Jiuquan
Jiuquan lies in the western part of the Hexi Corridor, surrounded by the Altyn Tagh Mountains, Qilianshan Mountains and Mazong Mountain (Northern Mountain). Jiuquan city is the hometown of Dunhuang Art, the cradle of modern spaceflight, and the birthplace of China’s oil and nuclear industry. It is also the birthplace of “Iron Man” Wang Jinxi and “Iron Man Spirit”.
The total area of Jiuquan city is 192,000 km2, accounting for 42% of all of Gansu Province. Jiuquan is made up of one district, two counties, two autonomous counties and two cities. More than 40 ethnic groups including Han, Mongol, Kazakh and Hui dwell there. Its population in 2019 was 1,132,200. Also, Jiuquan presents magnificent and unique natural scenery which is composed of glaciers, oases and magical mirages that appear in the desolate Gobi Desert.
Jiuquan has 50,000 km2 of arable land and 4,380,000 km2 of pasture land. There are 48 kinds of detected mineral resources at 487 places scattered in five large metallogenic belts, among which the reserves of asbestos, tungsten, chrome, magnesium, and gold rank at the top in Gansu province and even in the nation. Taergou Area has the largest tungsten mine in Asia and Laojunmiao oilfield was the earliest natural oil base in China. Therefore, Jiuquan is sufficient in supply of wind energy and photo-thermal resources. Guazhou and Yumen in Jiuquan are known as the World Wind Bank and the World Wind Outlet; their total reserve of wind energy reaches 150,000,000kw and the exploitable amount of wind energy is above 40,000,000kw. Jiuquan is entitled as the first “Wind Power Base of Millions of Kilowatts ” and is one of the important national new energy bases with theoretical solar power reserve close to 2 billion kw and more than 3,300 annual sunshine hours, on average. Jiuquan is one of the most potential national photovoltaic power generation bases since its solar radiation is second only to Tibet’s.
Jiuquan is a great tourist city of unique tourism resources with five world cultural heritages, one national AAAAA level traveling scenic area and five national AAAA level traveling scenic areas. The Dunhuang Mogao Caves,Guazhou Suoyang City, Dunhunag Yumen Pass, the Great Wall of the Han Dynasty and Dunhuang hanging spring site are famous world cultural heritages. Mingsha Mountain, Crescent Lake, Yumen Chijin Gorge, Yadan National Geopark, Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and Jinta Populus euphratica forest are distinctive cultural and natural landscapes. Jiuquan is famous at home and abroad for its Dunhuang culture, frontier culture and space technology and was selected as “The Most Popular Well-Known Western City” by China Central Television.