Wujiaqu 五家渠市

Setting and landscape

The city lies north of Bogda Peak (博格达峰) on the Tianshan and on the southern edge of the Junggar Basin (准噶尔盆地). It borders Midong District (米东区) of Ürümqi (乌鲁木齐) to the east and south and Changji (昌吉) city to the west and north. From south to north the land passes from mountains to alluvial plain and then desert.

History

The name means "five families' canal": in the late Qing and early Republic, five households, among them the Yang, Feng and Du families, dug a canal from the Laolong River (老龙河) to water their fields. From 1950 the 51st Regiment of the People's Liberation Army's 17th Division farmed the land around Qinggeda Lake (青格达湖), and in winter 1953 the headquarters of the Sixth Division moved to Wujiaqu. The State Council approved the city in September 2002, and it was formally inaugurated on 19 January 2004, formed from the division's 101st, 102nd and 103rd regiments and its Wujiaqu headquarters area.

What to see

Qinggeda Lake (青格达湖), 3 kilometres from the city centre in the south of the city, is the Mengjin Reservoir (猛进水库), a 17-square-kilometre irrigation lake at the end of the Ürümqi, Toutun and Shuimo rivers. It began as a reed-filled hollow called Heilongtan (黑龙潭, "Black Dragon Pool"). The 17th Division's Party committee decided to build the reservoir in May 1952, and work began on 18 June; it was then the largest reservoir project in Xinjiang, and the lake is also called the "first reservoir of the military reclamation". It has been called "the kidneys of Ürümqi" for holding back sand blown from the Gurbantünggüt Desert (古尔班通古特沙漠). Surveys between 2002 and 2013 recorded 225 bird species in the lake's nature reserve, including black storks, great bustards and white-tailed eagles, and large numbers of migrants stop there in spring and autumn.

The lake is also a national water-conservancy scenic area. Bingtuan Radio and Television reported in May 2025 that the lakeside scenic area had been refitted with flower fields in seven themes, among them a windmill square modelled on the Netherlands, and that the division-city's red-tourism circuit centres on its Generals' Memorial Hall (将军纪念馆).

Food and local products

Wujiaqu's main farm products are cotton, grain, sugar beet, watermelons and Hami melons (哈密瓜), along with oil crops, maize, aquatic products, eggs and meat.

Highlights

• Qinggeda Lake 青格达湖: The Mengjin Reservoir, begun in 1952 by the 17th Division and then the largest reservoir project in Xinjiang.
• Qinggeda Lake nature reserve 青格达湖自然保护区: 225 bird species recorded between 2002 and 2013, including black storks and great bustards.
• Generals' Memorial Hall 将军纪念馆: The centre of the division-city's red-tourism circuit.