Jintang Island (金塘岛) is an island in the

Zhoushan Zhoushan , formerly romanized as Chusan, is an urbanized archipelago with the administrative status of a prefecture-level city in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang. It consists of an archipelago of islands at the southern mouth of H ...

prefecture-level city in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

's eastern

Zhejiang Zhejiang ( or , ; , also romanized as Chekiang) is an eastern, coastal province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable cities include Ningbo and Wenzhou. Zhejiang is bordered by Jiang ...

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

. It has a population of about 41700.Jintang Island Information Page
Zhoushan Web (2003-7-14) It is one of the closest islands to the continental shore of Zhejiang, being only from the southern Ningbo Beilun portJintang Island legends
and from the eastern

Zhoushan Island Zhoushan Island is the principal and namesake island in the Zhoushan Islands, formerly romanized as the ChusanIslands, an archipelago administered by Zhoushan Prefecture in Zhejiang Province in the People's Republic of China. It is the province ...

. Jintang is Zhoushan's fourth largest island with an area of .

History

The name Jintang Island is literally translated as "Golden Pond Island". It derived its name from the two ponds built on the western side of the island by the locals to prevent erosion of the western coastline. The soil of the inner pond coastline became fertile and rich in minerals, bringing about bountiful harvests to the locals who dub the island "Golden Pond" (金塘).

Industries

Jintang Island is largely an agricultural community. Its thriving industries include farming, fishing and furniture production. It is most famous for the production of Jintang Plums (金塘李), a local fruit. The fruit has received a number of awards and accolades, earning a Zhejiang Province High Quality Agricultural Product Exhibition Silver Award in 1998 and subsequently a Gold Award in 1999 when the island was also conferred the namesake of "Jintang Plum Township (金塘李之乡)" by the provincial government. Jintang Island coastal waters produce a large number of marine products, such as squid, cuttlefish, fish, and more.

Transportation

Transport between Jintang and Zhoushan is made by boat. In April 2006 work began for the construction of two bridges, the

Xihoumen Bridge The Xihoumen Bridge () is a suspension bridge on the Zhoushan Archipelago, the largest offshore island group in China. Linking Jintang and Cezi islands, the bridge, together with the 27-kilometer cable-stayed Jintang Bridge linking Jintang and ...

(西堠门大桥) and

Jintang Bridge Jintang Bridge () is a highway bridge with a cable-stayed bridge portion, built in Zhejiang, China on the Zhoushan Archipelago, the largest offshore island group in China. It is the longest bridge in Zhoushan Trans-oceanic Bridges with a length o ...

(金塘大桥) connecting Zhoushan Archipelago with the country's continental area, an improvement long-awaited by Zhoushan people. They are scheduled to be completed in 2008. The two bridges are the second phase of a huge "continent-island joint project" launched by Zhoushan in 1999 to link the archipelago with the mainland through five bridges. Construction of the other three bridges have been completed.

Xihoumen Bridge

The 5.3-kilometer-long Xihoumen Bridge, linking Jintang and Cezi, two major islands of the archipelago, is a suspension bridge consisting of a 2.6-kilometer sea-crossing bridge and 2.7-kilometer side joint sections on both ends, costing 2.48 billion yuan (US$299.87 million). It allows the passage of ships of 30,000 dead weight tonnage.

Jintang Bridge

The Jintang Bridge, linking Jintang Island and

Zhenhai Zhenhai is a district and former county of the sub-provincial city of Ningbo in Zhejiang Province in eastern China. It has a population of 200,000. History The town of Zhenhai grew up at the foot of Zhaobao Hill on a tongue of land at the mo ...

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Ningbo Ningbo (; Ningbonese: ''gnin² poq⁷'' , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), formerly romanized as Ningpo, is a major sub-provincial city in northeast Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It comprises 6 urban districts, 2 sate ...

prefecture), will be long. The 7-billion-yuan project consists of an sea bridge and joint sections totaling . On 27 March 2008, there has been an accident involving a Taizhou freighter that hit the bridge construction site. Two pieces of reinforced concrete from the bridge weighing 3000

ton Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses. Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean * the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds ...

s each got stuck in the cockpit of the freighter, which was moving at a fast pace. The accident will result in further delay to the completion of its construction. There are plans by a

Sino Sino as a prefix generally refers to: * China * Chinese people * Two Chinas * Culture of China * History of China Sino may also refer to: * Sino Group, a property company in Hong Kong * ''Sino'' (Café Tacuba album), the 7th studio album by M ...

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to build an

archimedes bridge A submerged floating tunnel (SFT), also known as submerged floating tube bridge (SFTB), suspended tunnel, or Archimedes bridge, is a proposed design for a tunnel that floats in water, supported by its buoyancy (specifically, by employing the hydro ...

in the Jintang

strait A strait is an oceanic landform connecting two seas or two other large areas of water. The surface water generally flows at the same elevation on both sides and through the strait in either direction. Most commonly, it is a narrow ocean channe ...