Dìngyuǎn

Dingyuan lies west of the Helan Mountains, between their rocky slopes and the sands of the Tengger Desert. In the early eighteenth century the Qing built a military camp here, completed in 1730. The following year the emperor granted it to Abao, ruler of the Alashan Khoshut banner, who moved his residence there from Zini Lake. A princely residence and temples grew within the fortified town, making it a centre of Mongol authority on the edge of the desert.