Linxia 临夏Línxià

About Linxia

Linxia, the old Hezhou, was a Ming tea-and-horse market on the road to Tibet, and it is home to the Hui and to the Dongxiang, Bonan and Salar, who are also Muslim. In Linxia City the Bafang Thirteen Lanes keep the old Hui quarter's mosques and brick-carved courtyards, and Hezheng's museum holds fossil elephants, rhinos and three-toed horses from the surrounding hills. On the Yellow River above Liujiaxia, Bingling Temple has Buddhist caves dated from 420 and a seated Maitreya 27 m high.

What to eat in Linxia

• Dongxiang hand-held mutton (东乡手抓羊肉)

Listed sites in Linxia

15 sites in Linxia are on the official lists. Those with a page of their own link to it; the rest open as cards on the map.

• Bingling Temple Grottoes 炳灵寺石窟 5A scenic area · National heritage site
  Buddhist caves and niches carved over some 1,600 years into the red sandstone cliffs of the Dasi gully on the north bank of the Yellow River, in the Xiaojishi Mountains 35 km south-west of Yongjing county town; Cave 169, with an inscription of 420 under the Western Qin, is described by the site's conservation institute as the earliest dated cave in China.
• Bafang Thirteen Lanes 八坊十三巷 4A scenic area · on the map
  The old Hui Muslim quarter of Linxia, the historic Hezhou, where eight mosque communities (fang) grew up around their mosques and thirteen lanes took shape from the early Qing; some 2,000 households still live here, more than 98 per cent of them Hui.
• Dadun Gorge 大墩峡 4A scenic area · on the map
  A system of four gorges about 13 km long, forming a Y shape below Heida Mountain (3,300 m), 6 km west of Dahejia town in Jishishan, the autonomous county of the Bonan (Bao'an), Dongxiang and Salar peoples.
• Fataishan Resort 法台山 4A scenic area · on the map
  A year-round resort in Songming town next to the Songmingyan scenic area, with the Songmingyan International Ski Resort for winter sport and, in summer, a glass walkway, mountain rafting, grass-sliding and children's play areas such as go-karts.
• Hezheng Paleozoological Museum 和政古动物化石博物馆 4A scenic area · on the map
  A museum of fossil animals in Hezheng county town, founded in 2003 and now a national first-grade museum, holding more than 40,000 fossils from the late Cenozoic beds of the Linxia Basin.
• Hualin Fossil Site (Wanshou Valley) 桦林万兽谷 4A scenic area · on the map
  A fossil site in a farming valley at Hualin, south-east of Hezheng county town, whose in-situ fossil hall (opened 2013) shows about 3,200 m² of Hipparion-fauna bones, some 11 to 5 million years old, as they lay when buried.
• Kangle Birch Forest 白桦林 4A scenic area · on the map
  A scenic area of natural forest at Liewa village in Basong township, on the Taizi Mountains tourist highway in southern Kangle County, where some 3,000 mu (200 ha) of birch woods cover the hillsides and forest cover reaches about 95 per cent.
• Liujiaxia Dinosaur National Geopark 刘家峡恐龙国家地质公园 4A scenic area · on the map
  A geopark in Yanguoxia town protecting Early Cretaceous dinosaur trackways found in 1999 in the rocks above the Yellow River, with footprints of sauropods, theropods, ornithopods and pterosaurs as well as resting traces, tail drags, ripple marks and plant fossils.
• Liujiaxia International Paragliding Camp 刘家峡国际滑翔营地 4A scenic area · on the map
  A paragliding base on the north shore of the Liujiaxia Reservoir (Bingling Lake) in Yangta township, with its launch on Huangjia Mountain at about 2,300 m and a height difference of some 580 m to the landing ground.
• Songmingyan 松鸣岩 4A scenic area · on the map
  A national forest park and provincial scenic area in the foothills of the Taizi Mountains in Songming town, named for the roar of the wind in its pines echoing off the cliffs.
• Yanzhi Lake Park 胭脂湖 4A scenic area · on the map
  A town park in Kangle county town at the meeting of the Yanzhi, Zhongdi and Suji rivers, laid out around Yanzhi Lake with three stone arch bridges and a three-storey pavilion standing in the middle of the lake.
• Zhuzigou Valley 竹子沟 4A scenic area · on the map
  A valley inside the Taizishan nature reserve at Bazigou village, Minglu township, in southern Kangle County, with alpine meadows, forest and streams, which joined the 4A list in January 2026.
• East Mansion and Butterfly Building, Linxia 东公馆与蝴蝶楼 National heritage site · on the map
  Two Republican-era mansions in Linxia city: the East Mansion (Donggongguan), completed in 1947 as the residence of Ma Buqing, a north-western warlord general, and the smaller Butterfly Building in the Bafang quarter about 1 km to the west-south-west.
• Linjia Neolithic Site and Painted Pottery Centre 林家遗址 National heritage site · on the map
  A Neolithic settlement of the Majiayao culture on the loess tableland at Linjia village in Dongyuan township, excavated in 1978, where a small bronze knife of about 3000 BC, promoted locally as the earliest in China, came to light.
• Qijiaping Site (Qijia Culture) 齐家坪遗址 National heritage site · on the map
  The type site of the Qijia culture (about 2300–1500 BC), one of China's earliest Bronze Age cultures, found in 1924 by the Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson on a terrace of the Tao River at Yuanziping village in Qijia town; it is described locally as the only site to have yielded all five kinds of early artefact, in stone, bone, pottery, jade and bronze.

On the map

Open Linxia on the illustrated map to see its outline, its places and listed sites together, and to add them to a trip.

Learn more

• Wikipedia
• Official website
• Wikipedia (Chinese)