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History
Liu Xiaoli and Liang Wei, authors of "Zhejiangcun: social and spatial implications of informal urbanization on the periphery of Beijing," wrote that the Lu Brothers, who originated from Qingjiang district, Yueqing county, Zhejiang, were "said" to be the founders of Zhejiangcun. In 1982 they had stopped in Beijing on a journey from Inner Mongolia back to their hometowns. They set up a stand to sell overstocked goods in proximity to the Qianmen underground passageway and found a high volume of sales. Instead of returning to Wenzhou they rented a room in a peasant's house and opened a business there. A governmental open door policy to commerce and industry was established in Beijing in 1983, increasing the influx of businesspeople. A lot of immigrants came from Wenzhou because that city had a strong tradition of business. In 1985,as the release of the Beijing commercial circulation, groups of investors from Wenzhou got there positions into this village, worked as the owners of various shopping malls. At that time, these people were running their businesses as thieves, they had to hide their vendors from the local law enforcements. From year 1988, Zhejiangcun started to get famous of its iconic product, the leather jackets. Developing with the "Reform and opening up", from 1992, Zhejiangcun's population from Zhejiang Province began exploded, around 50% the annual grouth. That is the origin of the name of "Zhejiangcun" undoubtly. The Zhejiangcun (known as Zhejiang Village) originated from six migrant families into 1984 and by 1998 boasted of over 100,000 migrants. Known mostly for its local clothing business, Zhejiangcun represents an intricate network of people and their connections. Despite the deplorable conditions of the village, most migrants choose to stay and live among their fellow migrants due to the social network. In November 1995 the authorities demolished large segments of the Zhejiangcun settlement.

Cityscape
The historical community, around the Nanyuan-Dahongmen area, covered 24 administratrive villages. The central portion of the area included the municipal villages of Dahongmen, Dongluoyuan, Ganyuan, Shicun, and Shiliuzhuang. Its borders were Muxiyuan to the north, Majiapo to the south, Chengshou Temple to the east, and Dahongmen to the south. The primary commercial street of Zhejiangcun was Dahongmen Street, which is 20 m wide. The centermost part of Zhejiangcun consisted of the municipal sub-villages of Shicun: Dengcun, Houcun, and Macun.

Pre-November 1995 Dahongmen Street included small retail shops selling clothing and wholesale markets. A 150 sqm open air market was located on a 100 m street in Macun. This market was demolished in November 1995.

Demographics
The October 1994 estimates stated that 110,000 migrant workers lived in the community. The local population was only about 15,000. In the rest of the immigrants, 80% of them originated from Wenzhou, Zhejiang, most of these immigrants are from Leqing, around 25% are from Yongjia. 95% of the Zhejiang immigrants were holding the rural households. Only 5% were directly immigranted as urban ones. Migrant enterpreneurs from rural Wenzhou began to appear in Beijing in the early 1980s, specializing in the clothing and textile industries. While initially numbering only six families in the area, Zhejiangcun grew to 110,000 migrants in a rural area located on the cusp of Beijing's southern rural-urban boundary in Fengtai district. Interestingly, despite its name and the focus of scholars, almost halp of the migrants resident and working in Zhejiangcun were not from Zhejiang: they were workers from Hebei, Sichuan, and Anhui (Ma and Xiang 1998:571; Zhang 2001:19).