Heshui County () is a

county A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...

province, China. It is under the administration of the

prefecture-level city A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province of China, province and above a Counties of the People's Republic of China, county in China's ...

of Qingyang, and is the easternmost

county-level division The administrative divisions of China have consisted of several levels since 1412, due to mainland China's large population and geographical area. In the People's Republic of China, the constitution provides for three levels of government. Ho ...

of the province. Its postal code is 745400, and its population in 2023 was 133,200 people.

History

Heshui was known as Lepan () in the

Sui dynasty The Sui dynasty ( ) was a short-lived Dynasties of China, Chinese imperial dynasty that ruled from 581 to 618. The re-unification of China proper under the Sui brought the Northern and Southern dynasties era to a close, ending a prolonged peri ...

(617 AD), and later as Pan County, Panjiao County after 623 AD, and Hechuan County. In 742 it was named Heshui.

Yellow River elephant

In January 1973, remains of an elephant were discovered by several farmers on the bank of the Malian River in Banqiao township, Heshui County. The elephant remains measured 4 meters tall, 8 meters long, with tusks of over 2 meters long, resembling two long swords, hence it was also called a saber-toothed elephant. The fossilized skeleton of the Yellow River elephant, is the most complete saber-toothed skeleton ever found in the world. Because this fossil was found in the Yellow River area, it was named "Yellow River Elephant". However, after further analysis of the fossil of the Yellow River elephant and comparison it with other ancient elephants, paleontologists discovered that it was actually a

Stegodon ''Stegodon'' (from the Ancient Greek στέγω (''stégō''), meaning "to cover", and ὀδούς (''odoús''), meaning "tooth", named for the distinctive ridges on the animal's molars) is an extinct genus of proboscidean, related to elephants ...

zdanskyi. It is believed that more than 3000 years ago, "large populations of Asian elephants still roamed the forests along the Yellow River."

Qin highway

Remains of the

Qin dynasty The Qin dynasty ( ) was the first Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China. It is named for its progenitor state of Qin, a fief of the confederal Zhou dynasty (256 BC). Beginning in 230 BC, the Qin under King Ying Zheng enga ...

highway passing through Heshui County have been found.

Economy

Heshui has large coal and oil reserves. Agricultural output includes grains, corn, potatoes, soybeans, oilseeds, melons, vegetables, apples, white melon seeds, wood ear mushroom,

morels ''Morchella'', the true morels, is a genus of edible sac fungi closely related to anatomically simpler cup fungi in the order Pezizales ( division Ascomycota). These distinctive fungi have a honeycomb appearance due to the network of ridges w ...

, and deer antler velvet.

Administrative divisions

Heshui County is divided to 8 towns and 4 townships. Since 1952 the county government is seated in Xihuachi town. ;Towns ;Townships

Climate

Transportation

China National Highway 211 China National Highway 211 (G211) runs from Yinchuan in Ningxia to Xi'an in Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and ...

China National Highway 309 China National Highway 309 (G309) runs west from Rongcheng, Shandong, Rongcheng, Shandong towards Hebei Province, Shanxi Province, Shaanxi Province, Ningxia Autonomous Region, and ends in Lanzhou, Gansu. It is 2208 kilometres in length. Route an ...

References

Official website (Chinese)
Heshui County Qingyang {{Gansu-geo-stub