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. 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 (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 and Qidong, two

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers 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, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its ca ...

, 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 ...

s () under cultivation, growing corn 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

's pene-enclave

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, C ...

s of

Haiyong Haiyong () is a town of Haimen District in Nantong, Jiangsu, China. Together with neighboring Qilong, it forms a pene-enclave of the province on Chongming Island, most of which belongs to the province-level municipality of Shanghai. Haiyong pre ...

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 flowin ...

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 Haimen'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