The Mountain of the Coast

Binzhou has a single shape. The ground falls from southwest to northeast, and one river draws the line. South of the Xiaoqing the Changbai mountains of southern Zouping end at Mohe Peak, 826.8 metres, the highest point in the prefecture, with sloping alluvial ground below them rising from 8 to 800 metres. North of the Xiaoqing the ground is Yellow River alluvium, lying at 1 to 20 metres and flat but not truly level, because the river has shifted and broken its banks here so often that levees, hollows and salt ridges alternate. Jieshi Mountain is one of the forty-seven national 3A scenic areas of the prefecture, listed with the Liquan Temple scenic area, which has nine 4A areas and sixty-eight rated attractions in all.

The coast is the second thing to understand. Binzhou has 126.44 kilometres of shoreline, 170,000 hectares of tidal flat and reed wetland, 200,000 hectares of shallow sea less than five metres deep, and 96,000 hectares of ground rated as fit for salt making. Rock salt and natural brine are among the thirty-two minerals proved in the prefecture. The most unusual stretch is the shell ridge and wetland nature reserve, described as the most complete shell ridge in the world and the only place where old and new shell ridges exist side by side. Inland of the marshes stands Wei's Manor, the largest castle-style dwelling of the Qing period in China, one of the prefecture's five national monuments together with the Yangjia salt-works sites.

The names here remember the sea and the salt. The county of Bohai was founded in 688 on land taken from Putai and Yanci, and named, as the Taiping Huanyu Ji puts it, for standing on the shore of the Bohai. In 746 the prefectural seat was moved west because the ground there was salty. In 956, under the Later Zhou, parts of Bohai and Putai counties were combined to make Binzhou, and the town itself was called Putai until the county was abolished in March 1956; the old name survives in a subdistrict of the city. Along the coast the names change again: the county of Haifeng was renamed Wudi in 1914.