Ergun City


Ergun, formerly Ergun Right Banner, is a county-level city in Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia, containing the autonomous region's northernmost point.
The county-level city had the population of 85,162 people as of 2006.

Geography

Administratively, Ergun is part of the prefecture-level city of Hulunbuir. It occupies the right bank of the Argun River, which forms China's border with Russia's Zabaykalsky Krai.

Subdivisions

The county-level city of Ergun is divided into 2 subdistricts, 3 towns, 2 ethnic townships, one township and one sum. As of 2006, their population was reported as follows:
Ethnic composition of the county-level city of Ergun, as of 2006, was reported as follows:
Along the towns and villages of the Argun River within the boundaries of Ergun City are thousands of descendants of intermarriages between Han Chinese men and Russian women. This Russian descended population forms a large portion of the total number of Russians in China. One of the townships is Enhe, which is the only one of the settlements to be an official ethnic Russian township.
There are two international border crossings in the county-level city at Shiwei and Heishantou.

Ergun Wetlands

The city's claim to fame is the Ergun Wetlands, a plain delta formed by the Argun River and the Genhe River, Deerbugan River and Hawuer River. The Ergun Wetlands is one of the largest wetlands in Asia, lying about 3 km to the west of Labudalin Subdistrict, the urban area and seat of government, of the county-level city.
The wetlands are very lush in the middle of summer and see "oil painting like" autumn hues of red and yellow in September, attracting tourists and photographers for the scenery and wildlife. After the end of September the wetlands wither and turn dark. A panoramic view of the wetlands is afforded from a tourist scenic view overlooking the area from a hill 720 meters above sea level.
The encroachment of urban development has made preservation of the wetland difficult but were bolstered by a wetland protection law in 2012.