Current Time in Linxia Chengguanzhen, China

Linxia Chengguanzhen is the central urban district of Linxia City, the seat of the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu Province, north-western China. It lies in a valley on the Daxia River, a tributary of the Yellow River, on the edge of the loess plateau where the land begins to climb towards the Tibetan highlands. Terraced hillsides of yellow earth surround the town, and snow-capped mountains are visible to the south-west. The setting is dry and sunny, with cold winters and warm summers tempered by the altitude of nearly two thousand metres.

The urban area has a population of around two hundred and eighty thousand, and the prefecture close to two million. Linxia is a market and craft city rather than an industrial one. Its bazaars trade in livestock, wool, hides, medicinal herbs, tea and dried goods brought from the Tibetan plateau, and its workshops are known across China for carved bricks, gourd carving, carpets, saddlery and finely made knives. Food processing, construction and, increasingly, tourism supplement this trade.

Known historically as Hezhou, the town guarded a crossing point on one of the routes linking the Silk Road with the Tibetan world, and caravans of tea, horses and salt passed through for well over a thousand years. Chinese, Tibetan, Mongol and Central Asian influences met here, and from the Yuan and Ming periods onwards it became a major centre of Islam in China. Sufi orders established their lodges in the valley, religious scholarship flourished, and the city gained the nickname of the little Mecca of China, a name it still carries. The autonomous prefecture was created in 1956 in recognition of its distinctive population.

Visitors are struck first by the skyline of minarets and domes, since the prefecture contains a very large number of mosques and shrine complexes built in styles ranging from traditional Chinese timber halls to Arabian and Central Asian designs. The domed tombs of Sufi masters, known as gongbei, are places of pilgrimage set in walled gardens. The Linxia Museum, the old town lanes, the carved brick screens for which local craftsmen are famous and the bustling night food streets are all worth exploring. Nearby lie the spectacular Bingling Temple grottoes, reached by boat across the Liujiaxia reservoir, where Buddhist statues and painted caves carved into a canyon of red rock over sixteen centuries form part of a World Heritage Site. The great Tibetan monastery of Labrang at Xiahe is a few hours further south.

Linxia is home to Hui, Dongxiang, Bao'an and Salar peoples alongside Han and Tibetans, an unusual concentration of ethnic groups. Its cuisine is celebrated, with hand-pulled beef noodles, lamb dishes, stuffed pastries and the eight-treasure gaiwan tea sweetened with rock sugar, dates and dried fruit.

Expressways and a new railway connect Linxia with Lanzhou, about two hours away, and buses serve the mountain routes into Gannan and Qinghai. Teacher training and vocational colleges operate locally.

Linxia is remarkable as a crossroads of Islamic, Chinese and Tibetan culture in the mountains of Gansu.