Wenchuan County is a
county
A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
in
Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture
Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, also known as Aba (; Qiang: ; ), is an autonomous prefecture of northwestern Sichuan, bordering Gansu to the north and northeast and Qinghai to the northwest. Its seat is in Barkam, and it has an ar ...
,
Sichuan
Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...
,
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
.
The county has an area of ,
and a population of 100,771 as of 2010.
Wolong National Nature Reserve
Wolong National Nature Reserve (), also known as Wolong Special Administrative Region (), is a protected area located in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province, People's Republic of China. Established in 1963 with an initial size of about 20,000 hect ...
is a protected area located in Wenchuan County, which houses more than 150 highly endangered giant pandas. The
Wolong Special Administrative Region
Wolong National Nature Reserve (), also known as Wolong Special Administrative Region (), is a protected area located in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province, People's Republic of China. Established in 1963 with an initial size of about 20,000 hecta ...
is also located here.
The county was the site of the epicentre and one of the areas most severely hit by the
2008 Sichuan earthquake, also known as the Wenchuan earthquake.
Toponymy
The county is named after the Wenshui River (), now known as the
Min River.
History
Wenchuan County was established in 1958, when the former Maowen Qiang Autonomous County () was split into
Mao County
Mao County or Maoxian (; ; Qiang: ʂqini) is a county in Ngawa Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China.
It has an area of 3,903 and a population of 106,700 as of 2006. 88.9% of the population are Qiang people. The county seat is Fengyi ().
Natura ...
and Wenchuan County.
Wenchuan earthquake
On May 12, 2008, an earthquake with
moment magnitude
The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mw, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. It was defined in a 1979 pape ...
7.9 hit the Sichuan Province, with
epicentre
The epicenter, epicentre () or epicentrum in seismology is the point on the Earth's surface directly above a hypocenter or focus, the point where an earthquake or an underground explosion originates.
Surface damage
Before the instrumental pe ...
located in the town of
Yingxiu
Yingxiu () is a town of southern Wenchuan County, in northwestern Sichuan Province. It is located at the southern end of the Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, and lies on the road to Jiuzhaigou Valley, Wolong and the Siguniang Mou ...
, in Wenchuan county. The county was therefore one of the areas most severely affected by the earthquake. In Chinese, the earthquake is named after the county (the Wenchuan earthquake, 汶川地震), which made its name resonate across the nation. In the county, 15,941 people died, 34,583 were injured, and 7,474 were still missing as of June 6, 2008.
The
seismic intensity was the highest, reaching level XI in the
China Seismic Intensity Scale
The China seismic intensity scale (CSIS) is a national standard in the People's Republic of China used to measure seismic intensity. Similar to EMS-92 on which CSIS drew reference, seismic impacts are classified into 12 degrees of intensity, or ' ...
.
[
] After the earthquake, the central government enforced stricter requirements for seismic design in this area.
[
] The earthquake also caused many landslides, some of which remained active for years and generated destructive
debris flow
Debris flows are geological phenomena in which water-laden masses of soil and fragmented rock rush down mountainsides, funnel into stream channels, entrain objects in their paths, and form thick, muddy deposits on valley floors. They generally ...
s during the summer rainstorms, which increased the death toll and slowed reconstruction and recovery of the communities in the county.
Subdivisions
Wenchuan County administers nine
towns
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an ori ...
:
Weizhou, , ,
Yingxiu
Yingxiu () is a town of southern Wenchuan County, in northwestern Sichuan Province. It is located at the southern end of the Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, and lies on the road to Jiuzhaigou Valley, Wolong and the Siguniang Mou ...
,
Xuankou, , ,
Gengda, and .
Demographics
According to a 2021 publication by the county government, Wenchuan County's ethnic composition is 39.5%
Qiang, 38.7%
Han
Han may refer to:
Ethnic groups
* Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group.
** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...
, 20.4%
Tibetan
Tibetan may mean:
* of, from, or related to Tibet
* Tibetan people, an ethnic group
* Tibetan language:
** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard
** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...
, 1.1%
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 ...
, and 0.3% belonging to other
ethnic minorities
The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...
.
The
2010 Chinese Census reported the county's population as 100,771 people.
In 2005, the county reported a population of 106,238, with 34.16% of the population being ethnically Qiang.
The
2000 Chinese Census reported the county's population as 111,935.
In 1996, the county's population was estimated to be about 104,000, up from the 96,054 reported in 1990.
![1 wenchuan sichuan panorama 2013](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/1_wenchuan_sichuan_panorama_2013.jpg)
Economy
As of 2019, Wenchuan County's
gross domestic product
Gross domestic product (GDP) is a money, monetary Measurement in economics, measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjec ...
totaled ¥7.264 billion, a 6.2% increase from the previous year.
Consumer retail sales totaled ¥1.082 billion.
The annual per capita
disposable income
Disposable income is total personal income minus current income taxes. In national accounts definitions, personal income minus personal current taxes equals disposable personal income. Subtracting personal outlays (which includes the major c ...
of the county reached ¥34,513 for its urban residents, and ¥15,049 for its rural residents, an increase of 8.2% and 12.0%, respectively.
According to the county government, there were 4,440 people in the county living in poverty in 2014.
The county government claims that all its citizens were lifted out of poverty in 2019.
Tourism
![Panda Cub from Wolong, Sichuan, China](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Panda_Cub_from_Wolong%2C_Sichuan%2C_China.JPG)
Wenchuan County is home to the
Wolong National Nature Reserve
Wolong National Nature Reserve (), also known as Wolong Special Administrative Region (), is a protected area located in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province, People's Republic of China. Established in 1963 with an initial size of about 20,000 hect ...
, as well as the
Sichuan Caopo Nature Reserve ().
Other tourist attractions in the county include the
AAAAA-rated Wenchuan Special Tourist Area () and the
AAAA-rated Yu the Great Cultural Tourist Area ().
In 2019, the county received 6,277,800 visitors, bringing the county ¥2.87 billion in revenue.
Transport
Numerous expressways run through the county, including
China National Highway 213
China National Highway 213 (G213) runs from Ceke, Inner Mongolia, to Mohan, on the border with Laos, in Yunnan. It is in length and runs via Chengdu, Sichuan and Kunming, Yunnan. Before the 2013 Highway Planning, the route started in Lanzhou ...
,
China National Highway 317
China National Highway 317 (G317) runs broadly west to east from Chengdu, Sichuan to Gar County, Ngari Prefecture, Tibet. It is 2,028 kilometres in length and forms an important transportation route in Tibet. As of 2017, Highway 317 passes through ...
,
China National Highway 350
China National Highway 350 runs from Lichuan, Hubei to Luhuo County in Sichuan. The last section in Sichuan is noted for its scenic route through mountainous landscape. In Zhong County, Chongqing, it crosses the Yangtze's Sanxia Reservoir ove ...
, and the .
Climate
References
External links
Official website of Wenchuan County Government
{{Authority control
County-level divisions of Sichuan
Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture