Jiaxing

Jiaxing (Chinese: 嘉兴; pinyin: Jiāxīng; Wu Chinese: Gāshīng [kɑɕiŋ]) is a prefecture-level city in northern Zhejiang province, China. Lying on the Grand Canal of China, Jiaxing borders Hangzhou to the southwest, Huzhou to the west, Shanghai to the northeast, and the province of Jiangsu to the north. At the 2010 census, its population was 4,501,657 and its built-up area made of 2 urban districts was home to 1,201,882 inhabitants.

Administration

The prefecture-level city of Jiaxing administers 7 county-level divisions, including 2 districts, 3 county-level cities and 2 counties.

These are further divided into 75 township-level divisions, including 60 towns, 2 townships and 13 subdistricts.

History

Zhejiang

 Zhejiang , formerly romanized as Chekiang, is an eastern coastal province of China. Zhejiang is bordered by Jiangsu province and Shanghai municipality to the north, Anhui province to the northwest, Jiangxi province to the west, and Fujian province to the south; to the east is the East China Sea, beyond which lie the Ryukyu Islands of Japan.

Etymology

The province's name derives from the Zhe River (浙江, Zhè Jiāng), the former name of the Qiantang River which flows past Hangzhou and whose mouth forms Hangzhou Bay. It is usually glossed as meaning "Crooked" or "Bent River", from the meaning of Chinese 折, but is more likely a phono-semantic compound formed from adding 氵 (the "water" radical used for river names) to phonetic 折 (pinyin zhé but reconstructed Old Chinese *tet), preserving a proto-Wu name of the local Yue, similar to Yuhang, Kuaiji, and Jiang.

History

Prehistory

Zhejiang was the site of the Neolithic cultures of the Hemudu and Liangzhu. A 2007 analysis of the DNA recovered from human remains in the archeological sites of prehistoric peoples along the Yangtze River shows high frequencies of haplogroup O1 in the Liangzhu culture, linking them to Austronesian and Tai-Kadai peoples.