The treaty abolished the monopoly of the Thirteen Factories on foreign trade ( Article V ) in Canton and instead five ports were opened for trade, Canton ( Shameen Island until 1943 ), Amoy ( Xiamen until 1930 ), Foochowfoo ( Fuzhou ), Ningpo ( Ningbo ) and Shanghai ( until 1943 ), where Britons were to be allowed to trade with anyone they wished.

Fujian province in mainland China is to the west of the strait, while important islands like Quemoy, Xiamen Island, Pingtan Island, and the Matsu Islands lie just off the coast.

In 1656, he named Xiamen Island, Siming ( 思明洲 ), or " Remembering the Ming ".

Due to political tensions, the eastern half of Xiamen Island and much of the Fujian Coast facing the offshore islands remained undeveloped in the 1960s and 1970s.

Gulangyu Island in the foreground and Xiamen Island in the background

Xiamen comprises Xiamen Island ( longitude 118 ° 04 ' 04 " E, latitude 24 ° 26 ' 46 " N ), Gulangyu Island, and part of the rugged mainland coastal region from the left bank of the Jiulong River in the west to the islands of Xiang ' an in the northeast.

The city centers on Xiamen Island, which is divided between Huli District and Siming District ( which also encompasses Gulangyu ).

The Gaoji ( Gaoqi-Jimei ) Causeway built in 1955 – 1957 transformed Xiamen Island into a peninsula ( 半岛 ), and so it was termed in the heady propaganda of the time.

Just east of Xiamen Island are the Jinmen Islands, also spelled " Kinmen " and known as " Quemoy ".

At their nearest points, Greater Jinmen is about from Xiamen Island and Lesser Jinmen, also known as Lieyu, is about away.

Glossika divides the Min languages into eight: Northern Min ( Min Bei in Nanping prefecture in Fujian, but Jian ' ou dialect is the standard dialect of Min Bei ), Shaojiang ( eastern Nanping and surrounding areas ; in broader classifications treated as a dialect of Min Bei ), Eastern Min ( Min Dong in Fuzhou and Ningde prefectures ), Central Min ( Min Zhong in Sanming prefecture ), Puxian Min in Putian prefecture, Southern Min ( Min Nan in Zhangzhou, Quanzhou, and Xiamen ( Amoy ) prefectures and on Taiwan ( Hokkien dialect ), and in eastern Guangdong province ( Teochew dialect ); Hokkien and Teochew are sometimes considered separate languages ), Leizhou ( on the Leizhou Peninsula in Guangdong ), and Hainanese ( on Hainan Island ; in broader classifications Leizhou and Hainanese are treated as a Qiongwen language or as dialects of Min Nan ).

Visitors can reach it by ferry from Xiamen Island in about 5 minutes.

Xiamen ( also known as Amoy ) became a treaty port resulting from China's loss in the First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, hence the predominantly Victorian-era style architecture throughout Gulangyu Island, where 13 countries including Great Britain, France and Japan established consulates, churches, and hospitals.

Gulangyu Island Statue of Koxinga facing Xiamen

Neither cars nor bicycles are allowed, thus providing an alternative to the busier Xiamen Island across the river, although the recent introduction of electric tourist buggies may be damaging the island's charm.

It is located in central Xiamen Island, north of the original Siming District and south of Huli District.

Siming District () is on southeastern Xiamen Island and the seat of the city of Xiamen, People's Republic of China.

Until his retirement in late 2010 he was a professor at Xiamen University, where he taught theoretical physics and computer science, and ran the Artificial Brain lab.

In 2006, Xiamen was ranked as China's second " most suitable city for living ", as well as China's " most romantic leisure city " in 2011.

The area where Xiamen now exists was known as Tong ' an () in some Han Dynasty records, though the area was not significantly settled by Han Chinese until several centuries later.

Originally, the name Xiamen was written "" (, BP: ), possibly referring to its position at the mouth of the Nine Dragon River.

The city was renamed by the Manchus in 1680 to Xiamen Subprefecture.

In 1949, Xiamen became a provincially administered city ( 省辖市 ), then was upgraded to a vice-province-class city ( 副省级市 ), or a municipality.

In 1541, European traders ( mainly Portuguese ) first visited Xiamen, which was China's main port in the nineteenth century for exporting tea.

Xiamen was one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanking ( 1842 ) at the end of the war.

During World War II, Xiamen was occupied by Japan from May 1938 to September 1945.

In the Chinese Civil War that followed, the islands of Xiamen and Gulangyu were captured by Communist forces in October 1949 but an assault on the island of Jinmen was repelled by Nationalist defenders.

When China began to reform its economy, Xiamen was made one of the original Special Economic Zones in 1980, to attract foreign investment, particularly from overseas Chinese.

Trade and travel between Xiamen and Jinmen was restored and later expanded to include direct air travel to Taiwan.

In 1999, the largest corruption scandal in China's history was uncovered in Xiamen, implicating up to 200 government officials.

According to the 2010 Census, Xiamen has a population of 3, 531, 347 inhabitants, almost 1. 8 times the population counted for the last census in 2000 ( which was of 2, 053, 070 inhabitants ).

In 1874, 60 Christian woman in Xiamen called for an end of the practice and it was championed by the Woman's Christian Temperance Movement in 1883, and advocated by missionaries including Timothy Richard, who thought that Christianity could promote equality between the sexes.

Originally comprising a territory of 2. 5 km² in Xiamen City, it was expanded to 131 km² in 1984, covering the entire Xiamen Island, which comprises Huli District and Siming District excluding Gulangyu.

In June 1844 he was appointed interpreter at Amoy ( Xiamen ) and in March 1845 he and his consul, Mr ( afterwards Sir ) Rutherford Alcock, were transferred to Foochow, where Parkes was attacked by stone-throwing Manchu soldiers on 4 October.

His paternal grandmother, Chua Jim Neo, was a Hokkien Nyonya, and his mother has ancestry from Tong ' an District, Xiamen, Fujian, China.

In December, CNY810 million ($ 121. 5 million ) was injected by China Southern Airlines into its subsidiary Xiamen Airlines to fund its fleet expansion.

Xiamen (), also known as Amoy, is a major city on the southeast ( Taiwan Strait ) coast of the People's Republic of China.

One explanation is it is derived from the transliterated mispronunciation of the Amoy ( Xiamen ) dialect word for a Chinese tea known as " white down / hair " ( 白毫 ; ).

Amoy ( 廈門 ) is the old English romanisation, based on the Min Nan pronunciation of the city in Fujian province, China known in Mandarin as Xiamen.

Xiamen University ( XMU, Latin: Universitas Amoiensis, ), colloquially known as Xia Da (), located in Xiamen, Fujian province, is the first university in China founded by overseas Chinese.

These workers seemingly all came from Fujian via the port then known as Amoy ( Xiamen ) and some may have been brought involuntarily, as kidnapping or the ' sale of pigs ', as it was called, was common.

It is also known as the South Chinese, the Chinese, and the Xiamen tiger.

Xiamen ( then known as Amoy ) was one of these treaty ports, and British, Canadian and American missionaries moved in to start preaching to the local inhabitants.

Quanzhou and Zhangzhou are two major varieties of Southern Min, and in Xiamen they combined to form something " not Quan, not Zhang " – i. e. not one or the other, but rather a fusion, which became known as Amoy Dialect or Amoy Chinese.