Taicang is a

county-level city A county-level municipality (), county-level city or county city, formerly known as prefecture-controlled city (1949–1970: ; 1970–1983: ), is a county-level administrative division of the People's Republic of China. County-level ...

under the jurisdiction of

Suzhou Suzhou (; ; Suzhounese: ''sou¹ tseu¹'' , Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trad ...

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 c ...

province, China. The city located in the south of the

Yangtze River The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flow ...

estuary opposite

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

, being bordered by

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 ...

proper to the south, while the river also delineates much of its northeastern boundary along

Chongming Island Chongming, formerly known as Chungming, is an alluvial island at the mouth of the Yangtze River in eastern China covering as of 2010. Together with the islands Changxing and Hengsha, it forms Chongming District, the northernmost area of the prov ...

Administration

Taicang administers 7

towns 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 ori ...

History

Toponym

Taicang as a place name is mentioned in a memorial to the throne of geographer Jia Dan during the Song dynasty, "Where lies to the east of Kunshan nowadays", he supposedly wrote, "is called Taicang, also known as Gangshen".

Overview

Taicang is a natural port. Under the Yuan, the city reached its peak between 1271 and 1368. Under the

Ming The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han peop ...

, Taicang's Liuhe Harbor was the departure point for

Zheng He Zheng He (; 1371–1433 or 1435) was a Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat, fleet admiral, and court eunuch during China's early Ming dynasty. He was originally born as Ma He in a Muslim family and later adopted the surname Zheng conferre ...

's treasure fleets. It was also during this period that the shoals in the

Yangtze The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flow ...

estuary which later became

were placed under the supervision of Taicang Prefecture."Chongming County" in the ''Encyclopedia of Shanghai'', pp. 50 ff.
Shanghai Scientific & Technical Publishers (Shanghai), 2010. Hosted by the Municipality of Shanghai. It was the venue for the

2014 IAAF World Race Walking Cup The 2014 IAAF World Race Walking Cup was held in Taicang, China, on 3–4 May 2014. The course was a 2 km loop along Shanghai Road between Banjing Road and Loujiang Road in the centre of the city. It has already been used for the annual IAAF ...

Geography

The Taicang port is in the east of the city, and south of the Yangtze exit into the East China Sea. The center of the Taicang port is on 31°37′00" North, 121°14′00" East. The port line stretches 24.3 miles (38.8 km), of which 15.6 miles can park 50 thousand ton vessels. Taicang is in a humid subtropical climate zone with distinctive seasons. The average year round temperature is 15.5 Celsius. Precipitation is around 1078.1 mm.

Climate

Economy

Taicang is known for having operations from companies established by Germans since 1985, when the first German businessperson went to Taicang. Accordingly, the city obtained the nickname "Little Swabia" with it having German-inspired businesses. The area does not have a significant German population as the German expatriates prefer Shanghai since it contains the German School of Shanghai. The city has the German Centre for Industry and Trade Taicang (). ABA Chemicals, a chemicals manufacturing company, is headquartered in Taicang. By 2021 the city had a labor shortage with workers demanding higher wages.

Notable people

Chien-Shiung Wu ) , spouse = , residence = , nationality = ChineseAmerican , field = Physics , work_institutions = Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica University of California at BerkeleySmith CollegePrinceton UniversityColumbia UniversityZhejiang Univ ...

, the most famous female physicist in history by acclamation, who built the atomic bomb in the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

and disproved the

conservation of parity In physics, a parity transformation (also called parity inversion) is the flip in the sign of ''one'' spatial coordinate. In three dimensions, it can also refer to the simultaneous flip in the sign of all three spatial coordinates (a point ref ...

External links

Taicang guide on www.Jiangsu.net

References

{{authority control Cities in Jiangsu Administrative divisions of Suzhou County-level divisions of Jiangsu