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 1,208square kilometers in land area, with a population of 1,12 million.
The city has a center named Huilong Township. It also has a well-known fish port named Lü Si town -- meaning Mr. Lü Dong Bing, a legendary figure, had visited the place for four times. The other towns include Hui Ping, Yin Yang, Bei Xin, Hai Fu, Nan Yang and many other.
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Before the Han Dynasty,Qidong's land is still under the Yellow Sea .It became the land until Mid-Qing Dynasty.March 1928, Qidong County was set up.In November 1989, the name "Qidong County" was abolished by following current policies. It has adopted the name "Qidong City" ever since.
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.
People living in Lüsi town speak a different dialect -- known as Lüsi dialect (lǜsìhuà 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 Lüsi 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.
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. Except Qidong High School, there are many other high schools, such as Huilong High School, Dongnan High School and so on. Although these schools are not as famouse as Qidong High School, the quality of the education is also good. People in Qidong pay much attention to the education.
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.
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.
The bridge is still under construction as of 30 July 2011. However, a short 1/2 hour ferry ride connects Qidong & Chongming Island from which we can travel on road to Changxing Island onward to Pudong, Shanghai.
The local industry focuses on pharmaceutical production, computer accessory production and chemical fertilizer production.
Qidong is today an offshore engineering & construction hub hosting companies like COSCO, SINOPACIFIC, DAO DA Heavy Industry and several other HEAVY INDUSTRY shipyard & fabrications facilities.
Major agriculture crops are fatwa beans, wheat, corns, rapes, soy beans, peanuts, yams, etc, and the cotton is very common there. The climate is suitable for pears, peaches, oranges and water melons.
Fishery is one of the major income for some villagers.
There are four distinguish seasons. Spring, Summer, Fall and mild Winter. In Summer, monsoon lasts for weeks and there is plenty of rain.