Gansu Province may be wild and remote by Chinese standards, but it's a province of enormous historical interest. The Mogao Caves at Dunhuang in the far west house the finest examples of Buddhist art in all China, and further Silk Road sights are scattered right along the length of the province, ranging from the country's largest reclining Buddha at Zhangye to the stunning Buddhist caves at Bingling Si and Maiji Shan . The Great Wall, snaking its way west, comes to a symbolic end at the great Ming fortress at Jiayuguan , and, in the south of the province, right on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, is the fascinating Labrang Monastery at the Tibetan town of Xiahe.

Traditionally, the Chinese have regarded this province as marking the outer limit of China. During the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), the first serious effort was made to expand into the western deserts, primarily as a means to ensure control over the Silk Road trade. Prefectures were established and, although Gansu did not officially become a Chinese province until the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), it is unquestionably a part of the Chinese heartland. At various stages over the last two thousand years Chinese control has extended well beyond here into Xinjiang. Nevertheless, right into the last century, the primarily Muslim inhabitants of this province were considered little better than the "barbarian" Uigurs of Xinjiang by central government; the great Muslim revolts of that period were ruthlessly quashed.

Gansu's geography is remarkable, too - from the great Yellow River , dense with silt, surging through the city of Lanzhou , to the mountains and deserts of the Hexi Corridor , the thousand-kilometre route between mountain ranges that narrows at times to as little as 15km wide. It's the Hexi Corridor that accounts for the curious elongated shape of the province: the Silk Road caravans came down here, the Great Wall was built through here, and today's trains chug through here as well, along the only rail line in western China and the only link through Central Asia between China and the West.

A harsh and barren land, subject to frequent droughts, Gansu has always been a better place for travelling through rather than settling down in. The towns along the Hexi Corridor are mere dots of life in the desert, sustained by irrigation using water from the mountains. Given that agriculture is a barely sustainable activity here, the central government has tried to import a certain amount of industry into the province, particlarly in the east. The exploitation of mineral deposits, including oil and coal, has made a tentative beginning. But still the population is relatively small, comprising just twenty million, who continue to display an extraordinary ethnic mix, with Hui, Kazakhs, Mongols and Tibetans all featuring prominently.