Kuytun

Kuytun takes its name from the river descending from the northern Tian Shan into the Dzungarian plain. The name is a Mongolian word for cold, recorded in the history of the Yuan dynasty. Its waters flow near the old route east of Kur Kara Usu, through country once held by the Oirats. After Qing armies defeated the Dzungars in the eighteenth century, the river valley became part of the empire's newly organized western frontier.