Heze

Heze (simplified Chinese: 菏泽; traditional Chinese: 菏澤; pinyin: Hézé) is a prefecture-level city in southwestern Shandong, China. It is home to 8,287,693 inhabitants, of whom 1,346,717 live in the built-up (or metro) area comprising Mudan District. The westernmost prefecture-level city in Shandong, it borders Jining to the east and the provinces of Henan and Anhui to the west and south respectively. The old name of Heze was Caozhou (曹州; Cáozhōu) and now a part of the city bears this name. The first character in the city's name is sometimes incorrectly written as "荷" instead.

History

Qing & Republic

The city's name in postal romanization is Tsaochow.

People's Republic

In August 1949 Heze was detached from Shandong and given to the experimental province of Pingyuan. It returned to Shandong just over three years later.

In April 1953 Heze and Jining shared the counties of Huxi, which is no more.

Geography

Heze has a monsoon-influenced climate that lies between the humid subtropical and humid continental zones (Köppen Cwa/Dwa), with four well-defined seasons. The city is warm and nearly rainless in spring, hot and humid in summer, crisp in autumn and cold and dry in winter. The mean annual temperature is 13.74 °C (56.7 °F), with the monthly 24-hour average temperature ranging from −0.9 °C (30.4 °F) in January to 26.8 °C (80.2 °F) in July. Nearly 70% of the annual precipitation occurs from June to September. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 48% in July to 60% in May, the city receives 2,411 hours of bright sunshine annually.

Heze (disambiguation)

Heze may refer to:

Zeta Virginis

Zeta Virginis (ζ Vir, ζ Virginis) is a star in the zodiac constellation of Virgo. Zeta Virginis has the proper name Heze, which is of unclear origin. It is visible to the naked eye with has an apparent visual magnitude is +3.376 and is located about a half degree south of the celestial equator at a distance of 74.1 light-years (22.7 parsecs) from Earth.

ζ Virginis is a main sequence star with a spectral class A3 V, indicating that it is generating energy through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen at its core. This energy is being radiated from its outer envelope at an effective temperature of 8,247 K, giving Zeta Virginis the white hue of an A-type star. It has twice the mass and double the radius of the Sun and is about a half billion years old.

In 2010, a low mass stellar companion was discovered, ζ Virginis B. The object has not been under observation for a sufficient length of time to determine accurate orbital elements. However, the pair are estimated to be orbiting at an average separation of at least 24.9 Astronomical Units and an orbital eccentricity of 0.16 or more. Their orbital period is a minimum of 124 years. This companion may be a red dwarf star, which would explain the observed X-ray flux from this system.