Dabancheng District ( zh, s=达坂城区, t=達坂城區, p=Dábǎnchéng Qū) or Dawan Cheng ( ug, داۋانچىڭ رايونى, translit=Dawanching Rayoni, ), is one of 7
urban districts of the
prefecture-level city
A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province and above a county in China's administrative structure.
During the Republican era, many of Chi ...
of
Ürümqi
Ürümqi ( ; also spelled Ürümchi or without umlauts), formerly known as Dihua (also spelled Tihwa), is the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far northwest of the People's Republic of China. Ürümqi developed its ...
, the capital of
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,
Northwest
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each s ...
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
. Located southeast of the Ürümqi urban area, it contains an area of . According to the 2002 census, it has a population of 40,000.
The district seat of government is the
town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an o ...
of the same name (Dabancheng Town). The name means 'Pass City'. Just south of the town is a low pass on the road from
Urumchi southeast to
Turfan. It crosses a mountain spur that connects the main Tien Shan with the
Bogda Shan to the northeast. As of July 2015 GoogleEarth appears to show road and rail tunnels and viaducts being built to avoid the pass.
Human habitation and irrigated agriculture in this arid area are made possible primarily by streams flowing south from the
Bogda Shan range, which is located on the northern border of the district. The water that is not used up for irrigation locally flows into the district's several small lakes (Yanhu, Xiao Yanhu and
Chaiwopu Lake) or down the Baichang River into the
Toksun County
Toksun County is a county in Turpan Prefecture, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China.
Name
The term 'Toksun' means 'ninety'.
History
The Battle of Toksun took place in this county in July 1933 when Khoja Niyas Hajji, a Uighur leader, de ...
.
“It showed me the utter barrenness of the slopes of gravel and decayed rock over which the ascent is made from the Turfān depression to the watershed ; the remarkably low elevation of the latter, which on the plateau of Ta-fan-ch’êng Dawan Chengscarcely rises above 3,000 feet ; and the ease of communication secured by this route between the Turfān basin and Dzungaria. At the Chinese village of Ta-fan-ch’êng close to the watershed irrigation is still required for the fields, and a lively stream coming from the high Bogdo-ula mountains to the north-east serves this purpose. But on the low hills over which Urumchi is approached cultivation depends on rain and snowfall only. This marked change in climatic conditions made its effects strikingly felt when we reached Ta-fan-ch’êng from the south-east ; for there can be no doubt that the violent gales from the north-east for which the plateau is notorious, and one of which obliged us to make a day's halt there under rather trying conditions, are directly due to the ‘ aspiration ’ which draws the cold air of Dzungaria through this great gap of the T’ien-shan down into the deep depression of Turfān, where the atmosphere is warmed, even during the short winter, by far more abundant sunshine.”
Mountain ranges between Dabancheng and Ürümqi create a natural wind tunnel, increasing windspeed in the valley. Four of the five wind farms erected in Xinjiang in 2010 are in the area between National Highway 312 and the G30 Lianhuo Expressway, totaling more than 300 turbines.
Climate
References
{{Authority control
County-level divisions of Xinjiang
Ürümqi