Bole as the official romanized name, also transliterated from Mongolian as Bortala, is a

county-level city A county-level municipality (), county-level city or county city, formerly known as prefecture-controlled city (1949–1970: ; 1970–1983: ), is a Administrative divisions of China#County level (3rd), county-level administrative divi ...

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...

, China. The city covers an area of and had a total population of 403,700 (2003). Bortala means "brown grasslands/steppe" in Mongolian. Bortala is the seat of

Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture Bortala ( mn, Бортал, Mountain:''brown steppe'', ) is an autonomous prefecture for Mongol people in the northern middle of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Western China. It has an area of . Bole is its capital. "Boro tala" comes from t ...

, which borders

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

. The Northern Xinjiang Railway runs through the city along with highways to

Ürümqi Ürümqi ( ; also spelled Ürümchi or without umlauts), formerly known as Dihua (also spelled Tihwa), is the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far northwest of the People's Republic of China. Ürümqi developed its ...

Geography

Bole has a borderline

cool arid climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk''), is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...

(

Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (born 1951), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author and ...

''BWk'') just short of a cool semi-arid climate (''BSk''). Like all of Xinjiang, Bole features very warm to hot summers and freezing to frigid winters. Precipitation, again common to all of Xinjiang outside the mountains, is very low and chiefly falls in summer.

Notable persons

* Nur Bekri

References

External links

*
Official website
*
Official website
Populated places in Xinjiang County-level divisions of Xinjiang {{Xinjiang-geo-stub