Shuozhou is a

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 China' ...

in northern

Shanxi Shanxi (; ; formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-lev ...

province, China, bordering

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for ...

to the northwest. It is situated along the upper reaches of the

Fen River The Fen River drains the center of Shanxi Province, China. It originates in the Guancen Mountains of Ningwu County in northeast Shanxi, flows southeast into the basin of Taiyuan, and then south through the central valley of Shanxi before tur ...

. The prefecture as a whole has an area of about and, in 2010, a population of about 1.71 million.

History

The site of Shuozhou was the ancient Chinese frontier town of Mayi (马邑), which was used as a trading post between China and the Xiongnu nomads of the eastern

Eurasian steppe The Eurasian Steppe, also simply called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Tra ...

. In 201BC, the founder of the

Han dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by th ...

Liu Bang Emperor Gaozu of Han (256 – 1 June 195 BC), born Liu Bang () with courtesy name Ji (季), was the founder and first emperor of the Han dynasty, reigning in 202–195 BC. His temple name was "Taizu" while his posthumous name was Emper ...

(posthumously known as Emperor Gaozu or the "High Ancestor") moved

Han Xin Han Xin (; 231/230–196 BC) was a Chinese military general and politician who served Liu Bang during the Chu–Han Contention and contributed greatly to the founding of the Han dynasty. Han Xin was named as one of the "Three Heroes of the ea ...

from his fief around Yuzhou in

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

to Mayi, where he was attacked by the Xiongnu. Finding himself distrusted by the Han emperor, Han Xin allied with the Xiongnu instead and joined them on their raids against China until his death in battle in 196BC. Mayi was subsequently the capital of

Dai Prefecture Dai Prefecture, also known by its Chinese name Daizhou, was a prefecture (''zhou'') of imperial China in what is now northern Shanxi. It existed intermittently from AD585 to 1912. Its eponymous seat Daizhou was located at Shangguan in Dai Cou ...

and the scene of an attempted ambush of the Xiongnu by Chinese troops in 133BC. During the chaos between the fall of the Sui and rise of the Tang, Mayi was the base of the would-be emperor Liu Wuzhou.

Administrative divisions

The seat of government is in

Shuocheng District Shuocheng District, formerly Shuo County, is the main urban district of the prefecture-level city of Shuozhou in Shanxi province, China. History Shuocheng is the site of the ancient Chinese frontier post of Mayi and its territory was previousl ...

, the urban core of the city.

Climate

Shuozhou has a continental,

monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal osci ...

-influenced

semi-arid climate 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- ...

( Köppen ''BSk''),Peel, M. C., Finlayson, B. L., and McMahon, T. A.: Updated world map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 11, 1633-1644, , 2007. with cold, very dry, and somewhat long winters, and warm, somewhat humid summers. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from in January to in July, and the annual mean is . Typifying the influence of the

East Asian Monsoon The East Asian Monsoon is a monsoonal flow that carries moist air from the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean to East Asia. It affects approximately one-third of the global population, influencing the climate of Japan, the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, Ch ...

, over three-fourths of the annual of precipitation occurs from June to September.

Economy

It is a centre of industry, and its notable industries are primarily mining of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as stratum, rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen ...

and other ores such as

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in ...

bauxite Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(O ...

mica Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into extremely thin elastic plates. This characteristic is described as perfect basal cleavage. Mica is ...

manganese Manganese is a chemical element with the symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese is a transition metal with a multifaceted array of industrial alloy u ...

, and

graphite Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on la ...

. Other economic sectors include

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 peop ...

chemical industry The chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals. Central to the modern world economy, it converts raw materials ( oil, natural gas, air, water, metals, and minerals) into more than 70,000 different products. T ...

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelai ...

s, and

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques ...

Education

*North University of China at Shuozhou (中北大学朔州校区) http://neuc.nuc.edu.cn/ *Shanxi College of Technology (山西工学院) http://www.sxct.edu.cn/

Tourism

Western tourists rarely come to this area of China, but there are some attractions. The Yingxian Tower, built in 1056 during the Liao Dynasty, is one of the main sites of the region. It was built entirely of wood, without using nails, and serves as a museum of calligraphy. There are also some

paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone to ...

ruins, and ancient gravesites from the

Dongyi The Dongyi or Eastern Yi () was a collective term for ancient peoples found in Chinese records. The definition of Dongyi varied across the ages, but in most cases referred to inhabitants of eastern China, then later, the Korean peninsula, and Ja ...

people.

Transportation

The

Dayun Expressway The Dayun Group () is a Chinese conglomerate based in Yuncheng, Shanxi, China. Through its subsidiaries, it manufactures heavy trucks, light trucks, motorcycles and engines. Divisions Yuanhang Auto On the 2022 Chengdu Auto Show a new EV br ...

(

Datong Datong is a prefecture-level city in northern Shanxi Province in the People's Republic of China. It is located in the Datong Basin at an elevation of and borders Inner Mongolia to the north and west and Hebei to the east. As of the 2020 cen ...

—

Yuncheng Yuncheng is the southernmost prefecture-level city in Shanxi province, People's Republic of China. It borders Linfen and Jincheng municipalities to the north and east, and Henan (Luoyang and Jiyuan to the east, Sanmenxia to the south) and Sh ...

) passes through it, and it has 5 specialized train lines.

Notable people

* George F. Gao, virologist and immunologist.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Cities in Shanxi Prefecture-level divisions of Shanxi