Ten Chinese Cities from the Bohai Coast to the Western Plateaus

Tangshan sits on the Bohai coast east-southeast of Beijing and grew around coal mining that began in 1870, which made it the birthplace of China's first standard-gauge railway and steam locomotive. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake on July 28, 1976 destroyed the city, and its prefecture reached about 7.7 million people by the 2020 census after rebuilding as a port and industrial center.

Moving inland, Shijiazhuang lies about 266 kilometers southwest of Beijing, east of the Taihang Mountains. It was little more than a village until the railway arrived in the early twentieth century, and it is now Hebei's capital and most populous city, with 11,235,086 people at the 2020 census.

Handan is the southernmost prefecture-level city in Hebei, bordering Shanxi to the west and Henan to the south. It was the capital of the ancient state of Zhao and has a history of more than three thousand years, a contrast with Shijiazhuang, whose growth came from a railway junction.

Taiyuan is the capital of Shanxi province, and its economy is tied to Shanxi's coal reserves and an industrial base in energy and heavy chemicals. With a history of more than two thousand years, it mixes ancient temples and city walls with that modern industry, and it had 5,305,061 residents at the 2020 census.

Luoyang stands at the confluence of the Luo and Yellow rivers in Henan and served as capital under eleven dynasties, across six successive capital cities on the site. It was an eastern terminus of the Silk Roads and a major center of Buddhism, home to the White Horse Temple and the Longmen Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Baotou is a prefecture-level city on the northern bank of the Yellow River in Inner Mongolia, with about 2.7 million people at the 2020 census. It processes over half of the world's rare-earth minerals and grew as a steel center in China's early socialist period, which earned it the nickname City of Steel in the Grasslands.

Hohhot is the capital and largest city of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and its Mongolian name means Blue City. It has also been known as Guihua and Kweisui, and since a 2005 designation it has been called the Dairy Capital of China, home to the producers Mengniu and Yili.

Xining is the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau, at an elevation of 2,275 meters in the Huangshui River valley, with 2,467,965 inhabitants at the 2020 census. For over two thousand years it was a commercial hub on the Hexi Corridor of the Northern Silk Road, and it has been a prefectural seat since receiving its current name in 1104.

Lhasa is the second most populous urban area on the Tibetan Plateau after Xining and, at an altitude of 3,656 meters, one of the highest cities in the world. It has been the religious and administrative capital of Tibet since the mid-17th century and holds the Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple and Norbulingka Palaces.

Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou, lies about 1,100 meters up on the eastern part of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, on the north bank of the Nanming River. Once a relatively remote provincial capital, it has become a center for big data and cloud computing, drawn by its cool climate and abundant hydroelectric power, and had 5,987,018 people at the 2020 census.