Qitai County () as the official romanized name, also
transliterated from Uyghur as Guqung County or Gucheng County (; ), is a county in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
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 ...
of China under the administration of the
Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture
Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture ( zh, s=昌吉回族自治州; ug, سانجى خۇيزۇ ئاپتونوم ئوبلاستى) is an autonomous prefecture for Hui people in the middle north of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Western China. The ...
. It covers an area of and had a population of 230,000.
Qitai County's county seat is in Qitai Town. Gucheng Township is nearby.
History
Located on one of the main routes of the
Silk Road
The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...
, the old Gucheng (often referred in the European writing of the past as "Ku Ch'eng-tze", Kucheng, Kuchengtze, etc., using
Wade-Giles or Postal Romanization systems), was the western terminal for one of the
caravan routes across the
Gobi Desert
The Gobi Desert (Chinese: 戈壁 (沙漠), Mongolian: Говь (ᠭᠣᠪᠢ)) () is a large desert or brushland region in East Asia, and is the sixth largest desert in the world.
Geography
The Gobi measures from southwest to northeast an ...
.
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 ''Pacif ...
in ''The Desert Road to Turkestan'' leaves an account of his travel along this route in 1926-27.
"Under the special circumstances of the caravan trade, camel traffic usually overshoots Hami
Hami (Kumul) is a prefecture-level city in Eastern Xinjiang, China. It is well known as the home of sweet Hami melons. In early 2016, the former Hami county-level city was merged with Hami Prefecture to form the Hami prefecture-level city with t ...
the most easterly point on the arterial cart roads of Chinese Turkestan” going on all the way to Ku Ch’eng-tze. This is partly because the pastures near Ku Ch’eng-tze are more adequate to caravan needs, but still more because, transport being cheaper by camel than by cart, it is to the advantage of merchants to have their goods carried as far as possible by caravan."
Climate
Transportation
In 2009, the
Ürümqi–Dzungaria Railway was constructed through the Jiangjun Gobi desert in the northern part of the county. It terminates at a coal mine in
Jiangjunmiao
Jiangjunmiao (Chinese: 将军庙, pinyin: Jiàngjūnmiào) is a ruin and fossil site in Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang, China.
Geography
Jiangjunmiao is located in the Junggar Basin near the border with Mongolia, on a mesa and at th ...
.
[(Chinese]
"新疆精伊霍、乌精二线、奎北、乌准4条铁路新线开通运营"
(Four new railways enter into service in Xinjiang: the Jinghe-Yining Line, the Ürümqi-Jinghe second track, the Kuitun-Beitun Line, and the Ürümqi–Dzungaria Line) 2009-11-06
The radio telescope project
In 2012, the officials of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Xinjiang government presided over the groundbreaking at the site of the Xinjiang Qitai Astronomical and Science Education Base.
The facility, in Qitai County's Banjiegou Town (
半截沟镇), will be the home of the proposed
Qitai Radio Telescope
The Xinjiang Qitai 110m Radio Telescope (QTT) is a planned radio telescope to be built in Qitai County in Xinjiang, China. Upon completion, which is scheduled for 2023, it will be the world's largest fully steerable single-dish radio telesco ...
.
Once completed it will be the largest fully steerable single-dish
radio telescope
A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the radio frequency ...
in the world.
Footnotes
References
* Lattimore, Owen (1929). ''The Desert Road to Turkestan''. Owen Lattimore. Boston, Little, Brown, and Company. Reprinted with new introduction, 1972, AMS Press, New York, N.Y.
{{authority control
County-level divisions of Xinjiang
Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture