Ürümqi

Sister cities

• Batumi
• Dushanbe
• Chelyabinsk
• Peshawar
• Mashhad
• Gaziantep

History

During prehistory, the site of the future Ürümqi was occupied by a nomadic people known in Chinese accounts as the Jushi, who lived mainly on the northern slopes of the surrounding Tianshan Mountains. The Jushi are often regarded as likely precursors of the Tocharian peoples, who later established city states in the Tarim Basin, south of the present site of Ürümqi. The oldest known settlement, a town called Urabo, was located about from the southern suburbs of the present-day Ürümqi. Han Chinese states, located to the east, exerted increasing control of the Tarim Basin. Under the name Luntai, the city was founded by the Tang government, in 648 CE, the 22nd year of Emperor Taizong's reign, as part of the Protectorate General to Pacify the West. It was a seat of local government and collected taxes from the caravans along the northern route of the Silk Road. The Ürümqi of the early period was therefore a twin-city, with Gongning Cheng forming the administrative center while Dihua grew into Xinjiang's commercial and financial center. Han Chinese from all over China moved into Dihua, as did Chinese Hui Muslims from the areas of Gansu and Shaanxi. The origin of Hui in Ürümqi is often indicated by the names of their mosques. By 1762, more than 500 shops had already been opened by Chinese migrants to the area of modern-day Ürümqi. Those Qing literati who visited Dihua were impressed by its cultural sophistication and similarity to eastern China. The writer Ji Yun compared Dihua to Beijing, in that both had numerous wine shops which offered daily performances of Chinese music and dance. In 1870, the Battle of Ürümqi took place between the Turkic Muslim forces of Yaqub Beg against the Dungan Muslim forces of Tuo Ming (Daud Khalifa). With the help of Xu Xuegong's Han…

Geography

The largest city in western China, Ürümqi has earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the most remote city from any sea in the world. It is about from the nearest coastline as Ürümqi is the closest major city to the Eurasian pole of inaccessibility, although Karamay and Altay, both in Xinjiang, are closer. The city has an administrative area of and has an average elevation of . The location in the southwestern suburbs of Ürümqi (Ürümqi County) was designated by local geography experts as the "center point of Asia" in 1992, and a monument to this effect was erected there in the 1990s. The site is a local tourist attraction. Although surrounded by deserts (the Gurbantünggüt in the north and the Taklamakan in the south), the Ürümqi area is naturally watered by a number of small rivers flowing from the snow-capped Tian Shan mountains: the main range of the Tian Shan in south of the city (Ürümqi County), and the Bogda Shan east of the city (Dabancheng District). There are 20,000 glaciers in Xinjiang – nearly half of all the glaciers in China. Since the 1950s, Xinjiang's glaciers have retreated by between 21 percent to 27 percent due to global warming. Tianshan Glacier No. 1 (), origin of Ürümqi River, is the largest glacier near a major city in China, but has already split into two smaller glaciers. From the reservoir area water is further distributed over a network of canals throughout the lower Midong District. Ürümqi lies on the boundary between a humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfa, Trewartha: Dcac) and a cool semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSk, Trewartha: BSac). It sees vast differences between summer and winter temperatures, featuring very warm to hot summers, with a July daily average of , and frigid winters, with a January daily average of . The…

Most-observed species

• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  81
• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  81
• Azure-winged Magpie

  Cyanopica cyanus (Pallas, 1776) · Aves
  72
• Eurasian Magpie

  Pica pica (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  71
• Azure Tit

  Cyanistes cyanus (Pallas, 1770) · Aves
  63
• Eurasian Tree Sparrow

  Passer montanus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  36
• Common Swift

  Apus apus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  33
• House Sparrow

  Passer domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  31

Most recent

• M 4.5 — 2026-05-18
  17 km WSW of Ürümqi, China
• M 5.1 — 2026-04-02
  65 km SSE of Ürümqi, China
• M 4.2 — 2026-03-18
  59 km WSW of Changji, China
• M 4.5 — 2026-03-11
  73 km SSE of Ürümqi, China
• M 4.3 — 2026-03-10
  69 km SSE of Shihezi, China
• M 5.2 — 2026-03-06
  67 km SSE of Shihezi, China