 400,000. European settlement in the port was concentrated on Gulangyu Island off Xiamen proper; it remains known for its colonial architecture.
By the 20th century, the local export economy had collapsed due to the success of British tea plantations in India. During the Qing and the early 20th century, many southern Fujianese emigrated to Taiwan and Southeast Asia, such as in the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, etc., spreading Hokkien language and culture overseas. Some 350,000 overseas Chinese currently trace their ancestry to Xiamen. Some of this diaspora later returned: an estimated 220,000 Xiamen residents are returning overseas Chinese and their kin. Others continue to help fund universities and cultural institutions in Xiamen.
At the time of the Xinhai Revolution, the native population of the city was estimated at 300,000 and the foreign settlement at 280. After the establishment of the Republic of China, the area around Xiamen was renamed Siming County. Xiamen's trade during the period was largely conducted through Taiwan, which had been seized by Japan during the First Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese subsequently claimed Fujian as their sphere of influence during the colonial squabbling over China. Japan occupied Xiamen Island from May 1938 to September 1945 during World War II. During the Japanese occupation, the city provided some shipments of rice to the Portuguese Colony of Macau. In the late phases of the Chinese Civil War that followed, the Communists captured Xiamen and Gulangyu in October 1949 but failed to capture Kinmen. The same year, Xiamen became a provincially administered city.
In 1955 and 1958, mainland China escalated Cold War political tensions by shelling nearby islands from Xiamen in what became known as the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. The Nationalists responded by reinforcing Kinmen and shelling Xiamen. The Gaoji Causeway built from 1955 to 1957 notionally transformed Xiamen Island into a peninsula, and so it was termed in the heady propaganda of the time. Due to political tensions, the eastern half of Xiamen Island and much of the Fujian Coast facing the offshore islands remained undeveloped in the 1960s and 1970s. The Water Police and Post-Office were situated directly across the water from the American embassy.
When Deng Xiaoping initiated his Opening Up Policy, Xiamen was made one of the first four special economic zones in 1980, with special investment and trade regulations attracting foreign investment, particularly from overseas Chinese. The construction of Huli Export Processing Zone in Xiamen Special Economic Zone was officially started on 15 October 1981. In 1984, Xiamen Special Economic Zone was expanded from an area of 2.5 square kilometers of Huli to 131 square kilometers of the whole island. The city grew and prospered. In June 2010, Xiamen Special Economic Zone was expanded to the whole Xiamen city, and four districts outside Xiamen Island – including Jimei, Haicang, Tongan and Xiang'an – were included into the zone. After this expansion, the area of Xiamen Special Economic Zone reached 1,573 square kilometers, 11 times larger than before.
Answering the call of the Belt and Road Initiative, Xiamen has focused on dealing with international competition with a more confident attitude and to facilitate the construction of the important hub city of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.
In 2001, the governments of mainland China and Taiwan agreed to initiate the "Three Mini-Links" and restored ferry, commercial, and mail links between the mainland and offshore islands. Trade and travel between Xiamen and Kinmen was restored and later expanded to include direct air travel to Taiwan Island. In 2010, travelers between Xiamen and Kinmen made 1.31 million trips.
In 2006, Xiamen was ranked as China's 2nd-"most suitable city for living", as well as China's "most romantic leisure city" in 2011.