Changtu County 昌图县

Setting and landscape

Siping (四平) in Jilin borders the county to the north, and across the river to the west lies the Horqin Left Rear Banner (科尔沁左翼后旗) of Inner Mongolia. The climate is a temperate continental monsoon type with four clear seasons and about 655 millimetres of rain a year. Medicinal herbs of the county include schisandra (五味子), balloon-flower root (桔梗) and bupleurum (柴胡).

History

The name comes from the Mongolian 'Tsantakh Ereg', a 'frost-covered cliff'. The land once belonged to a Mongol prince of the Horqin Left Rear Banner; in 1802 the Qing began admitting Han Chinese settlers to farm it, set up Changtu sub-prefecture in 1806 and raised it to a prefecture in 1877. It became a county in 1913.

Much older is the walled town at Bamiancheng (八面城), which was the seat of Hanzhou (韩州) under the Liao dynasty and in the early Jin. A Liaoning Daily report on archaeological findings puts the circuit of its walls at about 3 kilometres, between the 4 to 6 kilometres of a typical Liao prefectural town and the roughly 2 kilometres of a small prefectural or county town. In 1150 the Jin moved the seat of Hanzhou to Pianliancheng (偏脸城), now in Lishu County (梨树县), Jilin.

Getting oriented

The county sits where Liaoning, Jilin and Inner Mongolia meet. The Beijing–Harbin and Siping–Qiqihar railways and the Beijing–Harbin Expressway cross it, the expressway with three exits in the county, and the county seat is 120 kilometres from Shenyang Taoxian airport.

Highlights

• Bamiancheng walled town 八面城: Seat of Liao-dynasty Hanzhou, with walls about 3 kilometres round.