Yanyuan County (; ii, ꋂꂿꑤ ce mo xiep) is 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 ...

Liangshan Prefecture Liangshan (; Yi: ''Niep Sha'', pronounced ), officially the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, is an autonomous prefecture occupying much of the southern extremity of Sichuan province, People's Republic of China; its seat is Xichang. Liangshan ...

Sichuan Province 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 ...

, China, bordering

Yunnan 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 C ...

province to the west. The county is located in Sichuan's rugged Hengduan Mountains in southwest Sichuan, but the county seat of

Yanjing Ji or Jicheng was an ancient city in northern China, which has become the longest continuously inhabited section of modern Beijing. Historical mention of Ji dates to the founding of the Zhou dynasty in about 1045BC. Archaeological finds in sout ...

() is situated in an unusually flat basin with a diameter. Yanjing, as the county seat, is usually referred to as Yanyuan.

History

Yanyuan County was originally inhabited by the

Yi people The Yi or Nuosu people,; zh, c=彝族, p=Yízú, l=Yi ethnicity historically known as the Lolo,; vi, Lô Lô; th, โล-โล, Lo-Lo are an ethnic group in China, Vietnam, and Thailand. Numbering nine million people, they are the sev ...

, but has since been incorporated into

Han Chinese The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctiv ...

culture. The region has long been a source of salt for the Chinese and the name Yanyuan () literally means "Salt source". Until recently, Yanyuan was poorly connected with the rest of China by road. In the 2010s, a new tunnel was built through the mountains east of Yanyuan to connect the county with the prefecture capital of

Xichang Xichang, formerly known as Jiandu, Jianchang and Ningyuan(fu), is a city in and the seat of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, in the south of Sichuan, China. In 2012 it had a population of 481,796. History The Qiongdu were the local peo ...

Geography

In the west, Yanyuan County encompasses the eastern shores of

Lugu Lake Lugu Lake () is located in the northwest of the Yunnan plateau, with the middle of the lake forming the border between the Ninglang County of Yunnan Province and the Yanyuan County of Sichuan Province. The formation of the lake is thought to have ...

, shared with

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 ...

. To the north and east, Yanyuan is bordered by the

Yalong River The Yalong River ( zh, 雅砻江, p ''Yǎlóngjiāng'', w ''Ya-lung Chiang'', IPA ), or Nyag Chu (Tibetan: , z ''Nyag Qu''), is a major tributary river of the Yangtze River in Southwest China. With a length of , the Y ...

that cuts a deep gorge through the mountains. The Yalong forms a dramatic bend as it diverts around the

Jinping Mountains The Jinping Mountains or Jinping Shan () are a short north-south mountain range in southwestern Sichuan Province, China. The Jinping are located within Yanyuan and Mianning Counties, both in Liangshan Prefecture. This mountain range is notable ...

in northern Yanyuan. Yanyuan is composed of the eight towns, 25

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 ...

, and one

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 ...

Climate

References

Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture Amdo County-level divisions of Sichuan {{Sichuan-geo-stub