Yanji, Jilin Province, China

🇨🇳 Yanji (延吉) is a county-level city in the east of China's Jilin Province, and is the seat of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. A significant portion of its population is ethnic Korean. Yanji is a busy hub of transport and trade between China and North Korea. The city is home to Yanbian University, a comprehensive university and the only Project 211 university in Yanji.

Yanji and its environs were largely unpopulated until the 1800s when Qing dynasty rulers of China began to encourage migration there from China proper as part of its Chuang Guandong policy to populate Manchuria in an effort to stem encroaching Russian expansion.

The city was the seat of Jiandao Province in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo from 1934 to 1943. In 1943, the city itself was renamed Jiandao (Chientao) and made a part of the Dongman Consolidated Province (东满总省).

Following World War II, the city (again called Yanji) was nominally part of a new Songjiang Province but with the communist seizure of power in 1949, Sonjiang's borders were changed and Yanji became part of Jilin Province.

Yanji is now part of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, which is situated in eastern Jilin. Yanji City is centrally located, surrounded by five other county-level cities and two rural counties (see map); it is the administrative seat of the prefecture.

Yanji is situated among foothills, with the main metropolitan area contained in a small, very flat area. It is ringed by mountains dotted with small, remote farming communities.

Yanji has six subdistricts and four towns. Subdistricts: • Henan Subdistrict (河南街道 / 하남가도), Jiangong Subdistrict (建工街道 / 건공가도), Xinxing Subdistrict (新兴街道 / 신흥가도), Gongyuan Subdistrict (公园街道 / 공원가도), Chaoyang Subdistrict (朝阳街道 / 조양가도), Beishan Subdistrict (北山街道 / 북산가도). Towns: • Yilan (依兰镇 / 이란진), Sandaowan (三道湾镇 / 삼도만진), Xiaoying (小营镇 / 소영진), Chaoyangchuan （朝阳川镇).

Economy With its current population estimated at four hundred thousand, Yanji is small by Chinese standards (by comparison, the population of Shanghai is almost twenty million). Yanji is also relatively young: the city was developed only in the nineteenth century and became the regional capital after the Second World War. Recent growth in tourism and overseas investment has helped to make Yanji a notably prosperous city. It abounds with modern architecture of steel and glass, and its broad avenues are conspicuously clean and well-maintained. In modern times, Yanji has become a city of transport and trade. China is the largest trading partner of North Korea, accounting for almost 40% of that country's international commerce, and Yanji is the centre of much of the cross-border enterprise. Beyond North Korea, other countries have begun to partner with Yanji business groups: currently there are over five hundred joint ventures with international partners ongoing in Yanji. Much of the recent investment has been made by South Korea and Taiwan, which has helped substantially in building the city's tourism industry.

Yanji also burnishes its reputation as a centre of tourism by hosting the annual North China Travel Fair. Held every year since 1996, the fair is one of the largest of its kind in the country, showcasing over a thousand exhibitions representing cultural and economic partners from across China and overseas. Yanji also hosts the Tumen River Area International Investment & Business Forum, a three-day exposition held annually since 2000.

Transport Daily train service to most major urban centres of the province is available from Yanji, including a 24-hour trip to Beijing. A much shorter trip to the Chinese capital can be arranged at Yanji Chaoyangchuan International Airport which serves the area with scheduled passenger flights domestically and to Korea. International air service is provided by the Changchun Longjia Airport, and surface travel to Changchun itself has been made more accessible since the large Changchun-Yanji Expressway was opened to the public in 2009.

A new 125-mile (201 km) water and sewage pipeline was completed in 2006, linking Yanji and the neighboring cities of Jilin and Songyuan to modern sewage treatment plants along the Songhua River.

As of 2012 Yanji offers the most convenient road access to the Rason Special Economic Zone in North Korea.

Education Yanbian University is a comprehensive university in Yanji, founded in 1949; it offers eleven programs of study, including four doctoral programs. The university maintains a full-time teaching staff of over 1,400, serving an active student body of over sixteen thousand. One of Yanbian University's graduates, a Korean language major, is Zhang Dejiang, formerly a deputy secretary of the Municipal Committee of Yanji (1983–1985), and now a Vice-Premier of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.

Yanji is also home to the Yanbian University of Science and Technology, a technical research college founded in 1990, and the Yanbian Medical College.

Yanbian International Academy, the area school for foreigners, is located in Yanji. There is also a school for Koreans, Korean International School in Yanbian.