Jingning County () is an administrative district in

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibe ...

, China. It is one of 58

counties A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

of Gansu. It is part of the

Pingliang Pingliang () is a prefecture-level city in eastern Gansu province, China, bordering Shaanxi province to the south and east and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to the north. The city was established in 376 AD. It has a residential population of 2 ...

prefecture, with the city of the same name being the prefecture seat. Its postal code is 743400, and in 2006 its population was 463,400 people. Its county seat is Chengguan. The county government's jurisdiction is over 19

townships A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, C ...

, 392

villages A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

, 2320 other communities and 4 neighbourhoods.

History

There is evidence of

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

settlements in Jingning. The area was also inhabited during most of Chinese history, including the

Three Kingdoms The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Eastern Han dynasty and was followed by the West ...

period. Sites have been dated to the

Qin Dynasty The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin state (modern Gansu and Shaanxi), ...

. During the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific T ...

, the area was evacuated (1940). The

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...

Long March The Long March (, lit. ''Long Expedition'') was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Army of the Chinese ...

entered Jingning on September 10, 1935.

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...

set up a headquarters in Shi Pu. The Communists left the next month. However, the county was taken under Communist control by the

People's Liberation Army The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the principal military force of the China, People's Republic of China and the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The PLA consists of five Military branch, service branches: the People's ...

during the

Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on main ...

. PLA troops entered on August 6, 1949. They met little resistance.

Geographical location

Located in the

Loess Plateau The Chinese Loess Plateau, or simply the Loess Plateau, is a plateau in north-central China formed of loess, a clastic silt-like sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. It is located southeast of the Gobi Desert and is surrounde ...

, it is at an altitude of around 2000 meters. The county has an area of 2193 km². Out of its population of 463400, 444500 (95.92%) are registered as working in

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people ...

. Ethnic Han and Hui make up most of the population.

Climate

The average annual temperature is , and the climate regime is classified as

semi-arid A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi- ...

. The area is frost-free for 159 days a year, and there are an average of 2238 hours of sunshine a year. The summer is the 'wet season' whereas the spring and the winter are drier. Average annual rainfall is .

Administrative divisions

Jingning County is divided to 1 subdistricts, 17 towns and 7 townships. ;Subdistricts * Chengqu () ;Towns ;Townships

Economy

Among the items it produces are wheat, potatoes, corn,

millet Millets () are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Most species generally referred to as millets belong to the tribe Paniceae, but some millets a ...

, buckwheat, oats, sesame,

rapeseed Rapeseed (''Brassica napus ''subsp.'' napus''), also known as rape, or oilseed rape, is a bright-yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage family), cultivated mainly for its oil-rich seed, which naturally contains a ...

, apples, pears and vegetables. The county is environmentally diverse, with more than 70 species of tree existing within the county, including apple trees, pear trees and the ash tree. For fruit production, the south of the county is more prevalent for apples, whereas pears are grown in the north. Many other things are cultivated in the county, including lilacs, leeks, garlic and licorice.

Mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the econom ...

also makes up part of the economy; iron ore, lead, zinc, white clay, and limestone are all mined in places such as Gao Hui.

Transport

China National Highway 312 China National Highway 312 (312国道), also referred to as Route 312 or The Mother Road, is a key east-west route beginning in Shanghai and ending at Khorgas, Xinjiang in the Ili River valley, on the border with Kazakhstan. In total it spans ...

Natural resources

Wildlife Jingning has a variety of diverse wildlife; tigers, bears, jackals, deer and

Mongolian gazelle The Mongolian gazelle (''Procapra gutturosa''), or dzeren (russian: Дзерэн), is a medium-sized antelope native to the semiarid Central Asian steppes of Mongolia, as well as some parts of Siberia and China. The name ''dzeren'' is Russian ...

all inhabit the county. The county government registers 15 varieties of mammal as well as 27 types of bird in addition to 13 kinds of reptile and amphibians. Animals are also used in agriculture; pigs, cattle and chickens are the main animals used for farming. There are 31 varieties of rose grown in the county, along with many other varieties of wild flower.

Tourism

Attractions "Wen Miao":The county boasts a

Confucian Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...

temple named "Wen Miao" (or "Xian Shi Wen Miao", ) dating from 1543, built by scholar Ming Jiajing, and took 21 years to build, and it covers . It was repaired by the

Kangxi Emperor The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 1654– 20 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Shengzu of Qing, born Xuanye, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1661 to ...

between 1692 and 1696. It was granted 'national heritage' status by the central government in 1993. On July 12 every year a festival is held there which usually attracts around 10,000 people. i "Jingning Mosque":Another antiquity is the mosque, built in 1536. Originally it covered only , but with an influx of

Muslims Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

into the county, it was increased to in 1712. "Wutai Mountain":Several famous mountains in Jingning such as the Wutai Mountain(also called Wenpingshan, not the Wutai Mountain in Shanxi Province),. "Fengtai Mountain":also called Horse Stables Mountain. "Saving Dragon Mountain" "Cheng Ji Cultural City": been built to commemorate

Fuxi Fuxi or Fu Hsi (伏羲 ~ 伏犧 ~ 伏戲) is a culture hero in Chinese legend and mythology, credited along with his sister and wife Nüwa with creating humanity and the invention of music, hunting, fishing, domestication, and cooking as well ...

. "West Ling Mountain Park": is built recent years. "Jieshipu Red Army Long March Memorial Museum ":to commemorate the

of the

in the county seat. "Immortal Gap" "Pearl forest"

Notable people

* Luo Yanlin, schoolteacher in Jingning County who was executed on September 10, 2008 for the rape of several schoolchildren.

References

External links

Official website (Chinese)
{{authority control Jingning County Pingliang