Yonglongsha, sometimes translated as the Yonglong Shoal or Yonglong Sands, was a

former island A former island is a mass of land that was once an island, but has been joined to a mainland, another island, or engulfed by a body of water. The process of joining might be the result of volcanic activity, moving tidal sands, or through land re ...

in the north channel of the

Yangtze River The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest list of rivers of Asia, river in Asia, the list of rivers by length, third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in th ...

above Chongming in eastern

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 ...

. It was also known as Yongfengsha and Hefengsha.Office of Shanghai Chronicles. '"Dǎo, Shā"'', "Islands and Shoals" Shanghai Municipal Government (Shanghai), 2015. Accessed 12 Jan 2015. Prior to its absorption by Chongming, it measured about east to west but was very narrow, with an area of about .

History

Yonglongsha first appeared in the 42nd year of

Kangxi The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 1654– 20 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Shengzu of Qing, born Xuanye, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1661 to 1 ...

(1703) but was impermanent. It emerged most recently in 1937. Eroding on the south and east while growing to the north and west, it migrated from the center of the Yangtze's northern channel towards Chongming. Its shores were stabilized and expanded by workers from

Haimen Haimen (, Qihai dialect: , Shanghai: ) is a district of Nantong, Jiangsu province, with a population of approximately 1 million. It is located at the opposite side of the Yangtze River to Shanghai and is directly north of Chongming Island except ...

and Qidong, two

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

-level

cities A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

Nantong Nantong (; alternate names: Nan-t'ung, Nantung, Tongzhou, or Tungchow; Qihai dialect: ) is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Jiangsu province of China, province, China. Located on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, near the river mouth. ...

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, Postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an Eastern China, eastern coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China. It is o ...

, in the late 1960s. The reclaimed areas were administered at first as farmsteads. By 1968, there were 1,800

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...

s () under cultivation, growing

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

and

fava bean ''Vicia faba'', commonly known as the broad bean, fava bean, or faba bean, is a species of vetch, a flowering plant in the pea and bean family Fabaceae. It is widely cultivated as a crop for human consumption, and also as a cover crop. Var ...

s. Another 3000 workers sent by Haimen over the next year reclaimed another by 1970. The same year, 200 households became the island's first permanent inhabitants. Qidong's area of the island began to merge with Chongming in 1972, followed by Haimen's three years later. Now its former area continues to be administered as

pene-enclave An enclave is a territory (or a small territory apart of a larger one) that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state or entity. Enclaves may also exist within territorial waters. ''Enclave'' is sometimes used improperly to deno ...

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...

s of

Haiyong Haiyong () is a Towns of the People's Republic of China, town of Haimen District in Nantong, Jiangsu, China. Together with neighboring Qilong Township, Qilong, it forms a list of enclaves and exclaves#Subnational pene-enclaves.2Fexclaves and ina ...

and Qilong rather than as part of

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

Chongming County Chongming District () is northernmost district of the provincial-level municipality of Shanghai. Chongming consists of three low-lying inhabited alluvial islands at the mouth of the Yangtze north of the Shanghai peninsula: Chongming, Changxi ...

. Areas of the former channel between the two islands form the North Heng Irrigation Canal p ''Běi Héng Yǐnhé''), a stretch of the canal which runs in a partial ring around Chongming Island. A separate area of present-day Qilong derives from its absorption of a second shoal, Xinglongsha p ''Xīnglóngshā''), which likewise formed in the middle of the Yangtze's channel and then migrated over time towards Chongming..

Infrastructure

During its existence, the island had ferry service to

's Lingdian Harbor ( t , s , p ''Língdiāngǎng'') and Qidong's Sanhe Harbor (, ''Sānhégǎng''). Its communities are now connected to Chongming's highway and ferry network, including the Chongqi Bridge to Qidong.

References

External links

* at Hudong Baike {{coord missing, Jiangsu Former islands of China Islands of Jiangsu Nantong

History

Infrastructure

See also

References

External links