China will host women’s 2013 FIVB Beach Volleyball Xiamen Grand Slam

Continuing to expand on the scope and reach of international professional beach volleyball, the FIVB announced that Xiamen, China will host the double-gender FIVB Beach Volleyball Xiamen Grand Slam, which will be held from October 22 to 27.

China has hosted more than 23 women’s and 14 men’s tournaments on the FIVB World Tour, but this will be the first visit for an FIVB international beach volleyball event in the city of Xiamen. The event in Xiamen is one of three FIVB international beach volleyball events being held in China this year. The first was the 2013 FIVB Open tournament held in Fuzhou on April 23 to 28, followed by the Shanghai Grand Slam, which took place from April 30 to May 5, 2013.

With a guaranteed purse of US$120,000, the bonus pool will push the total purse for the event to nearly $220,000.

As part of a new development strategy focusing on the current Olympic cycle, the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Council decided that FIVB Beach Volleyball Opens would no longer be part of the World Tour in 2013, putting in place an intermediate property that provides more opportunities for athletes worldwide to play.

With a total of five FIVB Beach Volleyball Opens currently on the 2013 calendar comprising four double-gender and one women-only tournaments, there are numerous possibilities for athletes to compete in high quality, international competition.

Xiamen, also known as Amoy, is a major city on the southeast (Taiwan Strait) coast of the People's Republic of China. It is administered as a sub-provincial city of Fujian province with an area of 1,699.39 square kilometers (656.14 square miles) and a population of 3.67 million. Its built up area is now bigger than the old urban island area and covers all six districts of Xiamen (Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, Haicang and recently Xiang'an). It borders Quanzhou to the north and Zhangzhou making this a unique built up area of more than five million people. The Jinmen (Kinmen) Islands administered by the Republic of China (Taiwan) are less than 10 kilometers (6.2miles) away.

Xiamen was a treaty port in the 19th century and one of the four original Special Economic Zones opened to foreign investment and trade when China began economic reforms in the early 1980s. In 2006, Xiamen was ranked as China's second "most suitable city for living", as well as China's "most romantic leisure city" in 2011.