Urumchi or Ürümqi, with a population of about 2.1 million, is the capital of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, in the northwest of the country.
Located in a green oasis between the lofty ice-capped Bogda Peak, the vast Salt Lake in the east, the rolling pine-covered Southern hill and the alternating fields and sand dunes of Zunggar Basin in the northwest, Ürümqi has an average elevation of 800 meters. The largest city in the western half of China, Ürümqi has won a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the most remote city from any sea in the world at a distance of about 1,400 miles (2500 km) from the nearest coastline (Ürümqi being the city closest to the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility).