| Yinchuan is capital of the Hui Autonomous Region of Ningxia, remotely stationed in the northwest of China. Yinchuan, is little visited and little known about, making trips here an interesting and hard experience. Ningxia is poor and would have been almost uninhabitable, with its harsh climate and remote location, but for the grimy Yellow River (Huang he) and the irrigation channels built in the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), that support the population.
Around 4 million people presently reside in Ningxia, a third are composed of the Muslim Hui Minority, and 930,000 of the total live in the city of Yinchuan. Yinchuan is a pleasant area, with many green areas and a vibrant atmosphere. Yinchuan is well protected by the Helan Mountain Range (Helan shan) to the north and is well supplied by the Yellow River to the southeast.
Travellers, however, are not really here for the man-made sights, but for the remote beauty of a province that is little populated and certainly off the beaten track. Hiking in mountainous areas, camping in deep woods, riding over sand dunes and rafting the turbulent Yellow River are the ideal reasons for visiting this autonomous region.
Yinchuan's industries include machinery, chemical, textile, construction material, food processing. Yinchuan Tire Plant is a major tire plant of China. The chief farm products of Yinchuan are rice, wheat, corn, beet, watermelons, grapes, apples, and Chinese wolfberry fruit.
Further out from Yinchuan lies Sand Lake, where you can swim, ride camels, and stroll amongst the sand dunes, and at Qingtonxia, with Tibetan dagobas right next to the Yellow River. It’s an open air desert location where many of the enigmatic desert scenes in a lot of Chinese films were shot. Also, at Zhongwei, you can explore the area of Shapotou, a desert research area, again camel rides, expeditions and trekking are all available here as are boat and raft trips along the Yellow River.
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