Zhidan () 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 ...

under the administration of 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' ...

Yan'an Yan'an (; ), alternatively spelled as Yenan is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanbei region of Shaanxi province, China, bordering Shanxi to the east and Gansu to the west. It administers several counties, including Zhidan (formerly Bao'an ...

, in the northwest of

Shaanxi Province Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichuan (SW), Gansu (W), Ningx ...

, China, bordering

Gansu Province Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibeta ...

to the south. The county has an area of , and a population of 141,600 as of 2012. Zhidan County and surrounding areas host oil drilling and industry.

Administrative divisions

Zhidan County is divided into 1

subdistrict 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, In ...

and 7

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 ...

Bao'an Subdistrict

The county's sole subdistrict is

Bao'an Subdistrict Bao'an may refer to: * Bonan people, or Bao'an (保安族), an ethnic group living in Qinghai and Gansu * Bao'an dialect, spoken in Shenzhen and the New Territories, Hong Kong Places in China * Bao'an District (宝安区), Shenzhen * Bao'an Cou ...

, which hosts the county's government.

Towns

Zhidan County is home to the following 7 towns: * * * Yongning * * * *

Geography

Zhidan County is located in the hilly

Loess Plateau The Chinese Loess Plateau, or simply the Loess Plateau, is a plateau in north-central China formed of loess, a clastic silt-like sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. It is located southeast of the Gobi Desert and is surroun ...

, and is approximately northwest of

city proper.

Climate

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

History

The area now known as Zhidan County was formerly known as the town of Bao'an (,

Postal Romanization Postal romanization was a system of transliterating Chinese place names developed by postal authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For many cities, the corresponding postal romanization was the most common English-language for ...

: Paoan) (corresponding to the urban core of today's Zhidan County). The town of Bao'an appears in many contemporaneous works and articles discussing 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 ...

. The historical significance of the town of Bao'an arises due to its having temporarily served as the capital of the

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

-held regions of China in the midst of the

. From early July 1936 to January 1937 Bao'an was the site of the Communist Party of China's (CPC)

Central Committee Central committee is the common designation of a standing administrative body of Communist party, communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, of both ruling and nonruling parties of former and existing socialist states. In such party org ...

headquarters, as well as that of the Chinese Communist military forces. Journalist

Edgar Snow Edgar Parks Snow (19 July 1905 – 15 February 1972) was an American journalist known for his books and articles on Communism in China and the Chinese Communist revolution. He was the first Western journalist to give an account of the history of ...

visited the communist leaders in Bao'an in the summer and fall of 1936, and named the third part of his book ''

Red Star Over China ''Red Star Over China'' is a 1937 book by Edgar Snow. It is an account of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that was written when it was a guerrilla army and still obscure to Westerners. Along with Pearl S. Buck's ''The Good Earth'' (1931), it ...

'' after this town.Edgar Snow, ''

''. Multiple editions. Part Three: "In 'Defended Peace'". He described the town as follows:

Pao An was once a frontier stronghold... Remains of its fortifications, flame-struck in that afternoon sun, could be seen flanking the narrow pass through which once emptied into this valley the conquering legions of the Mongols. There was an inner city, still, where the garrisons were once quartered; and a high defensive masonry, lately improved by the Reds, embraced about a square mile in which the present town was located.

In 1937,

(Wade-Giles: Yenan) replaced Bao'an as the capital of Communist-held China. The modern name of the county, Zhidan, takes its name from

Liu Zhidan Liu Zhidan (4 October 1903 – 14 April 1936), also known as Liu Chih-tan, was a Chinese military commander and Communist leader, who founded the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Base Area in north-west China, which became the Yan'an Soviet. Early life Li ...

, military

strategist A strategist is a person with responsibility for the formulation and implementation of a strategy. Strategy generally involves setting goals, determining actions to achieve the goals, and mobilizing resources to execute the actions. A strategy ...

and high-ranking leader of the

Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army The Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army or Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, commonly known as the Chinese Red Army or simply the Red Army, are the armed forces of the Chinese Communist Party. It was formed when Communist ...

who died while leading the Eastern Expedition in April 1936.

Economy

Zhidan County has a number of mineral deposits, such as

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

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 elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

dolomite Dolomite may refer to: *Dolomite (mineral), a carbonate mineral *Dolomite (rock), also known as dolostone, a sedimentary carbonate rock *Dolomite, Alabama, United States, an unincorporated community *Dolomite, California, United States, an unincor ...

oil shale Oil shale is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons can be produced. In addition to kerogen, general composition of oil shales constitute ...

, and

mineral water Mineral water is water from a mineral spring that contains various minerals, such as salts and sulfur compounds. Mineral water may usually be still or sparkling (carbonated/effervescent) according to the presence or absence of added gases. Tra ...

References

External links

*http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_01.htm *http://english.chinamil.com.cn/special/Stratagicist/content_eng_for_gong.htm *https://web.archive.org/web/20090529041926/http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761580341/Chinese_Revolution.html {{authority control County-level divisions of Shaanxi