Xiamen

Xiamen, city and port, southeastern Fujian sheng (province), China. It is situated on the southwestern coast of Xiamen (Amoy) Island in Xiamen Harbour (an inlet of the Taiwan Strait), the estuary of the Jiulong River. Known as the “garden on the sea,” it has an excellent harbour sheltered by a number of offshore islands, the most important of which, Quemoy (Pinyin: Jinmen; Wade-Giles: Chin-men), in the mouth of the estuary, has remained a fortress in the hands of the government on Taiwan. The region has a warm and humid subtropical climate, with abundant precipitation falling mainly in the summer months. Pop. (2002 est.) 963,019; (2007 est.) urban agglom., 2,519,000.

History

During the Song (960–1279) and Yuan (1279–1368) dynasties, Xiamen was known as Jiahe Island and formed a part of Tong’an county. It was notable chiefly as a lair of pirates and a centre of contraband trade. The name Xiamen first appeared when the island was fortified as one of a series of measures taken against piracy in 1387. During the 1650s it was under the control of Zheng Chenggong, or Koxinga (1624–62), the ruler of Taiwan, at which time it was called Siming prefecture. In 1680 it was taken by the forces of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12), after which it became the headquarters of the Quanzhou naval defense force.

Foreign trade there had begun with the arrival of the Portuguese in 1544, but they were expelled shortly thereafter. The port became known to Europeans as Amoy, and, under Zheng Chenggong’s rule, English and Dutch ships called there. British traders continued occasionally to visit Xiamen until 1757, when trade was restricted to Guangzhou (Canton). After the first Opium War (1839–42) between Britain and China, Xiamen was one of the first five ports to be opened to foreign trade and to residence by foreigners. A foreign settlement grew up on Gulang Island, in the harbour. Xiamen in the 19th century was preeminently a tea port, exporting teas from southeastern Fujian. The peak of this trade was reached in the 1870s but then declined, after which Xiamen became the chief market and shipping port for Taiwanese tea produced by local growers who had emigrated to that island.

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In the latter decades of the 19th century, Xiamen was the base from which Taiwan was settled and exploited, and the port retained a close link with the island even after the Japanese conquest of Taiwan in 1895; it also was one of the chief ports of departure for Chinese emigrants (overseas Chinese) settling elsewhere in Southeast Asia. With the decline of the tea trade in the early 20th century, Xiamen continued to export canned fruits, canned fish, paper, sugar, and timber. From 1938 to 1945 the area was occupied by the Japanese, and it was a point of contention between communist and Nationalist forces during the subsequent civil war.

The contemporary city

After the communists had established the People’s Republic of China on the mainland in 1949, the new government focused considerable attention on developing the city’s infrastructure and economy. A causeway was built in 1956, linking the island to the mainland, and a railway line was constructed from Xiamen to the border of Jiangxi province, with a branch to Fuzhou. The railway was completed in 1956. Industrial development at that time consisted chiefly of light manufacturing, notably the canning of fruit and fish, the production of cod-liver oil, fish meal, and other fish products, and sisal processing, sugar refining, tanning, and tobacco curing. Sizable ship-repairing and engineering industries were also established.

However, the city’s development was hampered at first by the high level of tension between the mainland and the Nationalist regime on Taiwan, which included periods of artillery shelling between Quemoy and Xiamen (notably an especially intense episode in 1958). Tensions between the two sides gradually diminished, and as China’s new policies of economic reform and openness were instituted in the early 1980s, Xiamen was designated one of the country’s special economic zones.

Prominent among the city’s several institutions of higher education is Xiamen University, which was founded in 1921 by Tan Kah Kee (Chen Jiageng), a patriotic overseas Chinese entrepreneur. Gulang Island, with its beautiful scenery, fine beaches, and notable architecture, and the Jimei District on the mainland opposite Xiamen Island, known for it gardens and historic buildings, are popular destinations for tourists from throughout the country.

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