The World's Most Remote Major City — the capital of Xinjiang in China's far northwest is the furthest major city from any ocean on Earth, a bazaar crossroads of Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Han cultures at the foot of the Heavenly Mountains, with the largest Sunday Bazaar market in Central Asia
Ürümqi is the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region — a city of 3.5 million at 43°N, 87°E, the most landlocked major city in the world (over 2,500km from the nearest ocean in any direction), at 800 metres elevation on the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert beneath the snow-capped Heavenly Mountains (Tian Shan). Xinjiang means 'New Territory' — the region was incorporated into China in the 18th century and has been the subject of significant political tension since; visitors should be aware of the current situation and check travel advisories. The Grand Bazaar of Ürümqi (Erdaoqi…
The Ürümqi area has been inhabited since antiquity as a crossroads of the Silk Road — archaeological evidence shows Bronze Age settlement and the region's role in early east-west cultural exchange (the Tarim mummies are among the most dramatic evidence of this). The area was under various Turkic, Uyghur, and Chinese imperial control before the Qing dynasty conquered Xinjiang in 1755–59. Chinese rule was re-established in 1884 and Xinjiang became a province. The region was repeatedly contested between Soviet-backed Uyghur independence movements and the Kuomintang/PRC through the 1940s. Xinjian…