Baoding prefecture-level city

Prefecture-level city

A prefectural level city , prefectural city or prefectural level municipality is an administrative division of the People's Republic of China, ranking below a province and above a county in China's administrative structure. Prefectural level cities form the second level of the administrative...

 consists of 3 municipal districts, 4 county-level cities

County-level city

A county-level city is a county-level administrative division of mainland China. County-level cities are usually governed by prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by province-level divisions....

, 18 counties:

The Baoding urban area has a population of around 1,006,000 (2009). The population of the Baoding administrative area is 10,890,000. The considerable majority are Han Chinese

Han Chinese

Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...

. The language of Baoding is Mandarin Chinese — specifically, the Baoding dialect of Ji-Lu Mandarin

Ji-Lu Mandarin

Ji–Lu or Jilu Mandarin , formerly known as Beifang Mandarin 'Northern Mandarin', is a primary Mandarin dialect spoken in the Chinese provinces of Hebei and Shandong...

. Despite Baoding's proximity to Beijing, the Chinese spoken in Baoding is not particularly close to Beijing dialect

Beijing dialect

Beijing dialect, or Pekingese , is the dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. It is the phonological basis of Standard Chinese, which is used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China , and Singapore....

 — rather, it is more closely related to Tianjin dialect

Tianjin dialect

Tianjin dialect is a Mandarin dialect spoken in the urban area of Tianjin, China. It is comprehensible to speakers of other Mandarin dialects, though its greatest deviation from the others lies in its individual tones, and the lack of retroflex consonants...

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Baoding is located in the centre of the Bohai Rim economic area which includes Beijing, Tianjin and Shijiazhuang.