Shuitou () is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an o ...

(a township-level division) of Nan'an City, in southern

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its ...

province,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

. Shuitou is located on the western side of the Shijing River and its estuary, the Anhai Bay (). It is connected to its eastern neighbor, the town of

Anhai Anhai is a town in southern Fujian province, People's Republic of China. It is located in the far southern suburbs of the Quanzhou metropolitan area. and is separated by Weitou Bay () from Kinmen, which is controlled by the Republic of China ...

, by the famous ancient five-'' li''-long Anping Bridge, built from large (some almost 10 meters long) slabs of stone. There is also a modern road to Anhai (and on to Jinjiang City and Quanzhou), which has a much shorter bridge over the Shijing, as the estuary has largely silted up over a thousand of years since the old bridge was built.

Economy

Shuitou - old pedestrian street - DSCF8927

Shuitou, similarly to its southern neighbor,

Shijing The ''Classic of Poetry'', also ''Shijing'' or ''Shih-ching'', translated variously as the ''Book of Songs'', ''Book of Odes'', or simply known as the ''Odes'' or ''Poetry'' (; ''Shī''), is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, co ...

, has a significant stone-working industry. There is a fair amount of new economic development in town, some of it connected to the trade with

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

Aquaculture Aquaculture (less commonly spelled aquiculture), also known as aquafarming, is the controlled cultivation ("farming") of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, mollusks, algae and other organisms of value such as aquatic plants (e.g. lot ...

is practiced on the Anhai Bay (the estuary of the Shijing River). As of ca. 2001, 138.5

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 i ...

s of the bay's mudflats and water surface were used for aquaculture; this included 37.5 ha used for raising the blood cockles ('' Tegillarca granosa'', 泥蚶), 58.3 ha used for the

Chinese razor clam ''Sinonovacula constricta'', the constricted tagelus, Chinese razor clam or Agemaki clam, is a commercially important species of bivalve native to the estuaries and mudflats of China and Japan. It is extensively aquafarmed in China and other ...

(''

Sinonovacula constricta ''Sinonovacula constricta'', the constricted tagelus, Chinese razor clam or Agemaki clam, is a commercially important species of bivalve native to the estuaries and mudflats of China and Japan. It is extensively aquafarmed in China and other ...

'', 缢蛏), 16.2 ha used for oyster farming, and 26.5 ha used for shrimp farming. Over 1400 people from Shuitou's Gangnei Village () were employed in aquaculture and fishing. Ruǎn Jīnshān; Li Xiùzhū; Lín Kèbīng; Luō Dōnglián; Zhōu Chén; Cài Qīnghǎi (阮金山;李秀珠;林克冰;罗冬莲;周宸;蔡清海),
安海湾南岸滩涂养殖贝类死亡原因调查分析
(Analysis of the causes of death of farmed shellfish on the mudflats in the southern part of Anhai Bay), 《福建水产》 (''Fujian Aquaculture''), 2005-04

References

Township-level divisions of Fujian {{Fujian-geo-stub

Economy

See also

References