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Wenzhou Wikipedia

image:Wenzhou.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Wenzhou's Rui'an District

Wenzhou (Simplified Chinese:温州) is a city located in the southeastern corner of Zhejiang Province in China. It was a prosperous foreign treaty port, and remains well-preserved today. The people of Wenzhou are equipped with business sense and a commercial culture more dominant than anywhere else in China. They're informally known as "Chinese Jews." Wenzhou has two economic characteristics: it was the first to launch a market economy, and it has the most active and developed private economy in China. In the process of developing its economy, its people have survived adversity, and the government played an important role. Wenzhou's Gross domestic product|GDP per capita was ?28097 (ca. US$3390) in 2003, and it ranked no. 29 among 659 Chinese cities.

Wenzhou is also known for its emmigrants who leave their native land for Europe and the United States. They are very enterprising folks who start restaurants, retail and wholesale businesses in their adopted countries.

Wenzhou, also known as Yongjia (or Yung-chia) has a history which goes back to about 2000 BC, when it became known for its pottery production. In the 2nd century BC it was called the Kingdom of Dong'ou. Under the Tang Dynasty, it was promoted to prefecture status and given its current name in 675 AD.

Throughout its history, Wenzhou's traditional economic role has been as a port giving access to the mountainous interior of southern Zhejiang Province. In 1876 Wenzhou was opened to the foreign tea trade, but no foreign settlement was ever made there. In 1937-1942 during the war with Japan, Wenzhou became an important port due to its being one of the few Chinese ports still under Chinese control. It declined in the later years of the war but began to recover after coastal trade along the Zhejiang coast was re-established in 1955.

Today Wenzhou remains the chief economic, political and cultural center of southeastern Zhejiang Province. While ignoring the political trends of China through the years, it has embraced the recent economic changes to the point that it is in the midst of a frenzied development boom. It exports foodstuffs, tea, jute, timber, and paper. Its main industries are food processing, papermaking, building materials, with some engineering works producing mostly farm machinery. Food products produced in Wenzhou include medicinal tea and wine. Alunite (a non-metallic mineral used to make alum and fertilizer) is so abundant here that Wenzhou claims to be the "Alunite Capital of the World". Exploration for oil and natural gas has commenced in the East China Sea 100 km off the coast at Wenzhou.

Wenzhou natives speak Wu dialect Chinese, like the people of Hangzhou and Shanghai. Geographic isolation and an admixture of Southern Min Chinese speakers from nearby Fujian Province however have caused Wenzhou speech to evolve into a dialect that has been described as "notoriously eccentric."

Last Modified:   2005-03-13