Xichang

Xichang is a county-level city in the south of Sichuan, China, and the seat of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. The Qiongdu were the local people when China made contact, and a county of that name is attested here from the Han dynasty. The area was part of the medieval Kingdom of Dali and was subdued by the Mongols between 1253 and 1256. Marco Polo recorded that the people of Jiandu, as the area was then called, used rods of gold bullion and half-catty pieces of molded salt instead of coins. Under the Qing it was known as Ningyuan Commandery or Jianchang and was the centre of Sichuan's white wax production. A magnitude 7.5 earthquake in 1850 killed more than 20,600 people. Catholic missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society arrived in the 18th century, and the Apostolic Vicariate of Kienchang, founded in 1910, became a diocese in 1946 with its cathedral in Xichang. The city sits in a mountainous region on the Anning River near Qiong Lake and has a mild, sunny, monsoon-influenced humid subtropical climate with an annual mean of about 17 degrees Celsius. Xichang Railway Station is on the Chengdu-Kunming railway, and its spaceport, in operation since 1984 about 64 kilometres to the northwest, mostly launches communications satellites.