Ningxia Autonomous Hui Region is the smallest of China's provinces. Covering just 66,000 square kilometres and squeezed between its giant neighbours, Inner Mongolia to the north and Gansu to the west, until recent times, its very existence as a separate zone remained an open question. Having first appeared on the map in 1928, the region was then temporarily subsumed by Gansu in the 1950s, before finally reappearing again in 1958. It appears that the authorities of the People's Republic could not make up their minds whether the Muslim Hui minority was substantial enough to deserve its own autonomous region, in the same way as the Uigurs and the Mongols. Historically, the area has never been a secure one for the Chinese; almost every dynasty built its section of Great Wall through here and, in the nineteenth century, the Hui people played an active part in the Muslim rebellions, which were subsequently put down with great ferocity by the Qing authorities.

Today, the Hui make up about thirty percent of the tiny population of four million, the remainder comprising mainly Han. As with all the autonomous regions of the Northwest, the central government has steadily encouraged Han immigration - or colonization - as a way of tying the area to the Chinese nation. The situation of the Hui people, however, is not comparable with that of the disaffected Uigurs or Tibetans. Having originally arrived in China more than a thousand years ago as descendants of Middle Eastern traders, the Hui people have long since adapted to the Han culture. They are still Muslim in faith and culture, but the vast majority speak Chinese as their mother tongue and, at present, there is little concept of a Hui nation floating round the backstreets of Yinchuan. Quite apart from that, most Hui people do not live in Ningxia at all, but are scattered around neighbouring regions.

Geographically, the area is dominated by the Yellow River . Apart from the hilly, green and extremely beautiful area in the south, Ningxia would be a barren, uninhabitable desert without its life-giving river. Unsurprisingly, the science of irrigation is at its most advanced here. As long as two thousand years ago, the great founding emperor of China, Qin Shihuang, sent a hundred thousand men here to dig irrigation channels. To those ancient systems of irrigation, which are still in use, have now been added ambitious reafforestation and desert reclamation projects. Some of these can be visited, particularly around the city of Zhongwei . Other sights include the regional capital Yinchuan , which makes a pleasant stopover, and one relic from an obscure northern branch of the Silk Road, the delightful Xumi Shan Grottoes , located well away from the Yellow River in the southern hills.

Despite a certain degree of industrialization since the Communists came to power, and the opening of the Lanzhou to Baotou rail link in 1958, Ningxia remains an underdeveloped rural area. For visitors, the rural scenes are the charm of the place, but this province is one of the poorest parts of the country.