FUZHOU CITY

Fuzhou (Chinese: 福州; pinyin: Fúzhōu; Fuzhou dialect: Hók-ciŭ) is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian Province, People's Republic of China. Along with the many counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute the Mindong (闽东, lit. East of Fujian) linguistic and cultural area.

Fuzhou's core counties lie on the north (or left) bank of the estuary of Fujian's largest river, the Min River. All along its northern border lies Ningde, and Ningde's Gutian County lies upriver. Fuzhou's counties south of the Min border on Putian, Quanzhou, Sanming and Nanping municipalities. Its population is 7,115,370 inhabitants at the 2010 census whom 4,408,076 inhabitants are urban standing around 61.95%, while rural population is at 2,707,294 standing around 38.05%.

The First Emperor of Qin unified ancient China in 221 BC and desired to bring the southern and southeast regions under Chinese rule. The Qin Dynasty organized its territory into "Commanderies" (Chinese: 郡; pinyin: jùn) - roughly equivalent to a province or prefecture - and the Fujian area was organized as Minzhong Commandery (Chinese: 闽中郡). The area seems to have continued mostly independent of Chinese control for the next century. The Han Dynasty followed the short-lived Qin, and Emperor Gaozu of Han declared both Minyue and neighboring Nanyue to be autonomous vassal kingdoms. In 202 BC Emperor Gaozu enfeoffed a leader named Wuzhu (Chinese: 无诸, Old Chinese: *Matya) as King of Minyue, and a walled city called Ye (Chinese: 冶, Old Chinese: *Lyaʔ, literally "Beautiful") was built. The founding of Ye in 202 BC has become the traditional founding date of the city of Fuzhou.

Fuzhou has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa) influenced by the East Asian Monsoon; the summers are long, very hot and humid, the winters are short, mild and dry. In most years torrential rain occurs during the monsoon in the second half of May. Fuzhou is also liable to typhoons in late summer and early autumn. Monthly daily means range from 10.9 °C (51.6 °F) in January to 28.9 °C (84.0 °F) in July, while extreme temperatures have ranged from −1.7 °C (29 °F) to 41.7 °C (107 °F).