Figure 13.1 Map of Jin-shanzui fishing village, Shanghai, China
Jin-shanzui is not only the oldest fishing village1 (extending back more than 6,000 years) on China’s Shanghai coast, it is also the last one.2 The village covers an area of 3.5 square kilometers, with a resident population of 2,000 people living in 692 households and comprising 500 retired fishermen. It is located along the north coast of Hangzhou Bay (Figure 13.1), with the Shanghai Chemical and Industrial Park to the east and Shanghai Petrochemical to the west. The village lies opposite the Jinshan Islands (Dajinshan, Xiaojinshan and Turtle Island).
This district of Shanghai lies in the prevailing subtropical East Asian monsoon zone, which has four distinct seasons. The climate is mild and humid, with an average daily temperature above 10°C. With the passing of warmer ocean currents in spring and summer, the coastal water temperature increases and plankton blooms occur in the nutrient-rich waters. Following the food, many fish and invertebrate species migrate inshore and prepare to reproduce, which is when the spring and summer fishing seasons start. Fu and Hu (1959) reported that – in contrast to the muddier coastline of the other Shanghai suburbs, the Jin-shanzui area has a 3-kilometer-long embankment that has been constructed from massive rocks based on and reinforced by numerous wooden pillars. Over time, this structure has provided a safe harbor and nursing ground for many species. The abundance of marine organisms in this area can be generally ranked, as shown in Table 13.1.
The fisheries activities of Jin-shanzui evolved in three stages (Xiang Mingsheng 2014): (1) beachcombing at the seashore, (2) exploiting the marine resources by fishing boat and (3) engaging in a deep sea fishery. Beachcombing at the seashore was done by fishermen who gathered fish and shrimp from the beach at low tide, without using ships, nets or other fishing tools. Rounding up mullet was a typical operation during this stage. The period of exploiting marine resources by fishing boat began when the resources obtained through beach fishing could not sustain the population anymore. As a consequence, fishermen started developing bamboo rafts, rowing boats and sampans. The larger and faster sampans enabled fishermen from Jin-shanzui to fish farther off the coast in Hangzhou Jinshan Bay. This in turn opened up a number of other ports such as Huangpansheng, Tanhusheng, Jiapaisheng, Baishansheng and Yangshansheng. In these ports, the water was deeper and in constant movement, allowing people to fish throughout the year without any seasonal restrictions (Table 13.2).
| Main species group | Species |
|---|---|
Hygropetrica |
Giant Pacific oyster (Saccostrea cucullata), nerite Snail (Nerita sp.) and green sea anemone (Anthopleura midori) |
Clay sand animals |
Sand anemone Edelsteinrose (Heteractis aurora, Bunodactis verrucosa), Say’s paper-bubble (Bullacta exarata), mantis shrimp (Oratosquilla oratoria) and ghost crabs (Macrophthalmus japonicas) |
Zooplankton |
Jellyfish (Esculentum), inkfish (Sepioidea) and Chinese water shrimp (Acetes chinesis) |
Others |
Largehead hairtail (Trichiurus lepturus), large yellow croaker (Larimichthys crocea), little yellow croaker (L. polyactis), cuttlefish (Sepiella maindroni) and swimming crab (Portunus trituberculatus) |
Source: Author’s own elaboration
Season |
Species |
Spring |
Yellow croaker (Clupanodon thrissa), silvery pomfrets (Pomfret), narrow-barred Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus commerson), Japanese Spanish mackerel (S. niphonius) and brown croaker (Miichthysmiiuy) |
Summer |
Coilia mystus, flower eel (Anguilla marmorata), white prawn (Exopalaemon) and rice prawn (Caridina denticulata sinensis) |
Autumn |
Jellyfish (Esculentum) |
Winter |
Flower eel (A. marmorata), C. mystus, baby croaker (Collichthys lucidus) and white bait (Hemisalanx prognathus) |
Source: Author’s own elaboration
The seagoing ability of the sampan pushed Jin-shanzui’s fishing industry through multiple developmental stages. Not only did the catch per unit effort increase, but the larger landings also sparked a local processing industry for dried fish. This again made it possible for fish to be sold in markets throughout the year. The many fish eggs recovered during the drying process were then further processed into a local delicacy (steamed fish egg) by adding white wine, vegetable oil and garlic. This delicacy has since become the specialty of every Jin-shanzui seafood restaurant. The fish and shrimp remains were then fed to chickens and ducks, which not only made them grow faster, but also stimulated their production of eggs, which promoted the development of the local poultry industry. This last stage also saw further infrastructure development in terms of a cold storage plant and the manufacturing of various types of fishing nets. All these activities produced a solid foundation for the transition of Jin-shanzui from a traditional fishing village to a multi-level, multi-stakeholder fish processing industry, with increasingly close links to the breeding and service industry, eventually turning it into a tourist destination for visitors from Shanghai and beyond.
