Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County ( zh, s=民和回族土族自治县;

Xiao'erjing Xiao'erjing, Xiaorjing, Xiaojing or Benjing, is a Arabic script, Perso-Arabic script used to write Sinitic languages, including Lanyin Mandarin, Zhongyuan Mandarin, Northeastern Mandarin, and Dungan language, Dungan. It is used on occasion ...

: ; Monguor: ), known in Tibetan as Kamalog, is the easternmost

county A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

Qinghai Province Qinghai is an inland province in Northwestern China. It is the largest province of China (excluding autonomous regions) by area and has the third smallest population. Its capital and largest city is Xining. Qinghai borders Gansu on the nort ...

, China. It is under the administration of

Haidong Haidong ( zh, s=海东市, p=Hǎidōng shì) is a prefecture-level city of Qinghai province in Western China. Its name literally means "east of the (Qinghai) Lake." On 8 February 2013 Haidong was upgraded from a prefecture ( zh, labels=no , s=� ...

(lit. Eastern Qinghai) Region. "Hui" refers to the Chinese Muslims, whereas "Tu" refers to the ethnic group known as “ Monguor” in the West and as " Tu Zu" in China. It borders the Honggu District of

Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...

on the east, demarcated by the Datong River, a tributary to the Huangshui River, which eventually flows into the

Yellow River The Yellow River, also known as Huanghe, is the second-longest river in China and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system on Earth, with an estimated length of and a Drainage basin, watershed of . Beginning in the Bayan H ...

. The county is multi-ethnic and significant to not only holding the most densely populated Tu Zu settlement in Sanchuan/ Guanting in its southeastern portion, but also as the homeland of the legendary Emperor Yü the Great, who established the

Xia dynasty The Xia dynasty (; ) is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese historiography. According to tradition, it was established by the legendary figure Yu the Great, after Emperor Shun, Shun, the last of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, Fiv ...

(2070–1600 BC), the first ever recorded dynasty in the ancient Chinese history based on recent archaeological discoveries.

Administrative divisions

Minhe is divided into 8

towns A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

and 13 townships, and 1 ethnic township. The county government is seated in Chuankou. * Chuankou Town (川口镇) * Gushan Town (古鄯镇) * Maying Town (马营镇) * Guanting Town (官亭镇) * Bazhou Town (巴州镇) * Manping Town (满坪镇) * Li'erbao Town (李二堡镇) * Xiamen Town (峡门镇) * Machangyuan Township (马场垣乡) * Beishan Township (北山乡) * Songshu Township (松树乡) * Xigou Township (西沟乡) * Zongbao Township (总堡乡) * Longzhi Township (隆治乡) * Dazhuang Township (大庄乡) * Zhuandao Township (转导乡) * Qianhe Township (前河乡) * Gangou Township (甘沟乡) * Zhongchuan Township (中川乡) * Hetaozhuang Township (核桃庄乡) * Xinmin Township (新民乡) * Xin'ar Tibetan Ethnic Township (杏儿藏族乡, )

Demographics

In 2019 the county had a registered population of 438,100 people. The county's urban population was 117,200 people, whereas the remaining 320,900 people lived in rural areas. The county recorded a

birth rate Birth rate, also known as natality, is the total number of live childbirth, human births per 1,000 population for a given period divided by the length of the period in years. The number of live births is normally taken from a universal registr ...

of 10.90 per thousand, and a

death rate Mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of d ...

of 4.44 per thousand, giving the county a rate of natural increase of 6.46 per thousand.

Ethnic groups

As of 2019, 38.28% of the county's population was ethnically

Han Chinese The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han people, are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. With a global population of over 1.4 billion, the Han Chinese are the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's la ...

. A 2004 report by the

National Ethnic Affairs Commission The National Ethnic Affairs Commission (NEAC), also called the State Ethnic Affairs Commission (SEAC), is a body under the leadership of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party that is responsible ...

reported that 44.51% of the county's population was ethnically Han Chinese, 40.45% was ethnically Hui, 11.26% was ethnically Monguor, and 3.55% was ethnically Tibetan.

Languages

The county has large populations of Hui, Tibetan, and Tu people, whose languages are commonly spoken in varying parts of the county. In addition to Standard Mandarin, there is also a unique Gangou dialect, a unique Guanting dialect, and a unique dialect in the Jingning Village of Gangou Township, Qinghai.

Climate

Economy

Minhe's

GDP Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic performance o ...

stood at 10.349 billion Yuan in 2019, of which, 1.329 billion Yuan came from the county's

primary sector The primary sector of the economy includes any industry involved in the extraction and production of raw materials, such as farming, logging, fishing, forestry and mining. The primary sector tends to make up a larger portion of the economy in d ...

, 4.249 billion Yuan came from the county's secondary sector, and 4.771 billion Yuan came from the county's

tertiary sector The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the ...

. The county's GDP per capita stood at 27,745 Yuan as of 2019. The county's per capita disposable income was 18,487 Yuan in 2019, which stood at 31,432 Yuan for urban residents, and 11,706 Yuan for rural residents. Minhe's unemployment rate stood at 3.22% at the end of 2019. Retail sales in the county totaled 2.820 billion Yuan in 2019, of which, urban sales accounted for 1.448 billion, and rural sales accounted for 1.372 billion.

Agriculture

In 2019, of land was sown, of which, was sown for

corn Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout Poaceae, grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples of Mexico, indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago ...

, was sown for

potato The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...

es, was sown for

wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...

, was sown for seed oils, and was sown for vegetables and mushrooms. Animal husbandry is also common in Minhe, and the county's farmers have sizable populations of cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry.

Industry

The county's largest industries are the production of

cement A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel ( aggregate) together. Cement mi ...

ferroalloy Ferroalloy refers to various alloys of iron with a high proportion of one or more other elements such as manganese (Mn), aluminium (Al), or silicon (Si). They are used in the production of steels and alloys. The alloys impart distinctive qualitie ...

aluminium Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...

, and

graphite Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...

Education

As of 2019, the county had 10,962

kindergarten Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cen ...

students, 33,609

primary school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

students, 15,539

junior high Middle school, also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school, is an educational stage between primary school and secondary school. Afghanistan In Afghanistan, middle school includes g ...

students, 9,953 standard

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

students, and 5,446 vocational secondary school students.

Culture

A number of cultural traditions unique to particular regions in Minhe County have been recorded, and are generally attributed to the large amount of inter-ethnic contact in the region. The region has a number of traditions unique to giving birth to a child, including unique midwifing practices, a "step on birth" ( zh, labels=no, c=踏生 , p=tà shēng) tradition where families invite a guest to visit their newborn in the hopes of the baby inheriting the guest's positive personality traits, a celebration for a newborn's 30th day known as a "baimanyue" ( zh, labels=no, s=摆满月 , p=bǎi mǎnyuè), and consulting books which host clan-specific baby names in order to name newborns. Ethnic Monguor and Tibetan weddings in the area are remarkable in that they involve more singing than their

counterparts.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Minhe Hui And Tu Autonomous County County-level divisions of Qinghai Haidong Hui autonomous counties Monguor autonomous counties