Gansu Linxia Travel Guide

Linxia is a county level city of Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province. Linxia City is seat and the political, economic and cultural center of the prefecture. The total area is 88.6 square kilometers, built up area covers an area of 24 square kilometers, the resident population of 355,968. There are 18 nationalities such as Han, Hui, Dongxiang, Baoan, Sala.

Linxia City is located in the southwest of Gansu Province on the upper reaches of the Yellow River, 117 kilometers away from Lanzhou, the provincial capital. Linxia City is an important town on the southern road of the ancient Silk Road. It is known as the "Tea-horse Market" and enjoys the reputation of "Hometown of Huaer(folk songs with unique highland style popular among the Han, Hui, Tu, Dongxiang, Baoan, Sala, Yugur and Tibetan peoples in Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia provinces)", "Hometown of Painted Pottery" and "Hometown of Peony".

Linxia City is surrounded by mountains, with an average altitude of 1,917 meters. The terrain slopes from west to east, with a relative height difference of 398.3 meters.

● What to do & where to go in Linxia

Linxia is a transit station and tourist destination on the Hui-Tibetan tourist line. There are the Eight Lanes Thirteen Alleys, East Suburb Park, Red Garden, Tea-horse Ancient Market, Uhand Hill and other tourist attractions, the East Mansion, Butterfly Building and other places of interest and brick carving, wood carving art. It is surrounded by Bingling Temple, Liujiaxia Reservoir, Songmingyan, Labrang Temple, Sangke Grassland, Jiuzhaigou and other tourist attractions.

Eight Lanes Thirteen Alleys are ancient blocks with ethnic customs. As early as the Tang Dynasty, merchants and religious figures from Saudi Arabia, Persia and other countries traded, preached and settled in the area. They gradually built eight mosques and their religious workshops, forming a Muslim community of "living around temples and trading around temples", so called "Eight Lanes Thirteen Alleys". It integrates brick carvings of Hui nationality, woodcarvings of Han nationality and colored paintings of Tibetan nationality. It integrates ethnic characteristics, leisure tourism, green ecology, humanities, science and education, presents a picture of Muslim life. It is the name card of ethnic folk culture and the "Grand Garden" of ethnic architectural art.

The East Mansion is the residence of Ma Buqing, former deputy commander of the 40th Group Army of the Kuomintang. It was started in 1938 and completed in 1945, lasted for eight years. The luxurious mansion, originally built for his family, inadvertently left an extremely valuable grand garden for the Chinese art of brick carving.

East Suburb Park is a collection of sightseeing, tourism, entertainment, leisure as one of the new comprehensive park in the east of Linxia City. The peony garden has more than 50 kinds of rare peonies introduced from all over the world and with more than 1,000 plants. In particular, the purple spot peony is famous for its bright color, rich fragrance and has won the bronze award in the Third China Flower Expo. 

Butterfly Building is located in the southwest of Linxia City, built in 1944, covering an area of 40 hectares. The building is 56 meters wide from east to west and 74 meters long from north to south, covering an area of 2,660 square meters. It is a two-story brick and wood structure.

Dagongbei: Chinese Islamic ancient tomb complex. It is located in Hongyuan Road, Linxia City, built around the tomb of Qi Jingyi (1656 ~ 1719), the founder of the Chinese Sufism Gattilin Sect.

● What to eat in Linxia

Fried noodles, millet batter, soup noodle and all kind of noodles. All kind of fried cakes, mutton, steamed stuffed bun, etc.

● Transportation

Railway: The planned Lanzhou-Hezuo Railway will pass through Linxia City (expect to be completed in 2027) and will be extended to Jiuzhaigou in the long term to connect with Chengdu-Jiuzhaigou Railway, forming a new channel of Chengdu-Lanzhou Railway.

Highway: Linxia City is convenient for external transportation and the provincial capital city Lanzhou can be reached in about two hours.  

Airport: the closest airport is Lanzhou Zhongchuan International Airport, two and a half hours from Linxia City.

● Climate

Linxia City has four distinct seasons and a humid climate, which is temperate continental climate. The annual average temperature is 8.1 degrees Celsius, the annual sunshine duration is 2,520 hours, the annual frost-free period is more than 163 days, the annual average precipitation is 484 mm, and the evaporation is 1,343 mm.