Because the number of sampans and motorized sailboats had greatly increased, fishermen were no longer satisfied to fish only in Hangzhou Bay, so they started a more extensive seagoing fishing industry. Especially after the issue of the ‘Reform and Opening’ policy in 1978, the fishing village gradually implemented a contract system linked to their fishing productivity. This stimulated the oceanic, deep-sea fishing interest of fishermen, expanded the industry and increased the production, which peaked in 1987. At that time, Jin-shanzui had more than 1,000 seafaring fishermen and 45 fishing boats with a gross capacity of 1,650 tons that returned 58,000 tons of catch annually. The high-seas motorized sailboat fleet expanded to 17, and the boats were uniformly equipped with technical advancements like fish finders, position and movement detectors, satellite navigators, transmitter-receivers, interphones, etc. The fishing range was expanded from Hangzhou Bay to the high seas, south to the Diaoyu Islands and north towards Cheju Island, South Korea. As a consequence, fish production increased tremendously year after year. In 1985 the fishermen’s average yearly income was over US$1470.60, and the village became a paragon for the fisheries front of Shanghai’s coast.
However, since the 1990s, marine fish resources have steeply declined. For example, the wild large yellow croaker, silvery pomfrets and sierra in Hangzhou Bay basically vanished. Meanwhile, international oil prices rose continually, causing fishermen to spend more of their income on fuel and eventually suffering heavy financial losses. In 2005 Jin-shanzui’s high-seas fleet was disbanded and the fishing quotas were returned to the government. Currently, there are only around 200 fishermen in Jin-shanzui. Of these, 150 people (>50 years of age on average) are still engaged directly in capturing marine fish, with roughly 100 workers specialized in selecting and sorting fish and shrimp. To date, only 18 remaining fishing boats from Jin-shanzui still operate in the East China Sea.
The national fisheries management system of the East China Sea, Yellow Sea and Beibu Gulf was fundamentally affected by the new international fisheries policies of the 1990s, especially the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone that came into effect in 1994, and the following agreement, namely the Sino-Japanese Fishery Agreement and the Sino-Vietnam Beibu Bay Fishery Cooperation Agreement. Thus, the area of available coastal fishing grounds shrank substantially, which exacerbated the exploitation of the already crowded fishing grounds which remained open, resulting in a depletion of fish stocks (Song Liqing 2007).
Over many centuries, China has developed as a land-based economy. However, with the rapid growth of the modern socialist economy, pressures on land-based resources, including energy and space, greatly increased. Gradually, the Chinese government began to shift the development focus to the coastal ocean and its fishery resources. The attractive characteristics of fishing, such as flexibility, public accessibility, common property and externality, caused the investments in the industrial fishery to become larger and larger. Together with the previously mentioned reduction in fishing area, and thus marine workspace, this condensed input into the fishing industry resulted in the overexploitation of resources and an intensification of resource-related conflicts (Wang Jianyou 2013). Over the last decades, many scholars in China have put forth numerous recommendations to help the sustainable development of fish stocks, and the administrative department of Shanghai has adopted various measures (e.g. fishing quotas), but all have proven insufficient to control the heavy fishing intensity (Liu Shunbin 2006).
