Tangwang, formerly known as Tangwangchuan (唐汪川) is a town of

Dongxiang Autonomous County Dongxiang Autonomous County (; Santa language, Santa: Dunxianzu Zizhixien) is an autonomous county in the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, province of Gansu of the China, People's Republic of China. It was established as a Dongxiang ethnic autono ...

Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture ( zh, s=临夏回族自治州 , t=臨夏回族自治州 , p=Línxià Huízú Zìzhìzhōu, Xiao'erjing: ), formerly known as Hezhou (河州) and Baohan (枹罕), is located in Gansu, Gansu Province, south of the pro ...

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 ...

, China. The town had a multi ethnic populace, the Tang () and Wang () families being the two major families. The Tang and Wang families were originally of non-Muslim Han Chinese extraction, but by the 1900s some branches of the families became Muslim by "intermarriage or conversion" while other branches of the families remained non-Muslim. People in the area have changed their ethnicity by marrying members of other groups or converting to their religion. The Tang and Wang families are now composed of all three different ethnic groups, with

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 ...

Hui The Hui people are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the northwestern provinces and in the Zhongyuan region. According to the 2 ...

and

Dongxiang people The Dongxiang (autonym: '' Sarta'' or ''Santa'') are a Mongolic people and one of 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. Half of the population live in Dongxiang Autonomous County, Linxia Prefecture, Gansu ...

. The Hui and Dongxiang are Muslims. Tangwangchuan and Hanjiaji were notable for being the lone towns with a multi ethnic community, with both non-Muslims and Muslims. The

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the one party state, sole ruling party of the country Republic of China (1912-1949), during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until Retreat ...

official Ma Hetian visited Tangwangchuan and met an "elderly local literatus from the Tang clan" when he was on his inspection tour of Gansu and Qinghai. In the local music of Hezhou/Linxia, a Han and Hui song called "Hezhou" contains the verse "tang wang chuan you yi ge" () in its third Ling. In 1956, ancient pottery was found at the town, giving its name to the Tangwang Culture. In 2009, murals dated to 1673 were found in a cave in Tangwang.

References

Township-level divisions of Gansu {{Gansu-geo-stub

See also

References