Qidong, Jiangsu

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view east from 1888 Renmin Road, Qidong City (May 2007)

Qidong (启东) is a county-level city in Jiangsu Province of People's Republic of China. It is located on the north side of the Yangtze River opposite Shanghai. It occupies a total of 1,157 square kilometers in land area, with a population of 1.16 million.

The city has a center named Huilong Township. It also has a well-known fish port named Lv Si town -- meaning Mr. Lv Dong Bing, a legendary figure, had visited the place for four times. The other towns include Yin Yang, Bei Xin, Hai Fu, Nan Yang and others.

1 History
2 Population and Culture
3 Language
4 Education
5 City Development
- 5.1 Entertainment
- 5.2 Constructions
6 References
7 External links

[edit] History

In November 1989, the name "Qidong County" is abolished by following current policies. It has adopted the name "Qidong City" ever since.

[edit] Population and Culture

The county was formed from sands in the Yellow Sea in Qing Dao Guang or Qian Long. People migrated to the newly founded land from both South Ning Bo, Or North. And therefore there are two dialects.

[edit] Language

People living in lvsi town speak a different dialect -- known as lvsi dialect (lvsìhuà 吕四话) or Tongdong dialect (tōngdōnghuà 通东话) -- from most other residents, who generally speak Qidong Dialect (qǐdōnghuà 启东话). The two dialects are considerably different and thus they are not mutually intelligible. Because most economic, educational and governmental activities are held in the city capital Huilong, where Qidong Dialect is prevalent, many residents of Qisi have learned to understand and even speak the majority dialect.

Qidong Dialect is a dialect of Wu Chinese. Some people consider it similar to Shanghainese, also a dialect of Wu Chinese, mostly spoken in the city of Shanghai. It is almost the same as the dialect spoken in Chongming, which is a town under administration of Shanghai.

Both of the two dialects belong to the Northern Wu dialect. However, because of cultural differences among two places, there still exist non-intelligible usage mostly in vocabulary.

[edit] Education

Qidong High School located at Huilong Town enjoys a high reputation which basically is owed to its so-called "Special Class" where most students can be awarded in national mathematics, physics and chemistry competitions and almost half of the students can be admitted to Tshinghua University, Peking University and other famous universities.

[edit] City Development

Note planned bridge south to Shanghai (May 2007 photo)

[edit] Entertainment

At the end of 2006, KFC and McDonalds made their debut in Qidong respectively. This is seen as unusual because those two international companies rarely set up branches in county-level cities in China.

Qidong hosts an annual Seafood festival and trade fair in late May.

[edit] Constructions

A newly constructed 200-300 mile Ning Qi highway connects Nanjing to Qidong.

There is a on-going plan to build a bridge across the Yangtze River to link with Qidong-ChongMing-Shanghai, which might be finished around 2010.^{[citation needed]}