Baotou

See also: bāotóu

English

Alternative forms

• Pao-t'ou (Wade–Giles)
• Paotow

Etymology

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin 包頭／包头 (Bāotóu), from Mongolian ᠪᠤᠭᠤᠲᠤ (buɣutu, “haunt of deers”), from ᠪᠤᠭᠤ (buɣu, “deer”) / буга (buga) + -ᠲᠤ (-tu, “with…”) / -т (-t, “ornative case suffix”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /baʊ.toʊ/

Proper noun

Baotou

1. A prefecture-level city, the largest city in Inner Mongolia, in northern China.
   • [1918 April, Rodney Gilbert, “Pneumonic Plague in China”, in Asia‎^[1], volume XVIII, number 4, American Asiatic Association, page 344, columns 2, 3:

     Moving west from Paotowchen there is only one highway, which many camel trains from Kansu follow in winter, but which is almost deserted in summer when the Yellow River is ice free. This road leads through Santaoho, a Roman Catholic Mission village near the elbow of the river, through Shihtsuishan, where there is a carefully guarded pass and a large garrison, and on into the populous Ninghsia district of Kansu, altogether an eighteen day journey of about 1,300 11 through thinly settled country in which a pestilence would travel with difficulty and in which it could have been most effectually checked at any of half a dozen points.]

   • [1962, Edgar Snow, “Paotou Retrospect”, in Red China Today: The Other Side of the River‎^[2], Penguin Books, published 1970, →OCLC, page 72:

     Alley and I were not going to Turkestan. We were on a four-hundred-and-fifty-mile trip to Paotou (pronounced Bao Toe), which used to be the frontier end of the line and is now autonomous Inner Mongolia’s largest city.]

   • 2021 April 13, Michel Penke, “Toxic and radioactive: The damage from mining rare elements”, in DW News‎^[3], archived from the original on 13 April 2021, CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS‎^[4]:

     Dirty, toxic, radioactive: Working in the mining sector
     One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.

Translations

a prefecture-level city in northern China

• Arabic: بَاوْتُو m (bawtū)
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 包頭／包头 (yue) (baau¹ tau⁴)

  Hokkien: 包頭／包头 (Pau-thâu)

  Mandarin: 包頭／包头 (zh) (Bāotóu)

• Hungarian: Paotou (hu)
• Japanese: 包頭 (ほうとう, Hōtō), パオトウ (Paotō)
• Korean: 바오터우 (Baoteou)
• Macedonian: Ба́отоу n (Báotou)
• Russian: Баото́у m (Baotóu) (indeclinable)
• Spanish: Baotou (es)
• Vietnamese: Bao Đầu (vi)

Further reading

• Saul B. Cohen, editor (2008), “Baotou”, in The Columbia Gazetteer of the World‎^[5], 2nd edition, volume 1, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 308, column 3

Spanish

Proper noun

Baotou ?

1. Baotou (a prefecture-level city, the largest city in Inner Mongolia, in northern China)