Baicheng

Baicheng is the prefecture-level city that covers the whole northwestern corner of Jilin, bordering Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang across a landscape of grassland, reed marsh and shallow lakes. Its economy rests on farming — Baicheng is one of China's leading oat districts and holds seven national geographical-indication products, including its oats, mung beans, Taonan chilli peppers and Tongyu grassland beef — and increasingly on energy, as the city is a core site of Jilin's inland "wind and solar Three Gorges" programme with very large wind farms, photovoltaic plants and green-hydrogen projects. Higher education centres on Baicheng Normal University, the only provincial public undergraduate institution in western Jilin, supported by Baicheng Medical College and several vocational schools. Baicheng Chang'an Airport opened in 2017 as Jilin's fifth civil airport, while Baicheng Railway Station is the largest marshalling yard in western Jilin and a hub on the Changchun–Baicheng–Ulanhot high-speed corridor. The city calls itself the "home of the white crane": the Xianghai and Momoge reserves are internationally important wetlands where nearly all of the world's Siberian cranes stop on migration, and Xianghai is counted among the eight great scenic sites of Jilin.