China, officially Zhōngguó (中华), has been the largest and most dominant nation of East Asia since it was unified under a single emporer in 221 BCE. However imperial power waned during the nineteenth century, allowing European colonial powers to enter the country. Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, and Russia all established outposts in China. European engineers developed Chinese ports and built the first Western lighthouses, many of which remain in service today. After the imperial government was overthrown in 1912 China entered a long period of instability. The civil war between republican and Communist forces began in 1927. In 1937 Japan invaded, occupying large parts of China and starting a war that merged with World War II. After that war ended in 1945 civil war resumed and by 1949 the Communists achieved control of the entire mainland, the republicans retreating to the island of Taiwan. Today the People's Republic of China (PRC) has a lengthy coastline, many large harbors, and a large number of lighthouses. The country is divided into 22 provinces and 11 other province-level regions of various special types. The province of Zhèjiāng (formerly spelled Chekiang) occupies the central coast of the country, south of Shànghǎi and north of the Taiwan (Formosa) Strait. The province faces east on the East China Sea. The coastline is hilly and irregular, with more than 3000 islands of all sizes offshore. Zhèjiāng is divided into eleven prefectural-level cities. This page lists lighthouses of the southern half of the prefectural-level city of Wēnzhōu in southern Zhèjiāng Province, including the port of Ruì'ān and the coastline south to the border of Fújiàn province. This is the southernmost area of Zhèjiāng. Lighthouses in China are maintained by the PRC Maritime Safety Administration. The administration is organized in four regional administrations, with district offices in the major ports. All the lights on this page are maintained by the Wēnzhōu MSA office, which is part of the Shànghǎi Region. There are many languages and dialects spoken in China, but Standard Chinese, often called Mandarin, is official. The pīnyīn system for transliterating Standard Chinese into Latin characters is now the international standard but some locations continue to be known also under the spellings of older transliteration systems. The Chinese word for a lighthouse is dēngtǎ (灯塔). In Standard Chinese jiāo (formerly chiao) is a reef or rock, jiǎo is a cape or headland, dǎo (tao) is an island; yǔ (tsu) or tuózi ("lump") is a small island, hǎi is a sea, wān is a bay, hǎixiá is a strait, hé or jiāng is a river, hékǒu ("river mouth") is an estuary, and gǎng (kang) is a harbor. ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. CN numbers are the MSA List of Lights (助航标志表) numbers. Admiralty numbers are from volume P of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA List numbers are from Publication 112.
|
|
|
![]() Dōngguāyǔ Light, Dàběi Islands, Ruì'ān unattributed (probably MSA) photo |
|
![]() Dàotiāoshān Light, Píngyáng unattributed (probably MSA) photo (no longer online) |
|
![]() Píngyáng Zuǐ Light, Lónggǎngzhèn, May 1997 PRC MSA Shànghǎi Region photo |
Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: North: Wēnzhōu Area | South: Ningde, Fújiàn
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted June 9, 2008. Checked and revised December 27, 2023. Lighthouses: 34. Site copyright 2023 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.