Yiwu County ( zh, s=伊吾县) as the official romanized name, also
transliterated from Uyghur as Aratürük County (; zh, s=阿热吐鲁克县), is a county in the northeast of the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and is under the administration of the
Hami City. It contains an area of . According to the 2002 census, it has a population of 20,000.
Yiwu was the site of the final
battle in mainland China of the
Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led Nationalist government, government of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Armed conflict continued intermitt ...
. There is a monument in Yiwu to a horse who greatly aided the
People's Liberation Army
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the military of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Republic of China (PRC). It consists of four Military branch, services—People's Liberation Army Ground Force, Ground Force, People's ...
during the battle.
Subdivisions
Yiwu County is divided into 3
towns
A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city.
The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...
, 3
townships, 1
ethnic township.
Demographics
Geography
The Yiwu County is located in the northeastern part of the prefecture, between the
Qarliq Shan mountain range (along which it borders on
Hami City) and the border with
Mongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...
's
Govi-Altai Province. Outside of the mountain range, most of the county is within the
Gobi Desert
The Gobi Desert (, , ; ) is a large, cold desert and grassland region in North China and southern Mongolia. It is the sixth-largest desert in the world. The name of the desert comes from the Mongolian word ''gobi'', used to refer to all of th ...
.
Some of the county important populated places are located in the oases irrigated by the intermittent Yiwu River, which flows north from the mountains, eventually disappearing in the desert. These include, from south to north, Yiwu Town (, the county seat), Weizi Xia Township () and Laomao Hu Town ().
As of the 1920s, the area of today's Yiwu town was referred to as "Tuhulu" ()
Owen Lattimore
Owen Lattimore (July 29, 1900 – May 31, 1989) was an American Orientalist and writer. He was an influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. Although he never earned a college degree, in the 1930s he was editor of '' Pac ...
, ''The Desert Road to Turkestan''. 1929. and that name is still retained by the Tuhulu Township () adjacent to today's Yiwu town. At the time, it was the first place with an actual river and some agriculture that weary travellers from the east would reach after crossing several hundreds of kilometers of desert (since crossing
Edsin Gol, a River in
Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of China. Its border includes two-thirds of the length of China's China–Mongolia border, border with the country of Mongolia. ...
).
[
Other places in the county include Qianshan Kazakh Township (), Yanchi Township () and Xiamaya Township ().
]
Climate
Notes
References
{{authority control
County-level divisions of Xinjiang
Hami