ABSTRACT
Teng Tou is a small village of 795 persons in 275 households, situated in Fenghua County, in the low-lying north-east region of Zhejiang province, facing the East China Sea. The nearest city is Zhejiang’s second largest, Ningbo, some 27 kms away, a city of 5.2m people, large enough to have its own airport, and with direct transport links from Shanghai by train (six hours) and ship (via the harbour facility at Zhenhai, ten hours). The only means of transport from Ningbo to Teng Tou is by automobile, but the new toll highway linking Ningbo and Fenghua, the county town, runs within a kilometre of Tengtou, so the village, while located in a wholly rural location, is currently well integrated into the rapidly developing economy of the region. The fast industrial and commercial development which has been characteristic of the eastern seaboard of China in the 1980s and 90s has made Zhejiang province one of the richest and fastest growing provinces in China with an annual GDP per head of 10,515 yuan in 1996 (China Statistical yearbook, 1998, p.65), ahead of its northern neighbour, Jiangsu, and surpassed only by the three municipalities of Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, and the province of Guangdong. The residential part of Teng Tou today is very compact, and in the summer, looks very pretty, with fruit trees, vines and flowers in evidence, with neat rows of modern two storey houses and fronted by a newly built village headquarters, which houses offices, meeting rooms and the guest house. It is surrounded by three small ‘industrial’ areas, 818 mu of arable land, 191 mu of orchards, 156 mu of forests and 66 mu of water surfaces (Teng Tou propaganda sheet, in Chinese, undated).
