Current Time in Binhe, China

Binhe lies in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in north-western China, on the great irrigated plain that the Yellow River has created as it swings north through the desert. The name means beside the river, and it describes the setting exactly, for the town stands among canals, poplar windbreaks, rice paddies and orchards on land that has been watered by diversion channels for more than two thousand years. The Helan Mountains form a long grey wall to the west, sheltering the plain from the sands of the Gobi, while dunes and dry steppe begin only a short distance to the east.

The urban area is home to a population in the low hundreds of thousands, and it forms part of the belt of settlement that runs along the river through Ningxia. Agriculture underpins the local economy, with rice, wheat, maize, melons and vegetables grown under irrigation, and the region is nationally famous for its wolfberries, the small red goji fruit dried and sold across China as a health food. Sheep raising, food processing, coal and chemical industries, energy production and a fast-expanding wine sector all contribute, and the vineyards along the eastern slopes of the Helan Mountains have won international awards in recent years.

This stretch of the Yellow River has been a frontier for millennia, contested between Chinese dynasties and the pastoral peoples of the steppe. Han and Tang administrations built garrisons and dug canals, some of which still carry water. In the eleventh century the region became the heart of the Western Xia empire, founded by the Tangut people, whose enormous earthen tomb mounds stand near the mountains and whose distinctive script puzzled scholars for generations. Mongol conquest, Ming frontier walls and Qing settlement followed, and the arrival of Hui Muslim communities gave the region the cultural identity recognised in its status as an autonomous region since 1958.

Visitors to the area come for a remarkable range of sights. The Western Xia tombs rise like pale beehives from the gravel plain, the rock carvings of Helankou preserve thousands of prehistoric images of hunters and animals pecked into cliff faces, and the ancient irrigation network of the Ningxia plain is recognised as a world heritage irrigation structure. Further along the river, Shapotou offers desert dunes running straight down to the water, sand sledding and camel rides, while Zhenbeibu and the film studio villages recreate old frontier settlements.

Hui culture is strongly present, with white caps and headscarves in the streets, mosques combining Chinese and Islamic architecture, and a cuisine built on hand-pulled noodles, lamb, flatbread and the eight-treasure tea sweetened with rock sugar, dried fruit and wolfberries.

Expressways and railways, including high-speed services, run the length of the Yellow River corridor, connecting the area with Yinchuan, Lanzhou and Xian, and an airport serves the region. Colleges and vocational schools operate locally, with universities concentrated in the regional capital.

Binhe is worth knowing as part of the green river plain that Chinese tradition calls a Jiangnan beyond the Great Wall.