Qiemo

About Qiemo Information, Qiemo Overview, Qiemo Guide, China Guide.

The Uighur-speaking city of Qiemo County, or Cherchen County, 1270 kilometres from the province capitol Urumqi City, is under the jurisdiction of the Autonomous Prefecture of Bayingolin Mongols in the southern part of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Situated on the south-eastern rim of the Tarim Basin and at the northerly base of the Kunlun Mountains and Altun Mountains, Qiemo shares a boundary with Ruoqiang County, neighboring Minfeng (Hotan Prefecture) in the western part, Tibet in the southern part, extends into the Taklimakan Desert in the northerly part and lies opposite the Shaya District of Aksu.

With an area of 138,680 km2, Qiemo is the second biggest province in China after Ruoqiang District. The name Qiemo was initially the name of an old empire in the Han region (202B.C.-220 A. D.); although historically altered for periods in different denominations, such as Boxer in the Tang Empire (618-907), Zhelihui in the Yuan Empire (1279-1368), Chelichang in the Ming Empire (1368-1644) and Kaqiang in the Qing Empire (1644-1911), the area has re-established its name of Qiemo in 1914.

Qiemo was known to the central plain peoples who began shortly after the visit of the emissary Zhang Qian to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. - A.D. 24). However, Qiemo was first mentioned in Han Shu literature (or Han Dynasty history) as the Qiemo kingdom; and in the records of eastern areas by the great Tang Dynasty friar Xuanzang, the great priest once described the area in detail.

It was from the Sui Dynasty (581-619) that the federal administration began to establish an associated bureau to administer Qiemo's area. Qiemo, with a very old story, is not only one of the 36 old empires in the West but also the source of the old Jade and Jewel Road and a pivotal location of the South Silk Road.