Comprehensive information and links about China Xiamen

Xiamen ; Wade-Giles: Hsiamen) is a coastal sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian province, People's Republic of China. It looks out to the Taiwan Strait and borders the cities of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou to the north and south respectively.

Xiamen is also known as b internationally, especially in the old times. "Amoy" is how "Xiamen" is spoken in Northern Min, the vernacular of the provincial capital Fuzhou. In the Amoy vernacular, the city name is b (using the POJ romanization). The toponym literally means "The Gate of the Grand Mansion".

table

The districts of Siming and Huli form the Special Economic Zone.

In May 2003, Gulangyu Island and Kaiyuan District were merged into Siming District, Xinglin District (杏林区) was renamed Haicang District, and Xiang'an District was created out of a section of Tong'an District.

History

The place was made Tong'an District (同安縣) in 282, a sub-entity of Jin'an Prefecture (晉安郡). In 1387, the Ming Dynasty used it as base against pirates, and was part of Quanzhou. Koxinga stationed here in 1650, naming it Siming Island (思明洲), or "Remembering the Ming", but the city was renamed by the Manchus in 1680 to Xiamen Subprefecture. The name "Siming" was reverted after the 1912 Xinhai Revolution and made a county. The following it was reverted to Xiamen City. In 1949, Xiamen became a provincial city (省轄市), then upgraded to a vice-province-class city (副省級市), or a municipality. It was made a Special Economic Zone in 1980.

Xiamen was the port of trade first used by Europeans in 1541. It was China's main port in the 19th century for exporting tea. As a result, the Amoy dialect had a major influence on how Chinese terminology was translated into English and other European languages. For example, the words "Amoy", "tea" (茶; tê), "cumshaw" (感謝; kám-siā), "ketchup" (茄汁; kiô-chiap), "satay" (沙爹), and "Pekoe" (白毫; pe̍h-hô) originated from the Amoy dialect.

Xiamen was one of the five Chinese i opened by the Treaty of Nanjing (signed in 1842) at the end of the First Opium War between Britain and China.

In 2000, the largest corruption scandal in China's history was uncovered, implicating up to 200 government officials.

Culture

The local vernacular language is Amoy, a dialect of Southern Min, also called Hokkien. The official language of the People's Republic of China, Mandarin, is also widely used.