Xiamen

Xiamen (Simplified Chinese: 厦门; Traditional Chinese: 廈門; Hanyu Pinyin: Xiàmén) is a coastal sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian province, People's Republic of China. It looks out to the Taiwan Strait and borders the cities of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou to the north and south respectively. Xiamen is also known as Amoy or Ē-mn̂g. For most speakers of the Ē-mn̂g vernacular, the city name is Ē-mn̂g (using the POJ romanization). The same name is pronounced Ē-mûi in dialects spoken in the region west and southwest of the city, giving rise to the colonial-European spelling of Amoy. Xiamen is the name in Mandarin. The modern toponym literally means "The Gate of the Grand Mansion". Earlier, the name was written 下門 (same pronunciation), meaning "Lower Gate"--possibly because of its position at the mouth of the Nine Dragon River--but the authorities found the name too unrefined. Xiamen and the surrounding countryside is famous for being an ancestral home to overseas Chinese and Taiwanese as well as one of China's earliest special economic zones in the 1980s. It covers an area of 1,565 km² with a local population of 2.01 million. area code: 592