The degradation of Jin-shanzui’s terrestrial environment is mainly due to the diversion of inland rivers and brooks for aquaculture and other industrialized endeavors. In the late 1970s, culturing prawns in low-salinity seawater developed both rapidly and successfully. Up to 1990, a portion of the total 350 hectares in Jinshan County was devoted to farming prawns, with an average yield of 1,931 kg per hectare. Shrimp sales amounted to US$1,179,400, up to 500 aquaculture workers were provided with livelihoods and there were four aquaculture enterprises – this made Jin-shanzui the second-largest shrimp producer in Shanghai (only surpassed by Fengxian County).
As jobs in the capture fishing industry disappeared, the fishing village successfully set up cotton mills, sack factories and chemical plants that employed more than 400 people altogether. In addition, China’s famous mega corporations – Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company Limited and Shanghai Chemical Industry Park3 – were located around Jin-shanzui. The exploitation of marine resources along with the continuing construction activities for Jin-shanzui’s rapid economic development eventually resulted in the pollution of the surrounding rivers and coastal marine waters. Xu and Liu (2006) measured the water quality of the coastal area of Jin-shanzui in August 1993, July 1997 and February 2002. Dissolved oxygen and petroleum levels had reached the second-level water quality standard (which means the waters were slightly polluted but still drinkable after standard purifying processes). Inorganic nitrogen contamination was very serious (e.g. untreated wastewater, suspended solid waste or subsidence from the atmosphere) and had exceeded the second-level water quality standard. Eutrophication levels were also high and continued to increase in the areas studied, and three main sources of land-based pollution were found: garbage, animal waste and industrial effluents. Ren (2008) indicates that to some extent, diminishing offshore resources have inspired the rapid development of poultry breeding and other industries in many fishing villages of coastal China, followed by well-known environmental problems, for the fish resources as well as the people living from them directly or indirectly. This combination of dwindling resources and increasing ecological imbalance caused by massive environmental degradation has become a major hurdle to sustainable economic development of China’s fishing villages in general (Ren 2008).
Shanghai is the largest industrial and commercial city in China. Despite its rapid growth and environmental impact, the fishing industry only occupies a fairly small portion of Shanghai’s overall economy. Compared with regions where fishing is the main contributor to its GDP, the Jin-shanzui fishery only has low levels of production, systematization and industrialization. The fishery here is therefore neither equipped nor does it have the capacity to compete with the larger industrial activities and structures in Shanghai. Although the Chinese government strongly advocates for Blue Growth initiatives, the fishing industry is required to give way to other emerging industries, causing its further marginalization (Wang Jianyou 2013). Studies by Chen and Xu (2010) revealed an obvious relationship between a decline in the total biomass of zooplankton and the construction processes of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge. The question of how to balance this relationship and have a sustainable fishery and sustainable development for the local population remains unresolved. This is an important and urgent issue faced by most Chinese fishing villages at present as they seek to balance the relationship among sustainable development of the fishing industry, fishermen’s income needs, the fishing village’s prosperity and the sustainable utilization of the marine resources.
Jin-shanzui’s development took the following pathways over the past decades. In terms of the law of the evolution of industrial structures (Sun and Huang 2008), the primary industry exhibited a continually decreasing trend. Then the secondary industry rapidly increases and then stabilizes, whereas the tertiary industry presents an ascending trend. Around the 1970s, a new trend occurred in the industrial structures of Western developed countries: traditional industries were replaced by new industries, and the new industries gradually became the dominant industries; a non-agricultural and non-industrial trend in the entire economy became increasingly apparent, and the tertiary industry’s status became more and more prominent (Sun and Huang 2008). Since the construction of numerous chemical factories in the late 1980s, large amounts of waste water have been discharged into Hangzhou Bay. Together with overfishing, this has led to the exhaustion of fishery resources and, ultimately, the collapse of the fishing village economy. Following the construction principles of the new socialist countryside (including fishing villages) put forth by the ‘11th Five-Year Plan,’ a large number of fishermen switched to non-fisheries production activities or changed jobs entirely. However, some fishermen remained in the first industry, namely the nearshore fishery, for reasons of familiarity with and pride in their livelihoods. Meanwhile, they also engaged in the second industry of farming (aquaculture) and the processing of fishing goods (primarily from yellow croaker) on land. According to non-exhaustive statistics, today there are 16 shops selling sea goods and more than 20 restaurants and hotels that employ more than 200 people. Gradually, the industrial activities, including fishing storage, processing, packaging, sales, seafood cuisine and marine aquaculture, came into being and today consist of the culture industry typical of local fishing villages in Shanghai. The remaining challenges faced by the Jinshan district government include how to take full advantage of the remaining marine resources without jeopardizing the sustainability of the fishery and how to improve local fishermen’s living conditions and subsequently revitalize the fishing village’s economy. In 2011 the Jinshan district government placed the reconstruction of the Jin-shanzui fishing village on its 2012 Jinshan district major engineering and practical projects list.
