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Qitai County

Qitai County (Chinese: 奇台县) as the official romanized name, also transliterated from Uyghur as Guqung County or Gucheng County (Uyghur: گۇچۇڭ ناھىيىسى; Chinese: 古城县), is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China under the administration of the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture. It covers an area of 16,641 square kilometres (6,425 sq mi) and as of the 2002 census had a population of 230,000.

Qitai County's county seat is in Qitai Town. Gucheng Township is nearby.

History

Located on one of the main routes of the Silk Road, the old Gucheng (often referred in the European writing of the past as "Ku Ch'eng-tze", Kucheng, Kuchengtze, etc., using Wade-Giles or Postal Romanization systems), was the western terminal for one of the caravan routes across the Gobi Desert. Owen Lattimore in The Desert Road to Turkestan leaves an account of his travel along this route in 1926-27.[2]

"Under the special circumstances of the caravan trade, camel traffic usually overshoots Hami ["the most easterly point on the arterial cart roads of Chinese Turkestan"], going on all the way to Ku Ch’eng-tze. This is partly because the pastures near Ku Ch’eng-tze are more adequate to caravan needs, but still more because, transport being cheaper by camel than by cart, it is to the advantage of merchants to have their goods carried as far as possible by caravan."[3]

Climate

Subdivisions

Qitai County is made up of 9 towns, 3 townships, and 3 ethnic townships.

Transportation

In 2009, the Ürümqi–Dzungaria Railway was constructed through the Jiangjun Gobi desert in the northern part of the county. It terminates at a coal mine in Jiangjunmiao.[8]

The radio telescope project

In 2012, the officials of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Xinjiang government presided over the groundbreaking at the site of the Xinjiang Qitai Astronomical and Science Education Base.[9] The facility, in Qitai County's Banjiegou Town (半截沟镇), will be the home of the proposed Qitai Radio Telescope.[10] Once completed it will be the largest fully steerable single-dish radio telescope in the world.[11][12]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Locals in Xinjiang frequently observe UTC+6 (Xinjiang Time), 2 hours behind Beijing.
  1. ^ Xinjiang: Prefectures, Cities, Districts and Counties
  2. ^ Lattimore (1929), pp. 52, 250.
  3. ^ Lattimore (1929), p. 250.
  4. ^ a b 中国气象数据网 – WeatherBk Data (in Simplified Chinese). China Meteorological Administration. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  5. ^ 中国气象数据网 (in Simplified Chinese). China Meteorological Administration. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  6. ^ 奇台城市介绍以及气候背景分析. Weather China (in Chinese). 中国气象局公共气象服务中心. Retrieved July 27, 2015.
  7. ^ 中国气象数据网 (in Simplified Chinese). China Meteorological Administration. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  8. ^ (Chinese) "新疆精伊霍、乌精二线、奎北、乌准4条铁路新线开通运营" (Four new railways enter into service in Xinjiang: the Jinghe-Yining Line, the Ürümqi-Jinghe second track, the Kuitun-Beitun Line, and the Ürümqi–Dzungaria Line) 2009-11-06
  9. ^ Groundbreaking Ceremony of Qitai Base
  10. ^ "QTT Project Proposal". Proceeds of the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory. 2012.
  11. ^ "QTT Specification". QTT International Advisory Workshop. Archived from the original on 2013-12-24. Retrieved 2013-04-08.
  12. ^ Na, Wang (May 2013). QiTai Radio Telescope. The Second China-U.S. Workshop on Radio Astronomy Science and Technology. Retrieved 11 July 2013.

References