Zhuozhou (), is a

county-level city A county-level city () is a County-level divisions of China, county-level administrative division of the China, People's Republic of China. County-level cities have judiciary, judicial but no legislature, legislative rights over their own local or ...

with 628,000 inhabitants in central

Hebei Hebei is a Provinces of China, province in North China. It is China's List of Chinese administrative divisions by population, sixth-most populous province, with a population of over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. It bor ...

province, southwest of

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

. It is administered by

Baoding Baoding is a prefecture-level city in central Hebei province, approximately southwest of Beijing. As of the 2020 census, Baoding City had 11,544,036 inhabitants, of which 2,549,787 lived in the metropolitan area made of 4 out of 5 urban distri ...

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 ...

. Zhuozhou has 3 subdistricts, 6 towns, 5 townships, and 1 development zone.

History

Zhuozhou was the birthplace of

Bai Guang Shi Yongfen (; 27 June 1921 – 27 August 1999), known professionally as Bai Guang (; also credited as Pai Kwong, Bai Kwong and Bai Kwang), was a Chinese actress and singer. By the 1940s, she became one of the Seven Great Singing Stars. Early l ...

in 1921. In 1928, the city was the site of a fierce battle between the forces of Fengtien clique warlord Chang Tso-lin and those of the

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the one party state, sole ruling party of the country Republic of China (1912-1949), during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until Retreat ...

National Revolutionary Army The National Revolutionary Army (NRA; zh, labels=no, t=國民革命軍) served as the military arm of the Kuomintang, Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT) from 1924 until 1947. From 1928, it functioned as the regular army, de facto ...

, with the city falling to the Fengtien after eighty-six days of heavy bombardment. In September 1937, General Count

Hisaichi Terauchi Count was a '' Gensui'' (or field marshal) in the Imperial Japanese Army, commander of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group during World War II. Biography Early military career Terauchi was born in Tokyo Prefecture, and was the eldest son of ...

, commander-in-chief of the

North China Area Army The was an area army of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. History The Japanese North China Area Army was formed on August 21, 1937 under the control of the Imperial General Headquarters. It was transferred to th ...

, sent a column of mechanised infantry supported by cavalry to cut the Jinghan railway at Zhuozhou. The area was lightly defended by provincial troops without proper artillery or planes, as the Chinese strategy at the time rested on defending Paoting with better-equipped central government soldiers.

Administrative divisions

Subdistricts: *Shuangta Subdistrict (), Taoyuan Subdistrict (), Qingliangsi Subdistrict () Towns: * Songlindian (), Matou (), Dongchengfang (), Gaoguanzhuang (), Dongxianpo (), Baichigan () Townships: * Yihezhuang Township (), Lintun Township (), Sunzhuang Township (), Douzhuang Township (), Diaowo Township ()

Climate

Zhuozhou is at a high risk of floods. It was heavily impacted by the 2023 China floods, and more than a sixth of the city's 600,000 residents had to evacuate. Zhuozhou has been described by Hebei communist party secretary Ni Yuefeng as being able to "serve as a moat for the capital" using flood storage and detention areas in the aftermath of flooding in Beijing as a result of

Typhoon Doksuri Typhoon Doksuri, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Egay, was a powerful and highly destructive tropical cyclone which became the costliest typhoon to hit China, the costliest tropical cyclone outside of the Atlantic hurricane, North Atl ...

Transportation

Railroads

* Beijing–Guangzhou Railway: Zhuozhou Railway Station *

Beijing–Shijiazhuang High-Speed Railway Beijing–Shijiazhuang high-speed railway () is a 281-kilometre high-speed rail line operated by China Railway High-speed between Beijing and Shijiazhuang (the provincial capital of Hebei) that opened on 26 December 2012 after 4 years of construct ...

: Zhuozhou East Railway Station

Highways

* G4 Beijing–Hong Kong and Macau Expressway * China National Highway 107 * G95 Capital Region Ring Expressway

Places of interest

* Zhidu Temple Pagoda: A pagoda built in the Liao Dynasty.

References

External links

Zhuozhou City Government Website

Geography of Baoding County-level cities in Hebei {{Baoding-geo-stub