In April of the same year, the district authorities brought in a marketing management team and set up the ‘Shanghai Jin-shanzui Fishing Village Investment Management Company Limited’ as a collective property (a company owned by all local residents) to implement development and management of the fishing village. The company was established in accordance with the theme ‘southeast China vernacular house style, coastal fishing village features’. It invested more than 40 million yuan (US$5.81 million) to conduct ‘deep’ development in the so-called ‘Shanghai’s last fishing village’, including rebuilding Seafood Street and Jin-shanzui’s Old Street with its distinctive ‘fishing village characteristics’, integrating the self-organized seafood restaurants, organizing coastal holiday tours, including the experience of sea fishing, and organic seafood catering – thereby achieving the ‘1 plus 1 is greater than 2’ effect, which increased tourism. Up to now, Jin-shanzui fishing village has expanded the parking lot, reconstructed toilets and built distinctive tourism attractions, such as the fishing village museum, old fishermen’s houses, fishing gear pavilion, Matsu cultural center and the fishing village’s old well, and launched the three-stage engineering plan of Jin-shanzui’s Old Street. According to the statistics of Jinshan District Tourist Administration, in 2012 Jin-shanzui fishing village received 420,000 tourists, with 56,000 people arriving during the mid-autumn and national day vacations. The number of tourists rose continuously between 2013 and 2014, with an estimated 500,000 people expected in 2015.
After Jin-shanzui fishing village established a marketing plan and realized an increase in tourist numbers, the village’s collective income increased rapidly. In 2012 the turnover in Old Street’s shops reached 520,000 yuan (US$75,540), and the operational revenue of the 20 hotels and restaurants under the village’s management reached 120 million yuan (US$17.43 million), which represented more than 70 percent of the total tourism-related revenue of Jin-shanzui. According to Han Xingyong (2014), after Jin-shanzui underwent its transition and development in 2011, fishermen’s incomes increased rapidly. In 2012 the disposable income of the entire district was 1,558,200 yuan (US$226,360) and the per capita income was 15,810 yuan (US$2,296). Jin-shanzui’s fishery now relies on marine aquaculture and takes advantage of the development of the tourism industry, which has had an important impact on increasing fishermen’s incomes and the economic revival of the fishing village.
The following experiences and inspirations from the transformation and development of Jin-shanzui fishing village can be noted:
Jin-shanzui fishing village, as the oldest and the last completely maintained fishing village in Shanghai’s coastal area, depends on the transformation of its seagoing culture and innovative development. This, in turn, has not only helped to showcase one piece of Shanghai’s valuable history, but also to inherit and develop its unique ‘fishing’ culture. In 2016 Jin-shanzui fishing village launched its new ‘1 + 2 + 3’ plan of creating a development structure as follows:
One seascape for the fishing village, which integrates the natural and social landscapes of the three islands of Jinshan, the industrial landscape for the active fishermen in the village, the historical landscape of coastline transformation and the landscape of coastal defense;
Two parks, namely the ‘Cultural Park of Matsu’, which runs under the model of “under the guide of the government, take advantage of the association and the market”, and the ‘Cultural Creative Park of the Ocean’, which consists of an ‘Exhibition and Sales Center for Cultural Products’, and a ‘Creative Incubator Base of Ocean Culture’; and
Three featured streets, that is, the Old Street of Jin Shan Zui (shopping), Seafood Street (food and delights) and Anbo Street (tourism). It is expected that Shanghai’s Jin-shanzui fishing village will become an excellent model for coastal tourism with its integration of leisure, food, sightseeing and culture after three to five years of innovative and advantage-based developments.
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