Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
connected to Shanghai through new infrastructure like bridges and train
routes. h ese connections have created completely new visions and stories.
h e bridges and tunnels themselves conjured and imagined the narratives
and hopes about the island's future, graphically illustrated through plan-
ning documents and project descriptions.
Chongming is a pretty agricultural landscape of farms, trees, occasional
wandering livestock like goats, numerous two-story new houses, and
decrepit old apartment blocks.
Chong
means high and
Ming
means unre-
strained and far-reaching, and thus
Chongming
denotes the broad fl atland
above the water. Two sandbanks in the estuary emerged out of the sea in the
Tang Dynasty (a.d. 618) called Dongsha (East Sandbank) and Xi'sha (West
Sandbank). Soon afterward, six households of fi shermen became the earliest
residents.
10
Historically, Chongming was administered as part of the Jiangsu
province to the north, but since 1958, it has been part of Shanghai city.
11
Chongming Island grows ever larger each year at an increasing rate
because of environmental damage upstream. Deforestation, a result of rapid
economic development over the past half century, has led to increased silt-
ing. h e island doubled in size between 1950 and 2005 and is currently about
three hundred square miles. h e island's wetland area was listed as a nation-
ally protected area in 1992, and in 2001, it became an “important bird area”
listed under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.
12
Although best known as
a passage area for the critically endangered black-faced spoonbill, Chong-
ming's wetlands also provide passage for the spotted greenshank and winter
grounds for the hooded crane.
Chongming County has thirteen towns and three villages, with a popula-
tion of approximately 700,000 locals and a “fl oating population” of people
from other regions of approximately 111,000 (including thousands displaced
by the h ree Gorges Dam project who chose o' cial relocation to Chongming).
h e Han are the majority ethnic group, along with minorities of Mongolian,
Hui, Man, Zhuang, Bai, Yi, Chaoxian, Uygur, Buyi, Hani, Tujia, and Tibetan.
