Shache (Yarkant) County or Yarkand County (lit. Cliff city) is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, located on the southern rim of the Taklamakan desert in the Tarim Basin. It is one of 11 counties administered under Kashgar Prefecture. Yarkant, usually written Yarkand in English, was the seat of an ancient Buddhist kingdom on the southern branch of the Silk Road. The county sits at an altitude of and had a population of 373,492.