Bayannur

Bayannur lies in western Inner Mongolia, around the Hetao country of the Yellow River. Its modern name means “rich lake” in Mongolian and refers to a broad region rather than a single historic city. In the Ming period, Mongol groups held much of the wider Hetao beyond the frontier wall, and pastoral life remained important. In 1648 the Qing organized the Urad people and their grazing lands north of the river into three banners; other parts of the region belonged to Ordos banners. From the late Kangxi and Qianlong periods onward, migrants from neighbouring provinces rented and cultivated land in parts of Hetao. Pastoral and farming communities thus shared a landscape whose boundaries and uses changed over time.