Zhangye

Zhangye began as a Han dynasty military colony. In 121 BC the general Huo Qubing drove the Xiongnu from the Hexi Corridor, and a commandery was established here, named with a phrase meaning to extend the arm of the empire and open the passage to the western regions. Walls, beacon towers and irrigation canals followed, and the oasis became one of four garrison commanderies strung along the corridor, supplying caravans on the road between Chang'an and the Tarim Basin.

Buddhism travelled the same road, and the city, long known as Ganzhou, filled with monasteries. The Tanguts of the Western Xia took the corridor in the 11th century and built the temple of the reclining Buddha in 1098, a Western Xia monument that survived the destruction of their state by the Mongols in 1227. Under the Yuan the city lay on the main route between China and Central Asia; Marco Polo's account describes a long stay in Ganzhou. The Ming rebuilt the walls, made the city a regional military headquarters and set the end of the Great Wall a little further west at Jiayuguan. Muslim revolts in the 1860s and 1870s brought heavy fighting and loss of life across Gansu.

In the 20th century the corridor became a strategic route again, carrying Soviet supplies to China in the 1930s and 1940s and later the railway and highway to Xinjiang. The modern city grew around irrigation, grain and, from the 2000s, tourism: the Danxia hills west of town, little visited before roads and platforms were built, became one of the best-known landscapes in China, and the high-speed railway arrived in the middle of the last decade.

Zhangye sits where Han China, the Tibetan plateau, the Mongolian steppe and the Muslim north-west meet, and the mixture shows. The city itself is mostly Han, with a long-established Hui community whose mosques and halal kitchens are part of ordinary street life. To the south, in the Qilian foothills, live the Yugur, a small people of Turkic and Mongolic speech descended from Uyghur groups who moved into the mountains a thousand years ago; their herding festivals, felt tents and embroidered dress are distinct from anything else in Gansu, and Sunan county is the centre of their culture.

Buddhism has shaped the city's landmarks and much of its calendar. The reclining Buddha, the pagodas and the cliff grottoes at Mati are visited by worshippers as well as tourists, and Tibetan Buddhist practice is common in the mountains, where prayer flags mark the passes. Local pride attaches to the temple's antiquity and to the oasis itself — the wetlands and irrigated fields that surprise visitors expecting only sand.

Everyday manners are those of small-city northern China: early meals, tea throughout the day, square dancing in the evening in public squares, and a direct, unhurried way of speaking. Domestic tourism is now a large part of the economy, and the city is used to visitors from elsewhere in China rather than from abroad.

The prefecture-level city holds roughly 1.1 million people, of whom about 260,000 are urban residents in its core district of Ganzhou. Growth has been slow, and like much of the interior Zhangye sends young workers to the coastal provinces while its own population ages. Life is inexpensive, distances are short, and many families still have relatives farming in the surrounding oasis.

Agriculture remains the foundation: seed maize in particular, along with vegetables, sunflowers, potatoes and fruit, all of it dependent on water from the Heihe, the Black River, which flows out of the Qilian Mountains and disappears into the desert to the north. Water allocation between farms upstream and the wetlands and downstream basin is a continuing issue, and efficiency schemes, canal lining and quotas have changed farming practice over the past two decades. Tourism, food processing, mining and a growing wind and solar sector fill out the economy.

Daily rhythms follow the sun rather than the clock in summer, when evenings stay light until late under Beijing time; the wetland boardwalks, the squares by the drum tower and the riverside parks fill after dinner. Winter brings heating season, dry cold and a slower pace. Air quality is generally better than in the cities further east, though spring winds carry dust off the Gobi.

The food of Zhangye is wheat, mutton and pepper, the standard fare of the Hexi Corridor. Breakfast is often xiaofan, a warming bowl of small dough cubes simmered with diced meat, potato and spices into a thick soup, sold in the old town from early morning. Noodles come in many shapes: cuoyumian, rolled by hand into little fish-shaped lengths; hand-pulled lamian in clear beef broth; and flat, chewy noodles stir-fried with vegetables and mutton.

Lamb from the Qilian pastures is the meat people rave about, boiled and eaten with garlic and salt, stewed with potatoes, or skewered and grilled with cumin and chilli at the night market. Hui restaurants serve it with sesame-topped flatbreads and mutton soups, and no pork. Cold dishes of liangpi, wide starch noodles in chilli oil and vinegar, are eaten in summer, along with sour-dressed vegetables.

The oasis supplies the rest: maize, potatoes, tomatoes, melons and pears, sold by the sackload in season, along with goji berries from further east in Gansu and dried fruit from Xinjiang carried down the corridor. Tea, often with rock sugar, dried fruit and nuts, is drunk all day, and barley and highland spirits appear at celebrations.