Chongming Island

Chongming lies in the Yangtze estuary north of the city, an island built entirely of river silt over more than a thousand years and still growing, one of the largest alluvial islands in the world at over a thousand square kilometres, and administratively part of Shanghai despite feeling nothing like it. Farmland, canals and small towns cover most of it. The Dongtan wetland at its eastern tip is a Ramsar site on the East Asian-Australasian flyway, where hundreds of thousands of migratory birds stop each year, including large numbers of shorebirds and wintering geese and swans. Shanghai has designated the island an ecological development zone, limiting industry.

History

Chongming began as two shoals, Xisha and Dongsha, that rose in the Yangtze mouth in the Wude era of the Tang dynasty, AD 618-626, and by 705 a town called Chongming, for its high and clear ground, stood on Xisha. Over the centuries new shoals rose and others sank with the river's floods, fishermen and salt makers settled them, Kublai Khan made Chongming a prefecture in 1277, and migrants from Pudong and Songjiang brought cotton growing in the late Yuan and early Ming; by around the end of the Ming in 1644 the shoals had merged into a single island (Wikipedia, Chongming Island).

What you'll find

• The Dongtan wetlands - Ramsar-listed mudflats on the migratory flyway.
• The farm landscape - canals, fields and villages unlike anywhere else in Shanghai.
• The Dongping forest park - planted woodland in the island's centre.
• The estuary - the Yangtze mouth and the silt that built the island.

When to go

October to April for the birds, with autumn and spring passage strongest and winter holding geese and swans; summer is hot, humid and mosquito-heavy. Weekends bring Shanghai day trippers to the parks.

What to expect

The island is large and flat, and public transport across it is slow; a car or bicycle helps considerably. Wetland access is restricted in the core reserve, with viewing from designated areas. Little English interpretation.

Nearby

Shanghai lies south across the tunnel; Jiangsu is north across the estuary.

Key facts