Sanmenxia

關於Sanmenxia

Sanmenxia is a prefecture-level city in the west of Henan Province, China. The westernmost prefecture-level city in Henan, Sanmenxia borders Luoyang to the east, Nanyang to the southeast, Shaanxi Province to the west and Shanxi Province to the north. The city lies on the south side of the Yellow River at the point where the river cuts through the Loess Plateau on its way to the North China Plain.

As of the 2020 census, it was home to 2,034,872 inhabitants of which 820,300 lived in the built-up area made of Hubin, Shanzhou urban districts and Pinglu County in neighboring Shanxi (205,080 inhabitants), now within the agglomeration.

The city's name in Chinese (三门峡) means "The Gorge of Three Gateways" and is derived from two islands that split the Yellow River into three parts.

According to Chinese mythology, Yu the Great used a divine axe to cut the mountain ridge three times, creating the Sanmenxia gorges to prevent massive flooding. The three "men" or gates were then named "The Gateway of Man" (人门), "The Gateway of Gods" (神门) and "The Gateway of Devils" (鬼门).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.