Current Time in Nianbo, China

Nianbo lies in the Huangshui River valley of eastern Qinghai Province in western China, at an altitude of around eighteen hundred metres on the north-eastern rim of the Tibetan Plateau. It is the seat of Ledu District and the administrative centre of Haidong, a prefecture-level city created in 2013, and it stands roughly fifty kilometres east of the provincial capital Xining on the historic corridor linking central China to the Tibetan and Central Asian worlds.

The valley is narrow and terraced, with dry brown hills rising steeply on both sides and irrigated fields of wheat, rape and vegetables along the river. Around a quarter of a million people live in the district. The population is notably mixed, including Han Chinese, Tibetans, Hui Muslims, Tu, Salar and Mongols, and the markets, mosques, temples and cuisine of Nianbo all reflect that overlap of cultures.

This was a frontier zone for millennia, garrisoned in Han times and contested between Tang China and the Tibetan empire. Its outstanding monument is Qutan Temple, founded in 1392 under imperial patronage at the beginning of the Ming dynasty and enlarged by later emperors. Set in a side valley a short drive from town, it is one of the best preserved groups of early Ming architecture anywhere in China, sometimes called the little Forbidden City, and its covered galleries contain hundreds of square metres of painted murals illustrating the life of the Buddha, executed by court-trained artists and remarkably intact after six centuries.

Ledu is equally important to archaeologists. The Liuwan cemetery on the far bank of the Huangshui yielded more than a thousand Neolithic and Bronze Age graves and an extraordinary quantity of painted pottery from the Majiayao and Qijia cultures, making it one of the richest prehistoric sites in China. The Liuwan Painted Pottery Museum displays vessels decorated with swirling spirals and frogs that are four thousand years old.

The local economy rests on agriculture and processing. The district is known across Qinghai for its long chilli peppers, garlic, walnuts and highland barley, and for the distilled spirits and vinegar made in the valley. Coal, building materials, aluminium processing and, increasingly, solar and hydropower contribute to industry, while the Beishan forest park draws visitors into the mountains north of the town for cool summers, wildflowers and hiking.

Transport is excellent for such a remote setting. The old Lanzhou to Xinjiang railway, the high-speed line with its station at Ledu, and the expressway between Lanzhou and Xining all pass through the valley, and Xining's international airport is only a short drive away. Schools, vocational colleges and teacher training institutions serve the district.

Nianbo repays a visit for its Ming murals, its prehistoric pottery and its position at the meeting point of Chinese, Tibetan and Muslim Central Asia.