Thursday, October 16, 2008

Huludao

Huludao is a prefecture-level city in southwestern Liaoning Province, China. It is one of the two municipal cities in the Liaoxi Corridor . Founded as a municipality in 1989 (first called Jinxi,then renamed Huludao in 1994), Huludao has a total area of 10,415 square kilometers, a population of 2.73 million up to 2004.

Huludao is the hometown of China's first astronaut Yáng Lìwěi.

Geography


Huludao's central geographical coordinates are at 120°38' east longitude and 40°56' north latitude. It lies in the southwest of Liaoning Province, with Jinzhou city on its east, Shanhai Pass on its west, and Liaodong Bay of the Bohai Sea on its south, forming the Bohai Sea economic rim with such cities as Dalian, Yingkou, Qinhuangdao, Qingdao, etc. As the first city outside the Shanhai Pass, it is situated at such a key junction that it serves as the west gate of the Northeast.

Huludao is situated in the north temperate zone with a continental monsoon climate. It has a frost-free period of 175 days and sunshine time of 2600- 2800 hours all year around. Its annually average precipitation is 550-650mm and temperature is 8.5-9.5℃

History


The area now ocuppied by Huludao city became a county in 1906. It is called Jinxin county in most of the time before 1982. It became Jinxi city in 1982, and then became Jinxi municipal city in 1989. The city is renamed to Huludao, which is the name of the peninsula as well as the harbor inside the city area, in 1994.

Subdivisions


Huludao has six immediate sub-municipal divisions:

Suizhong County
Jianchang County
Lianshan District

Nanpiao District

Transportation


Highways, railways, ocean shipping, air transportation and underground pipelines form the three-dimensional transportation network of Huludao. Jingha Railway and China National Highway 102 , the Jingshen Expressway and Qinshen Passenger Railway run across the major part of the area, and local railways radiate in all directions. Jinzhou Port is 7.5 kilometers away from its east border, while Qinhuangdao Port is 24 kilometers away from its west border, and within its area exists the Huludao Harbor and Suizhong Port, which is under expansion, air transportation has great potentialities. Qinhuangdao Airport is 20 kilometers away from its west border, while Jinzhou Airport is 30 kilometers away from its east border, the Xingcheng Airport within our area can serve large airliners.

Tourism


Historical changes and social development have endowed Huludao a great number of cultural relics, historic spots and natural sights. The world-famous Great Wall bridging water -Jiumenkou Great Wall, the ancient town of Xingcheng of the Ming Dynasty called the Second Beidaihe, and the relics of Jieshi Palace, an imperial palace for the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty and Emperor Wu Di of the Han Dynasty on their inspection tours and expeditions to the east which is comparable to the imperial Palace of Beijing and Shengshui Temple the Great Wall in terms of archaeological values, all exist within Huludao area, and with other nearly 30 natural sights and historic spots by the sea. They form the features of their own described as "time honored sights and historic spots, and fascinating corridor and scape".

Economy


As an important part of Bohai Economic Rim, Huludao links the developed Jing-Jin-Tang and Liaodong Peninsula Economic Zone together. With 18 large enterprises, including 3 extra-large ones, Huludao is one of the country's heavy industry base. An industrial structure with a combination of heavy and light industries has been set up, taking petrochemical industry as its main body metallurgy, building materials, machinery, ship building and power generation industries as its key sectors. There is an interactive network of underground pipelines in the area, two of which, one is from Daqing to Qinhuangdao, and the other is from Panjin to Huludao, carrying crude oil here, adding vigor to the old petrochemical basis. Huludao Shipyard is the building site of Chinese nuclear submarines.

Natural Resources


Huludao boasts of four kinds of noticeable resources. Firstly underground minerals. There are over 40 kinds of underground minerals, such as molybdenum, lead zinc and iron, etc. Secondly, mud flat resources. There are 237 kilometers of coastlines and 134,000 mu of mud flat, rich in fish, shrimp, shellfish, etc. Thirdly, oil and natural gas resources under the sea. There are more than 400 million tons of offshore oil and 16 billion cubic meters of natural gas in deposit. The largest offshore oil-and-gas field slies right here. Fourthly, forest and fruit resources in the mountainous area. There are altogether 2,525,000 mu of orchard land and 88.5 million of different fruit trees here, yielding totally 750000 tons of fruit every year, Qiansuo Orchard Farm is the fifth largest one in Asia.

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