Tongxin

Tongxin County lies in the arid center of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, under the administration of Wuzhong, in a drought-prone landscape where roughly four in five residents are Hui Muslims, among the highest shares anywhere in Ningxia. Its economy rests on sheep and goat herding, dryland grain farming, and a growing trade in dried Tongxin round dates and wolfberries, alongside modest wind and solar power projects that exploit the county's open, sun-baked plateau. Tongxin has no university of its own, and students typically continue their studies in Wuzhong or Yinchuan, though the county is nationally known as the birthplace of Communist China's first autonomous Hui government, proclaimed at the Tongxin Great Mosque in 1936. That mosque, likely dating to the Ming dynasty, remains the largest and oldest in Ningxia and draws visitors from across the region for its blend of Chinese timber-frame architecture and Islamic design. Beyond the mosque, the forested slopes of Mount Luoshan and the historic frontier garrison of Weizhou, once a Tang- and Xi Xia-era military post on the northern Silk Road, round out a county whose austere landscape belies a rich layered history.