Shuozhou is a

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

in northern

Shanxi Shanxi; Chinese postal romanization, formerly romanised as Shansi is a Provinces of China, province in North China. Its capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level cities are Changzhi a ...

province, China, bordering

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of China. Its border includes two-thirds of the length of China's China–Mongolia border, border with the country of Mongolia. ...

to the northwest. It is situated along the upper reaches of the

Fen River The Fen River drains the center of Shanxi Province, China. It originates in the Guancen Mountains of Ningwu County in northeast Shanxi, flows southeast into the basin of Taiyuan, and then south through the central valley of Shanxi before turni ...

. The prefecture as a whole has an area of about and, in 2010, a population of about 1.71 million.

History

The site of Shuozhou was the ancient Chinese frontier town of Mayi (), which was used as a trading post between

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

and the

Xiongnu The Xiongnu (, ) were a tribal confederation of Nomad, nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese historiography, Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, t ...

nomads of the eastern

Eurasian steppe The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or The Steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Europea ...

. In 201BC, the founder of the

Han dynasty The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...

Liu Bang Emperor Gaozu of Han (2561 June 195 BC), also known by his given name Liu Bang, was the founder and first emperor of the Han dynasty, reigning from 202 to 195 BC. He is considered by traditional Chinese historiography to be one o ...

(posthumously known as Emperor Gaozu or the "High Ancestor") moved

Han Xin Han Xin (; ? – early 196 BCE) was a Chinese military general and politician who served Liu Bang during the Chu–Han Contention and contributed greatly to the founding of the Han dynasty. Han Xin was named as one of the "Three Heroes of the ...

from his fief around Yuzhou in

Henan Henan; alternatively Honan is a province in Central China. Henan is home to many heritage sites, including Yinxu, the ruins of the final capital of the Shang dynasty () and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the historical capitals of China, Lu ...

to Mayi, where he was attacked by the Xiongnu. Finding himself distrusted by the Han emperor, Han Xin allied with the Xiongnu instead and joined them on their raids against China until his death in battle in 196BC. Mayi was subsequently the capital of Dai Prefecture and the scene of an attempted ambush of the Xiongnu by Chinese troops in 133BC. During the chaos between the fall of the Sui and rise of the Tang, Mayi was the base of the would-be emperor Liu Wuzhou.

Administrative divisions

The seat of government is in Shuocheng District, the urban core of the city.

Climate

Shuozhou has a continental,

monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in Atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annu ...

-influenced

semi-arid climate A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of se ...

(

Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (1951–2014), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author ...

''BSk''),Peel, M. C., Finlayson, B. L., and McMahon, T. A.: Updated world map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 11, 1633-1644, , 2007. with cold, very dry, and somewhat long winters, and warm, somewhat humid summers. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from in January to in July, and the annual mean is . Typifying the influence of the East Asian Monsoon, over three-fourths of the annual of precipitation occurs from June to September.

Economy

It is a centre of industry, and its notable industries are primarily mining of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

and other ores such as

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

bauxite Bauxite () is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)), and diaspore (α-AlO(OH) ...

mica Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into fragile elastic plates. This characteristic is described as ''perfect basal cleavage''. Mica is co ...

manganese Manganese is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese was first isolated in the 1770s. It is a transition m ...

, and

graphite Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...

. Other economic sectors include

agriculture Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...

chemical industry The chemical industry comprises the companies and other organizations that develop and produce industrial, specialty and other chemicals. Central to the modern world economy, the chemical industry converts raw materials ( oil, natural gas, air, ...

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcela ...

s, and

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment (Freshwater ecosystem, freshwater or Marine ecosystem, marine), but may also be caught from Fish stocking, stocked Body of water, ...

Education

*North University of China at Shuozhou () http://neuc.nuc.edu.cn/ *Shanxi College of Technology () http://www.sxct.edu.cn/

Tourism

Western tourists rarely come to this area of China, but there are some attractions. The Yingxian Tower, built in 1056 during the Liao Dynasty, is one of the main sites of the region. It was built entirely of wood, without using nails, and serves as a museum of

calligraphy Calligraphy () is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instruments. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an e ...

. There are also some

paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic ( years ago) ( ), also called the Old Stone Age (), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehist ...

ruins, and ancient gravesites from the

Dongyi The Dongyi or Eastern Yi () was a collective term for ancient peoples found in Chinese records. The definition of Dongyi varied across the ages, but in most cases referred to inhabitants of eastern China, then later, the Korean peninsula and Jap ...

people.

Transportation

The Dayun Expressway (

Datong Datong is a prefecture-level city in northern Shanxi Province, China. It is located in the Datong Basin at an elevation of and borders Inner Mongolia to the north and west and Hebei to the east. As of the 2020 census, it had a population o ...

—

Yuncheng Yuncheng () is the southernmost prefecture-level city in Shanxi province, People's Republic of China. It borders Linfen and Jincheng municipalities to the north and east, and Henan (Luoyang and Jiyuan to the east, Sanmenxia to the south) and ...

) passes through it, and it has 5 specialized train lines. Shuozhou Zirun Airport opened on December 18, 2023.

Notable people

George F. Gao Gao Fu (; born 15 November 1961), also known as George Fu Gao, is a Chinese virologist and immunologist. He served as Director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention from August 2017 to July 2022 and has been Dean of the Sava ...

, virologist and immunologist.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Cities in Shanxi Prefecture-level divisions of Shanxi