AS LEADERS of both Essex County Council and the governor of the Jiangsu Province, in China sign a momentous agreement hoped to boost trade, and create an official partnership between the regions, here are the top 14 facts you need to know about our new trade partner.
1. It is the most densely populated of all China's provinces with 79.2 million residents across 102,600 km2, making around 772 persons per km2 compared to Essex's 471 per km2.
2. It has 106 areas akin in status to our counties, and these are classified further into 13 cities.
3. It is known as the "country of fish and rice" and the "land of rivers and lakes".
4. It stretches along both banks of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and also borders the Yellow Sea in the east.
5. It makes up just 1.06% of China's total territory.
6. The capital city is Nanjing , which was the capital of China for several periods throughout history.
7. It has two main linguistic regions with the southern part speaking Wu, while the northern part is Mandarin speaking.
8. The local cuisine is similar to that serviced up in Shanghai, with recipes using soy, ginger, sugar and Shaoxing wine. 'Dazha crab' is their specialty.
9. It gets even more rain than us, with an estimated 724 - 1,120 mm of rainfall per year.
10. Their coastline is often visited by destructive typhoons (also known as tropical cyclones) between late summer and early autumn.
11. Pingtan, form of storytelling accompanied by music, is very popular in Jiangsu.
12. With more than 14,000 miles of inland waterways, it carries more than a quarter of its goods by water.
13. It is the birthplace of kunqu, one of the oldest forms of Chinese opera
14. A product popularly sold in the Nanjing area is a zhijing– handwoven silk – and particularly cloud brocades, which use every shade of colour to portray the clouds of sky at sunset.
