Zhaoyuan () 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 county-level administrative division of the People's Republic of China. County-level ...

within the

prefecture-level city A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province and above a county in China's administrative structure. During the Republican era, many of China ...

Yantai Yantai, formerly known as Chefoo, is a coastal prefecture-level city on the Shandong Peninsula in northeastern Shandong province of People's Republic of China. Lying on the southern coast of the Bohai Strait, Yantai borders Qingdao on the ...

, Shandong Province, China, located on the

Bohai Sea The Bohai Sea () is a marginal sea approximately in area on the east coast of Mainland China. It is the northwestern and innermost extension of the Yellow Sea, to which it connects to the east via the Bohai Strait. It has a mean depth of ...

. Zhaoyuan is well known for its abundant gold deposit and production, and is occasionally nicknamed "China's gold capital" (). The city spans an area of , and has a population of 560,234 as of 2019.

History

The area was first incorporated under the

Han dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...

as Qucheng County (). Gold was discovered at Zhaoyuan 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 ...

. The myth accompanying the city's discovery of gold is that a giant tortoise named Ao once told villagers struggling with famine to dig, and upon digging, they struck gold. The county was named Zhaoyuan County () in 1131.

People's Republic of China

Five

townships A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, C ...

in Zhaoyuan were upgraded to

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 ...

on September 1, 1988. On December 21, 1991, Zhaoyuan was upgraded from a

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

to a

. Throughout the mid-1990s, three more townships were upgraded to towns. On January 11, 1999, the town of Zhaocheng () was divided into three

subdistricts A subdistrict or sub-district is an administrative division that is generally smaller than a district. Equivalents * Administrative posts of East Timor, formerly Portuguese-language * Kelurahan, in Indonesia * Mukim, a township in Brunei, Indon ...

: , Quanshan Subdistrict, and . The

Fifth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China The 2000 Chinese census, officially the Fifth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China (), was conducted by the government of the People's Republic of China with 1 November 2000 as its zero hour. The total population was calcula ...

reported that Zhaoyuan had a population of 593,705. On December 19, 2000, Dahuchenjia Township () became the city's last township to be upgraded to a town.

2014 murder of Wu Shuoyan

In late May 2014, five members of The Church of Almighty God, an outlawed new-age cult, entered a

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation is an American multinational fast food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechristened their business as a hambur ...

in Zhaoyuan and began soliciting customers' phone numbers. When 37 year-old Wu Shuoyan refused to give her phone number to the group, they claimed she was an "evil spirit", and began beating her with chairs and a metal mop handle, ultimately killing her. In February 2015, two of the attackers were executed, and the other three received jail sentences ranging from seven years to life.

Geography

Zhaoyuan's city center is located approximately southwest of Yantai's urban center. The city's terrain is higher in the northeast, middle and west, and lower in the northwest and southeast

Climate

The city's annual average temperature is , and its annual average precipitation is .

Administrative divisions

Zhaoyuan administers five

and nine

Subdistricts

Zhaoyuan's five subdistricts are , Quanshan Subdistrict, , , and .

Towns

Zhaoyuan's nine towns are , , , , , , , , and .

Economy

The city has a significant amount of

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

deposits, largely concentrated in its northeast. Zhaojin Mining has its headquarters located in the city. Additionally, Linglong Tire is headquartered in the city.

Transport

National Highway 206 runs through Zhaoyuan.

Tourist attractions

A large golden statue of Ao'','' a Chinese mythical giant turtle is located in the

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

of Oujiakuang (), in the town of . Located in Luoshan National Forest Park (), the statue is Asia's largest statue of Ao'','' and is located at . The statue is 15 meters tall and 20 meters long.招远罗山《金鳌》
/ref> The is located in Zhaoyuan.

Notable people

Chi Haotian Chi Haotian (; born 9 July 1929), also spelled as Chih Hao-tien, is a retired general of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. He served as Minister of National Defence from 1993 to 2003. Biography Chi was born 9 July 1929 in Zhaoyuan, Sha ...

, PLA General, Minister of National Defense of the People's Republic of China * Sun Baoguo, BTBU Professor, Academician of

Chinese Academy of Engineering The Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE, ) is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for engineering. It was established in 1994 and is an institution of the State Council of China. The CAE and the Chinese Academy of Sciences ...

References

{{Yantai Cities in Shandong Yantai