Definition of "Ordos"

The Chinese Moslems, who constitute the largest minority, number about 700,000. They are organized in two autonomous chou and three autonomous hsien. The Wuchung Moslem Autonomous Chou, situated east of the Yellow River in former Ningsia Province, was called the Hotung (“east of the river”) chou until April, 1955, when it was renamed for its capital. The Wuchung chou has a population of 230,000, 62 per cent of whom are Moslems. The Wuchung chou includes the east-bank section of the Ningsia irrigated plain, adjoins the Ordos desert and passes southeastward into the loesslands. The autonomous chou was set up in April, 1954.

1956, Theodore Shabad, China's Changing Map: A Political and Economic Geography of the Chinese People's Republic‎, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, page 246

The river, which is some 3,028 miles long and has a catchment basin of 250,000 sq. miles, rises in the Bayan Kara Shan (15,000 ft) of north-east Tibet and flows as a mountain torrent above Lanchow. Between Lanchow and Wuchung in Ningsia it descends on to the Inner Mongolian plateau and is less torrential although still of considerable strength. At Wuchung it starts on its northward course, known as the Great Bend, across the Ordos Desert.

1970, T. R. Tregear, An Economic Geography of China‎, Butterworths, page 60

That prompted Buhchulu to quote yet another saying of this medieval eco-crusader: "'Don't freely dig up the earth!'"FREELY DIGGING UP the earth is exactly what I saw during a long, numbingly cold bus ride the next day to Genghis Khan’s mausoleum in the heart of the Ordos prefecture.

2011, Eric Enno Tamm, The Horse that Leaps through Clouds‎, Counterpoint Press, page 388

One rather frightening place those cars and bridges can reach is the Ghost City of Ordos. The original old Ordos lies on top of one-sixth of all the coal reserves of China. So despite its remote location near the Mongolian border, Ordos prospered. Its citizens produced about three times the national average GDP of China, ranking it only behind Shanghai and ahead of Beijing. Ordos became known as China’s Texas.

2012, Steve Cortés, Against the Herd‎, John Wiley & Sons, page 14

In Inner Mongolia a new city stands largely empty. This city, Ordos, suggests that the great Chinese building boom, which did so much to fuel the country's astonishing economic growth, is over.

2012 March 17, Peter Day, “Ordos: The biggest ghost town in China”, in BBC‎, archived from the original on March 5, 2014

As we have come to see, places have power, and power is symbolized by its possession of place. The deep bond between the two is especially clear in empty landscapes, such as the ghost town of Kangbashi New Area in the Chinese city of Ordos.

2014, Alastair Bonnett, “Kangbashi”, in Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies‎, 1st U.S. edition, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, page 100

In 2006, the headquarters of the local government was moved to Kangbashi from the Dongsheng District, 20 miles north; bus service between Kangbashi and Dongsheng was allegedly cut off so that Ordos’s public officials would be forced to take up residence in the new town.

2015 March 6, Jody Rosen, “The Colossal Strangeness of China’s Most Excellent Tourist City”, in The New York Times‎, archived from the original on 17 September 2015‎