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Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture (Xiao'erjing: ), formerly known as Hezhou (河州) and Baohan (枹罕), is located in Gansu Province, south of the provincial capital Lanzhou, bordering Qinghai to the west. It is an autonomous prefecture for the Muslim Hui people, a large Chinese ethnic group. It also includes two autonomous counties for other Muslim groups, namely Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar.
[edit] History and Culture
In the past, Linxia City was called Hezhou and the surrounding area was known as He Prefecture.
[edit] The Hui Minorities WarDuring the Hui Minorities' War in the 1860s He Prefecture was a scene of fierce fighting between the Muslim (Hui, Dongxiang and Salar, in modern terms) rebels on one side and the Han Chinese militias and, later, government troops, on the other side. From 1862 to 1872, Hezhou City (today's Linxia City) was the stronghold of the Muslim (mostly Hui) rebels led by the Khufiyya imam Ma Zhan'ao and his associates Ma Haiyan and Ma Qianling. The Han Chinese's resistance to the rebellion throughout the northern and eastern parts of the then Hezhou Prefecture (today's Yongjing County and Dongxiang County of Linxia Prefecture and Lintao County of Dingxi City) was headed by the Kong family, one of whose main home villages was Dachuan in today's Yongjing County (within from the county seat, Liujiaxia Town). The conflict was further complicated by the fact that some members of the Kong clan had, in fact, intermarried with the Hui people.[1] Large number of people lost their lives on both sides of the conflict, in particular during the rebels' attacks on Kong clan's villages around Dachuan 1864.[1]
Linxia (Hezhou) was often wracked by these frequent rebellions. The entire southern suburbs of the city (ba fang) "eight blocks" was ruined in 1928 by savage fighting between the Muslims and Guominjun forces during the Muslim Conflict in Gansu (1927–1930). Well-known Muslim individuals in Hezhou in the 1940s included La Shih-Chun, who was part of the Gansu Provincial Government Committee and Ma Chuanyuan, the supermagistrate of five districts. [edit] The hydro damsIn 1955, just a few years after the creation of the People's Republic of China, the Communist government announced a large-scale program of hydroelectric dam construction on the Yellow River. Two of them were constructed in Linxia Prefecture's Yongjing County: the 57-meter high Yanguoxia Dam (1958–1961) and the 147-meter high Liujiaxia Dam (1958–1969). One more - the 33-meter high Bapanxia Dam (1968–1975) - although located in Lanzhou's Xigu District, had much of its reservoir within Yongjing County as well. The dams contributed greatly to the national economy - Liujiaxia Hydro Power Station remained the country's largest until the 1980s - but the reservoirs they created in narrow, but fertile valleys of the Yellow River and its tributaries displaced a large number of local farmers. The three reservoirs flooded 118,229 (7,881 hectares) of farmland and displaced 43,829 residents, primarily in Yongjing County. The compensation payments to the farmers affected by the Yanguoxia and Liujiaxia Dams averaged, supposedly, 250 yuan and 364 yuan per person, were grossly insufficient to allow them to reestablish their way of life.[4] It is said that the residents received lower compensation amount than they could otherwise because in 1958, when the Yanguoxia project started, they understated the value of their assets, as they were afraid to be classified as "rich peasants", i.e. class enemies. Even the more generous payments (averaging 1,100 per person) to those affected by the Bapanxia Dam were not an adequate substitute for the loss of the farmland.[4] [edit] Traditional local productsLinxia is famous for a certain style of round glasses worn during the Qing Dynasty that are still made there today. [edit] FoodA type of thick cold wheat noodles called Niangpi (a species of Liangpi) is a popular local dish, served with spongy tofu and spicy sauce. [edit] Research Tips
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