This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Mengzi County is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
| Mengzi County | |
| — County — | |
| Chinese transcription(s) | |
| - Characters | 蒙自县 |
|---|---|
| - Pinyin | Měngzì Xiàn |
  Mengzi County
|
|
| Coordinates: | |
| Country | China |
| Province | Yunnan |
| Prefecture | Honghe |
| Area | |
| - Total | 2,228 km2 (860.2 sq mi) |
| Population | |
| - Total | 330,000 |
| - Density | 148.1/km2 (383.6/sq mi) |
| Postal code | 661100 |
| Area code(s) | 873 |
| Website: http://www.mzxzfw.gov.cn/ | |
Mengzi County (Chinese: 蒙自县; Pinyin: Měngzì Xiàn) is a county, in the southeast of Yunnan, China, in the Honghe prefecture about 12 miles east of Gejiu. It is situated in the center of a fertile valley basin on a plateau 1000 meters above sea level.
Contents |
Government
The county seat is in Wenlan town.
Food
The Mengzi region is well-known for a dish called guoqiao mixian ("Over the Bridge Rice Noodle"), made with long rice-flour noodles.
History
In the 19th century, Mengzi was a trading centre for commerce between the interior of Yunnan and the Hanoi-Haiphong area of Vietnam.
In 1886, a French convention chose Mengzi to be the center of trade in Yunnan province for importing and exporting goods via Tongking in Vietnam. Facilities for this opened 2 years later.
Communications were inconvenient: goods were shipped to Hekou on the Vietnamese border by junk, transferred by small craft to Manhao, and then taken 60 km by pack animal to Mengzi. Despite these difficulties, Mengzi was an important port of entry into both Yunnan and western Guizhou provinces, and in 1889 it was opened to foreign trade as a treaty port. Most of this foreign trade was in tin and opium. Its main exports were tin and opium, and the main imports were mostly textiles (primarily cotton) and tobacco.
As a trading center, the city gradually began to lose its importance beginning from the early 20th century. The importance of Mengzi was ended by the construction of the French railway from Haiphong to Kunming (the Yunnan provincial capital) in 1906–10. This railway bypassed Mengzi, but in 1915 a branch line was built via the town to the Gejiu tin mines. Apart from a brief respite during the early days of World War II, the town of Mengzi has, nevertheless, steadily declined in importance ever since.
Gejiu became a county in 1913, and a city in 1951. With the improvement of communications and transportation between cities of Gejiu and Kaiyuan and the other counties nearby, plus the development of trade between southwestern China and the countries of Southeast Asia, Mengzi's ties have increasingly strengthened with Gejiu and Kaiyuan. The whole area has become a border economic centre. In addition to tin, the county's natural resources include coal, manganese, lead, zinc, and antimony.
When Japanese troops drove Beijing and Tianjin university professors, students, and administrators out of those cities, and then later out of Changsha as well, the academics made their own long march to Yunnan Province. They first established themselves in Mengzi, but after a year or so moved on to the provincial capital, Kunming. This was Lianda, or the Southwest Associated Universities.
Recently, the prefectural government has moved from nearby Gejiu to Mengzi. New wealthy suburbs and large government offices have sprung up as a result, but much of the poverty remains, creating a large wealth gap within the city.
Economy
Like nearby Gejiu, mining, mostly of tin, is a large part of its economy.
References
- BBC report on Mengzi
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
External links
|
|||||||||||||||||
.png)
 |
This Yunnan location article is a stub. You can help by expanding it. |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 9 November 2008, at 08:39.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Mengzi County".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.