Tonghai County () is located in

Yuxi Yuxi () is a prefecture-level city in the central part of Yunnan province of the People's Republic of China. The administrative center of Yuxi is Hongta District. Yuxi is approximately south of Kunming. Geography Yuxi is located in the center ...

Prefecture-level City,

Yunnan Province Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...

, China.

Geography

Tonghai County occupies the fertile valley of

Qilu Lake Qilu Lake () is a plateau lake in Yunnan Province, in southwestern China. The lake has a total area of about 36.86 square kilometers. The average depth is 4.03 m, with an elevation of 1796.75 m. the water storage capacity is about 1.486×108m3. ...

, surrounded on all sides by mountains. The county seat is located on the south side of the lake, separated from the lake by a mile-wide strip of farmland. The county's southernmost part, including the Dagao Dai and Yi Ethnic Township and Lishan Yi Ethnic Township, is separated from the rest of the county by mountains; it is outside of the Qilu Lake basin, and is drained into the Qu River instead. In 1970, a powerful earthquake struck the area.

History

The area around

has been inhabited since at least the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

period. In the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdom ...

it was the base of a general. For many centuries it was the political, economic and military center of southern Yunnan. Soon after the formation of PRC, the area of today's Tonghai County was organized as two counties: Tonghai and Hexi (in the western part of today's Tonghai County). The two counties were merged into Qilu County () on November 22, 1956. On October 22, 1959, Qilu County was renamed Tonghai County. The county includes a large Muslim (

Hui The Hui people ( zh, c=, p=Huízú, w=Hui2-tsu2, Xiao'erjing: , dng, Хуэйзў, ) are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the n ...

) population. Centers of Hui culture include Dahui and Xiaohui villages in Hexi Township, as well as Nagu Town, with its

Najiaying Mosque The Najiaying Mosque () is a mosque in Tonghai County, Yuxi City, Yunnan Province, China. History The mosque was originally built in 1370. Over the past 600 years, the mosque had been expanded several times. In 2001, a new mosque building was ...

. Xingmeng Mongol Ethnic Township, home to the Yunnan Mongols (

Khatso The Khatso people (), commonly known as the "Mongols in Yunnan", is a Mongolic ethnic group, mainly distributed in Tonghai County in the Yunnan Province of southwestern China. The Khatso people are descendants of the army personnel of the Yuan dy ...

), is the only Mongol

ethnic township The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

in Yunnan.

Administrative divisions

Tonghai County has 2 subdistricts, 4 towns and 3 ethnic townships. ;2 subdistricts *

Xiushan Xiushan Tujia and Miao Autonomous County (), or Xiushan County for short, is located in the southeast of Chongqing Municipality, China. It is the municipality's southernmost county-level division. * Area: * Population Population typically ...

() * Jiulong () ;4 towns ;3 ethnic townships * Lishan Yi () * Gaoda Dai and Yi () * Xingmeng Mongol ()

Transportation

Bus routes: *

Jianshui County Jianshui County (; Hani: ''Jeifsyu'') is a city in Honghe prefecture, Yunnan province, China. and remains an important transportation crossroad. Previously, it has been known as Lin'an () or Huili (); today, the name Lin'an Town is retained by J ...

(2hr) *

Gejiu (, ; Hani: ''Goqjef''; formerly known as Kochiu) is a county-level city and the former capital of Honghe prefecture, Yunnan Province, China, and has 202,000 urban inhabitants (ranked 14th largest city in Yunnan). It is the site of the country's l ...

(2hr) * Hekou (13hr) * Kaiyuan (4hr) * Kunming (2hr) Railway: * Yuxi–Mengzi Railway (a section of the standard gauge Kunming–Hekou Railway). The passenger station, Tonghai Station, is located near Hexi Town, a few kilometers west of the county seat.

Climate

References

External links

Tonghai County Official Website
County-level divisions of Yuxi {{Yunnan-geo-stub