Chizhou lies in the south west of Anhui Province, facing Yangtze River on its north and the famous Yellow Mountain to its south. The city has jurisdiction over Guichi District, Dongzhi County, Shitai County, Qingyang County, the Scenic Area of Jiuhua Mountain, and the provincial Chizhou economic development zone, with a total area of 8272 km² and 1.56 million people. | Chizhou with its unique tourism resources, which combine natural scenery and cultural highlights, is the ideal tourist resort. Jiuhua Mountain, as one of the four national Buddhist shrines, is not only beautiful in its natural scenery of the State's Four-A-Class scenic spots, but also a well-known international Buddhist temple with profound religious culture, hundreds of temples and thousands of monks and nuns. In the area, there is a national wildlife reserve –Guniujiang, which is called “East Chinese Animal and Plant Gene Bank”. High trees, various rivers, and mountains make the area known as “Another Yellow Mountain”. Shengjin Lake is one of the important Asian Damp Natural Reserves and is called “the Lake of Crane in China”. The water of the lake is mirror-clear, along which trees mix with the mist -- a typical scene in the south of Yangtze River region. Chizhou is a famous historical and cultural city in Anhui with profound cultural background. In the fourth year of Emperor Wudi in Tang Dynasty, Chizhou was set as an administrative place -- 1400 years of history. Dumu in late Tang Dynasty and Baozheng in North Song Dynasty had been governor in Chizhou. Libai and Sushi (famous ancient poets) tripped and made many well-known poems, for which, Chizhou is called “Place of Poets for Thousand Years”. The Nuo Opera which initiated in Chizhou from the ancient matriarchal society is praised as the “living fossil of opera”. The ecological environment of Chizhou is fine, with forest coverage rate of over 57%. It is China’s first national ecological economic demonstration zone, a local pilot area implementing “China 21st Century Agenda”, and one of the first comprehensive demonstration cities for the construction of “Ecological Anhui”. The city is rich in mineral resources, especially limestone, dolomite, calcite, and other non-metallic mineral resources -- all of high geological quality with tremendous processing potential. Anhui provincial government has established it as the provincial industrial cluster of new non-metallic materials. In recent years, the industry of the non-metallic materials in Chizhou has been developed prosperously. Many domestic and foreign companies, such as Belgium Lvsiwei Company, South Korea Oumier Company, Hong Kong Weique Company, Baoshan Steel, Ma’anshan Steel, Conch and so on, have come to invest in Chizhou. | Chizhou is along the Yangtze River and near the port. It claims 162 km of golden waterway for navigation. Chizhou Port with 5,000-ton freight berth capacity, is the key port along the Yangtze River, a national rank open port to the outside world. National Highways 318 and 206 are crossing here. The west section of the expressway along the River (Maozhuyuan to Dadukou) and Chizhou section of Tongling-Jiujiang Railway are open to traffic. Hefei-Tongling-Huangshan Expressway and Anqing-Jinggangshan Expressway which will cross Chizhou are under construction. Jiuhua Mountain Tourist Airport, Chizhou Yangtze River Highway-Railway Bridge, and Nangjing-Anqing Intercity Passenger Railway are under rapid construction. The city will become a transport node. | During the 11th Five-Year-Plan period, Chizhou will adhere to “Catch up, struggle to rise as a unique and achieve leap”, regard industrialization as its key principle, opening up as the main strategy, attracting investment as the main task, the industrial zone as a platform, and make great efforts to cultivate the five pillar industries -- new non-metallic materials, tourism, agricultural and sideline products and processing, nonferrous metal smelting and processing, and energy industry. People in the city try to make Chizhou the country’s largest non-metallic materials base, a world-class tourist destination, the important processing base of agricultural and sideline products, the base of Chinese herbal medicine base in East China, important nonferrous metal smelting and processing base and energy base in Anhui Province, and strive to build a rich and pleasant Chizhou with good scenery and harmonious society.
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