Yiwu County ( zh, s=伊吾县) as the official romanized name, also transliterated from Uyghur as Aratürük County ( ug, ئارا تۈرۈك ناھىيىسى; zh, s=阿热吐鲁克县), is a county in the northeast of 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 ...

and is under the administration of the

Hami City 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 ...

. It contains an area of . According to the 2002 census, it has a population of 20,000. Yiwu was the site of the final battle in mainland China of the

Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...

. There is a monument in Yiwu to a horse who greatly aided the People's Liberation Army during the battle.

Demographics

Geography

The Yiwu County is located in the northeastern part of the prefecture, between the Qarliq Shan mountain range (along which it borders on

) and the border with

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

's Govi-Altai Province. Outside of the mountain range, most of the county is within the Gobi Desert. Some of the county important populated places are located in the oases irrigated by the intermittent Yiwu River, which flows north from the mountains, eventually disappearing in the desert. These include, from south to north, Yiwu Town (, the county seat), Weizi Xia Township () and Laomao Hu Town (). As of the 1920s, the area of today's Yiwu town was referred to as "Tuhulu" ()

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 ...

, ''The Desert Road to Turkestan''. 1929. and that name is still retained by the Tuhulu Township () adjacent to today's Yiwu town. At the time, it was the first place with an actual river and some agriculture that weary travellers from the east would reach after crossing several hundreds of kilometers of desert (since crossing

Edsin Gol Ejin River (), also Etsin Gol, Ruo Shui () or Ruo He in ancient times, is a major river system of northern China. It flows approximately from its headwaters on the northern Gansu side of the Qilian Mountains north-northeast into the endorheic E ...

, a River in

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

). Other places in the county include Qianshan Kazakh Township (), Yanchi Township () and Xiamaya Township ().

Climate

References

County-level divisions of Xinjiang Hami {{Xinjiang-geo-stub