Xining

Xining began as a Han dynasty outpost. As Chinese forces pushed west along the Hexi Corridor in the last two centuries BC, a county called Linqiang was established in the Huangshui valley to control the Qiang peoples of the plateau. The valley changed hands repeatedly over the following centuries between Chinese dynasties, Xianbei and Tuyuhun kingdoms, the Tibetan empire, which held it during the Tang, and later Tangut and Mongol rulers. The name Xining, meaning peace in the west, was given when the Song recovered the valley in 1104.

Its importance was commercial as well as military. The valley carried a southern branch of the Silk Road and, more lastingly, the trade in which Chinese tea and grain were exchanged for horses, wool, hides and salt from the plateau. Muslim merchants settled from the Yuan and Ming periods, founding the community whose descendants still dominate the eastern districts, and Tibetan Buddhism spread through the surrounding hills; the Kumbum monastery was begun in 1583 at the birthplace of Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug school. Qing control was enforced through campaigns against Mongol and Tibetan forces in the 1720s, and the Muslim uprisings of the 1860s and 1890s brought severe fighting to the valley.

For much of the first half of the 20th century Qinghai was ruled by the Ma family, Hui Muslim warlords based in Xining. The province was formally organised in 1928 and the city became its capital; after 1949 it grew quickly as an industrial and administrative base, with heavy industry, migration from eastern China and, later, the railway to Golmud in 1984 and on to Lhasa in 2006, which made Xining the gateway to the plateau.

Few Chinese cities hold as many communities in one valley. Han residents form the majority, but Hui Muslims are a large and visible presence in the east of the city, Tibetans from Amdo — the north-eastern Tibetan world, of which Qinghai is the heart — come in from the grasslands, and the Tu and Salar peoples, both found almost nowhere else, live in the counties nearby. Mosques with Chinese timber roofs stand a few streets from Buddhist temples, and the markets sell prayer caps, thangkas, barley flour and dried yak meat side by side.

Tibetan Buddhism gives the region its great festivals. At Kumbum, the Monlam prayer gatherings bring masked cham dance, butter sculptures shaped from coloured yak butter, and the unrolling of an enormous appliqué thangka on a hillside. Muslim life is ordered by Friday prayers at Dongguan, where the square fills with worshippers, and by Ramadan and the two Eids. The Tu are known for embroidery, wrestling and the Nadun harvest festival, the Salar for their distinct Turkic language.

Everyday manners are plainer and less formal than in eastern China, closer to those of the plateau: direct speech, quick hospitality, tea offered at once, and an evening spent walking, eating on the street and dancing in squares. Sensitive subjects — religion, Tibet, ethnic policy — are not discussed with strangers, and visitors should not press them.

About 2.5 million people live in the Xining municipality at the 2020 census, close to two million of them in the built-up districts along the valley — some two-fifths of Qinghai's entire population in one city. It is the province's centre for government, hospitals, universities and transport, and people come in from grassland prefectures the size of European countries for services unavailable at home.

The economy mixes administration and services with older heavy industry — steel, aluminium, chemicals and machinery — and newer plateau specialities: solar and wind power on the dry basins to the west, lithium and potash from the salt lakes, Tibetan medicine, barley processing and the trade in caterpillar fungus, goji berries and wool. Tourism has grown strongly, concentrated in the summer months.

The valley shapes the city: development is squeezed into a narrow strip between steep, dry hills, so Xining is long, dense and heavily built, with tower blocks running for kilometres along the Huangshui. Altitude, thin air and strong sun are ordinary facts of life, as are cold winters heated by coal and gas. Migration runs both ways, with Han and Hui families long established here and Tibetan families moving in from pastoral districts as herding gives way to town work and schooling.

Qinghai's food is plateau food: mutton, beef, wheat, barley and dairy, with little that is sweet and less that is delicate. Shouzhua yangrou, hand-grabbed mutton, is boiled on the bone and eaten with salt and raw garlic, the meat valued because the sheep graze at altitude. Gamianpian, pinched dough squares in a mutton broth with potato and greens, is the everyday bowl, and hand-pulled beef noodles from the Hui kitchens are eaten at any hour.

Cold dishes and street snacks fill the gaps: niangpi, the chewy wheat-starch noodle dressed with vinegar, garlic and chilli oil; mutton skewers grilled with cumin; stuffed sheep's intestine; and yoghurt sold thick and sour in small bowls, often topped with sugar. Bread is a heavy baked flatbread called kang guo mo in the countryside, and Hui bakeries sell sesame rings and fried pastries.

From the Tibetan side come tsampa, roasted barley flour kneaded with butter tea, yak butter and cheese, and dried yak meat sold in strips in the markets. Highland barley, qingke, is also distilled into a clear spirit and brewed into a mild beer. Eight-treasure tea, a glass of green tea with rock sugar, longan, jujube, raisins and goji berries, is the drink offered to visitors in Hui homes and teahouses, and goji berries from the province's irrigated basins are sold everywhere by the bag.