Wenzhou

Wenzhou is a port city in Zhejiang province on the southeast coast of China, at the mouth of the Ou River. Many Chinese families in Paris, Prato and Madrid trace their roots to Wenzhou and the villages around it.

According to tradition, the scholar Guo Pu laid out the walls of the town in the 4th century, placing them around its hills like the stars of the Big Dipper. It was then called Yongjia, and under the Tang dynasty it took the name Wenzhou, meaning ‘mild prefecture’, after its warm climate. Nanxi, the southern opera of the Song dynasty and one of the earliest forms of Chinese opera, began in Wenzhou in the 12th century. The port was opened to foreign trade in the late 19th century. After the reforms of the late 1970s, families in the city set up small private workshops, and the Wenzhou model of private business became known across China.

Chint, based in Yueqing, a county-level city governed by Wenzhou, makes circuit breakers, switches and solar equipment. Aokang, a shoe maker based in Wenzhou, sells its leather shoes for men and women through its own shops. Red Dragonfly, another shoe brand of the city, also sells through a chain of stores across China.

Jiangxin Island, in the middle of the Ou River, has two pagodas, one at each end, from the Tang and Song dynasties, and they long guided ships into the port. The Yandang Mountains, north of the city in Yueqing, are known for their rock pinnacles and waterfalls and are a UNESCO Global Geopark. The Nanxi River, a tributary of the Ou in Yongjia County, winds past old villages such as Furong, whose stone walls and lanes go back to the Song dynasty. Wenzhou dialect, a form of Wu Chinese, is hard to follow even for speakers of other Wu dialects nearby.