Laixi 莱西市

Setting and landscape

Laixi borders Laiyang (莱阳) to the east, Pingdu (平度) to the west along the Xiaogu River (小沽河), Jimo (即墨) to the south, Zhaoyuan (招远) to the north and Laizhou (莱州) to the north-west. It measures 63 km from north to south and 36 km from east to west. The ground falls from low mountains and hills in the north through gently sloping plains in the middle to lowlands in the south, and the highest point, 427.8 m, lies on the Pingdu border.

Most of its 61 rivers, among them the Xiaogu and the Zhu (洙河), belong to the Dagu system. Chanzhi Reservoir (产芝水库), completed in 1958 on the upper-middle Dagu north-east of Chanzhi village, is a large reservoir for flood control, irrigation and water supply. The Jiangshan Wetland (姜山湿地) covers 25 square km. The climate is a temperate continental monsoon type, and about 72 percent of the 635.8 mm of yearly rain falls from June to September.

History

The Han set up Zoulu County (邹卢县) here; the city's English history dates it to 164 BC, under the Jiaodong (胶东) kingdom. The Sui founded Luxiang County (卢乡县) in 596, the Tang merged it into Changyang (昌阳县) in 627, and in the Later Tang Changyang was renamed Laiyang. Laixi County was formed by a merger in May 1950; it was merged into Laiyang County in 1958 and split off again in 1962, passed to Qingdao in October 1983 and became Laixi City in February 1991. Sites from the Longshan culture and the Western Zhou, and a group of Western Han tombs, are protected at city level.

Food and local products

Farming centres on peanuts, fruit and vegetables, and dairy cattle are raised on a large scale. Underground, Laixi has sizeable, high-grade graphite deposits and is one of China's main sources and exporters of the mineral.

Getting oriented

The Qingdao–Rongcheng intercity railway and the Lancun–Yantai railway cross Laixi from north to south, and the Weifang–Laixi high-speed railway runs east to west.