Weiyuan

Weiyuan is a Chinese toponym and personal name that can refer to more than one subject. The most common uses are a county in Sichuan Province and the name of a Qing dynasty official and reformer.

Weiyuan County (威远县) is a county in Sichuan Province, China. It is administered by a prefecture-level city in eastern Sichuan. The county seat is Weiyuan Town. The area comprises a mix of agricultural land and hilly terrain, and its economy traditionally centers on farming with some light industry and small-scale manufacturing. Weiyuan has a long history within the Sichuan basin and is connected to regional transport networks that link it with neighboring cities and counties.

Wei Yuan (魏源; 1794–1857) was a prominent Qing dynasty official, scholar, and reformer. He is best known for advocating modernization and the dissemination of Western knowledge in response to pressure from Western powers in the mid-19th century. Wei Yuan is associated with the Hai Guo Tu Zhi (Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Countries), a comprehensive reference work on foreign nations and technologies that influenced later reform efforts and debates about China’s modernization. His ideas emphasized empirical learning, the study of Western technology, and the potential for national strengthening through reform.

Other uses of the name exist in Chinese toponymy and personal naming, reflecting different character combinations that can be transliterated as Weiyuan. The spelling may vary with transliteration systems, and the term can appear in different historical or geographic contexts.