Jiayuguan

For most of its history the place was a gate rather than a town. The Hexi Corridor, the strip of oases between the Qilian Mountains and the desert, was China's road to Central Asia from the Han dynasty onward, and the narrowest point of the corridor, between the Black Mountains and the foothills of the Qilian, was a natural place to control it. Around 1372, four years after the Ming dynasty took power, a fortress was built here, and over the following century and a half it was enlarged with gate towers, watchtowers and the walls running north to the Black Mountains and south to the Taolai River gorge, finished in the 1530s. Jiayu Pass became the western terminus of the Ming Great Wall and the formal edge of the empire.

Merchants and envoys from Central and West Asia entered China through the gate, and exiles were sent out through it, many never to return. When the Qing conquered Xinjiang in the 1750s the frontier moved far to the west and the fort lost its purpose as a border post.

The modern city dates from 1958, when the plain near the pass, with iron ore in the mountains nearby, was chosen for a steel works to serve the north-west. Jiuquan Iron and Steel was built on the plain, and the city that housed its workers was formally established in 1965 and raised to prefecture-level status in 1971. The fort is part of the Great Wall's UNESCO World Heritage listing, and the high-speed railway arrived in 2014.

Jiayuguan is a company town with a monument attached. Its identity was formed by the steel works, and many residents are the children and grandchildren of workers who came from other provinces to build it from the late 1950s. That gives the city a mixed, mainland-Chinese character rather than a deep local one: Mandarin is the common language, the planned avenues and square feel like a northern industrial city, and civic pride attaches to having built a city in the desert.

The fort gives the city its symbol and its stories. The legend of the extra brick — the builder who calculated the bricks so exactly that one was left over, still displayed on a gate tower — is told to every visitor. The city is also a base for the Hexi Corridor's history tourism, alongside Zhangye and Dunhuang.

Hui Muslim cooking shapes the food, as across Gansu, and the Sunan Yugur Autonomous County borders the city to the south. Manners are north-western: plain, hospitable and loud at table, with lamb and strong spirits at celebrations. Evening life happens on the central square and in the restaurants of the centre.

About 313,000 people lived in the city at the 2020 census; it is by far the smallest prefecture-level city in Gansu by area. The steel works remains the backbone of the economy, and mining and mineral processing are the main industries. Tourism to the fort, services for the railway and solar power make up much of the rest.

Housing is in apartment blocks on the planned grid, many of them originally built for steel workers; the newer districts around the South station and the lake park have larger, newer estates. Daily rhythm follows the plant's shifts and the school day: an early breakfast of noodles, lunch at home or in the canteen, and the evening on the square or in the restaurants of the centre. The dry, sunny climate is a point of pride, and so is the city's tidiness.

Issues that occupy people are the long-term future of a city built for one industry, air quality on days when the works and the dust storms coincide, the loss of young people to Lanzhou and the eastern cities, and water in a place with almost no rain, where the city's lakes and street trees depend on the Taolai River and the glaciers of the Qilian range. The high-speed line has made Jiayuguan an easy stop on the corridor.

The food is that of the Hexi Corridor: lamb, wheat and whatever the oases grow. Roast leg of lamb, kao yangtui, and skewers of lamb grilled over charcoal and dusted with cumin and chilli are staples, eaten with flatbread and beer at outdoor tables on summer evenings. Hand-pulled noodles in beef broth, the Lanzhou style found across Gansu, are the standard breakfast and lunch, and Hui-run shops serve them with slices of beef, radish, coriander and a spoon of chilli oil.

Cold dishes suit the dry heat: liangpi and niangpi, sheets of wheat or starch noodle cut into ribbons and dressed with vinegar, garlic and chilli, are sold from stalls and small shops. Dumplings and steamed buns, braised beef and vegetables stir-fried with the corridor's chillies fill out the menus, and the melons, apricots and grapes of the oasis towns to the west come to market in late summer.

Grapes have been grown in Gansu for centuries. Meals are hearty rather than refined, portions are large and sharing is the rule. The night-market streets near the central square are where the city eats out, and Jiuquan, twenty minutes away, has a longer tradition of restaurants in its old centre.