Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture () is located in the mountainous southwestern corner of Hubei province, People's Republic of China. It forms Hubei's southwestern "panhandle", bordering on Hunan in the south and Chongqing Municipality in the west and northwest. The Yangtze River crosses the prefecture's northeastern corner in Badong County. Administrative divisions There are two county-level cities: Enshi City (), the prefectural seat Lichuan City () There are six counties: Xianfeng County () Laifeng County () Badong County () Jianshi County () Hefeng County () Xuan'en County () History Imperial "Endless green mountains to walk on, endless clear water going away" (by a poet of the Tang dynasty) Republican Republic of China's Hubei provincial government was relocated to Enshi during the 1937-45 resistance war (against Japanese invasion and occupation). The Roman Catholic Church had the Diocese of Shinan on the territory of today's Enshi Prefecture. People's Republic of China Badong County was the site of the Deng Yujiao incident. Geography Enshi Prefecture is located in the west end of Hubei Province, a mountainous belt separating Hubei's Jianghan Plain from the Sichuan Basin. There are karst phenomena in the region. The most famous of them is perhaps the Tenglong Cave near Lichuan, a county-level city of Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. A 290-meter deep karst sinkhole, located near the village of Luoquanyan () in Xuan'en County, is described as possessing its own unique ecosystem. The Enshi Grand Canyon is also a well-known scenic area. Demographics The total area is , and the population is 3,800,000. 52.6% of the population belong to the Tujia and Miao nationalities. Enshi is the only autonomous prefecture in Hubei province. Enshi is also the only part of Hubei which has been included in the Chinese government's Western exploration programme and over the next 5–10 years they will put 50 billion RMB into its development. Transportation The prefecture has only a small amount of Yangtze River frontage, but Badong, in the prefecture's northeast, has a Yangtze River port. The Qing River in the central part of the prefecture, with its cascade of reservoirs, is an important waterway as well. Due to the mountainous terrain, until recently the prefecture had no railways, and even the highways were of doubtful quality. The Yichang−Wanzhou Railway, completed in December 2010, crosses the prefecture from east to west, providing a more direct connection between Hubei and Sichuan than was previously