Suiling County 绥棱县

Setting and landscape

The county government calls Suiling a typical half-mountain county and sums up its land as "six parts hills, one part water, three parts fields" (六山一水三分田). Three main rivers cross it, the Numin (努敏河), the Keyin (克音河) and the Morgen (墨尔根河), and the Hongqi (红旗) and Xiangyang (向阳) reservoirs are its two medium-sized reservoirs. Woodland covers more than three million mu, with white pine, larch, Mongolian Scots pine (樟子松), spruce and birch among some twenty tree species. The annual average temperature is 2.4°C and the frost-free season lasts about 132 days.

Suiling lies 70 kilometres from Suihua city and 180 kilometres from Harbin (哈尔滨). The Binbei Railway (滨北铁路) and the Qianjin–Nenjiang Expressway (前嫩高速公路) pass through the county.

History

The name comes from Suileng Mountain (绥楞山). A Suileng administrative bureau was set up in 1915 and raised to a county on 1 January 1917; the name took its present written form in June 1921. During the anti-Japanese resistance the county once held the seat of the provisional Northern Manchuria Provincial Committee (北满临时省委), and the resistance leaders Zhao Shangzhi (赵尚志), Yu Tianfang (于天放), Kim Chaek (金策) and Chen Lei (陈雷) all fought here. The county was liberated in 1945.

What to see

The Suiling county government lists the Jindouwan tourist area (金斗湾旅游区), Baimashi (白马石, "White Horse Rock"), Dongbei Lake Park (东北湖公园), a botanical garden and Qingyun Temple (青云寺) among its sights, together with a forest narrow-gauge railway (森林窄轨铁路), stands of primeval forest and wetlands.

Food and local products

Suiling is one of Heilongjiang's main producers of rice, soybeans and maize, and about one million mu of its farmland has selenium-rich soil. Its farmland, mostly black soil, peat soil and meadow soil, also grows wheat, sugar beet, melons and vegetables. From the hills come more than a hundred kinds of wild produce, including bracken fern, pine nuts and hazelnuts, and over 400 medicinal plants such as ginseng and schisandra (五味子).

Highlights

• Forest narrow-gauge railway 森林窄轨铁路: Listed by the Suiling county government among the county's sights.
• Qingyun Temple 青云寺: Listed by the county government among Suiling's historic and scenic sights.
• Jindouwan tourist area 金斗湾旅游区: Tourist area listed by the Suiling county government among the county's sights.