Tourism
The Jiayuguan Pass of the Great Wall
Jiayuguan Pass, in Jiayuguan city, is the largest and most intact pass, or entrance, of the Great Wall. Jiayuguan Pass was built in the early Ming dynasty, it was the first pass on the west end of the great wall so it earned the name “The First and Greatest Pass under Heaven.”
Mogao Grottoes
The Mogao Grottoes near Dunhuang represent an astonishing collection of Buddhist art and religion. Originally there were a thousand grottoes, but now only 492 cave temples remain. Each temple has a large statue of a buddha or bodhisattva and paintings of religious scenes.
Silk Road and Dunhuang City
The historic Silk Road starts in Chang’an and goes to Constantinople.
Bingling Temple
Bingling Temple, or Bingling Grottoes, is a Buddhist cave complex in a canyon along the Yellow River. The site contains dozens of caves and caverns filled with outstanding examples of carvings, sculpture, and frescoes.
Labrang Monastery
It is one of the six major monasteries of the Gelukpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet, and the most important one in Amdo. It has 6 dratsang (colleges), and houses over sixty thousand religious texts and other works of literature as well as other cultural artifacts.


Gansu is located in the northwest of China, which has an area of 141,500 sq mi (366,500 sq km). Its capital is Lanzhou. Gansu is abbreviated Gan or Long, and is also known as Long West or Long Right, in reference to the Long Mountain east of Gansu.
Administration divisions
There are fourteen administrative areas in Gansu immediately below the province level: twelve prefecture-level cities and two autonomous prefectures:
• Baiyin
• Dingxi
• Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture
• Jiayuguan
• Jinchang
• Jiuquan
• Lanzhou
• Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture
• Longnan
• Pingliang
• Qingyang
• Tianshui
• Wuwei
• Zhangye


History
In ancient times, it was an important strategic outpost and communications link, as the Hexi corridor runs along the "neck" of the Gansu province. The Han dynasty extended the Great Wall across this corridor, also building the strategic Yumenguan (Jade Gate Pass, near Dunhuang) and Yangguan fort towns along it. The Ming dynasty also built the Jiayuguan outpost in Gansu.
Situated along the Silk Road, Gansu was an economically important province and a cultural transmission path as well. Temples and Buddhist grottoes such as those at Mogao Caves and Maijishan Caves contain artistically and historically revealing murals.
Geography
Gansu lies between Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, and the Huangtu Plateaus, and borders Mongolia to the north and Xinjiang to the west. The Huanghe River passes the southern part of the province.
The majority of Gansu’s land is more than 1 km above sea level. The landscape in Gansu is very mountainous in the south and flat in the north. The mountains in the south are part of the Qilian mountain range. At 5,547 meters high, Qilian Shan Mountain is Gansu’s highest elevation. It is located at latitude 39°N and longitude 99°E.Part of the Gobi Desert is located in Gansu.


Economy
Agricultural production includes cotton, linseed oil, maize, melons (the Bailan melon is well known in China), millet, and wheat. Gansu is known as a source for wild medicinal herbs which are used in Chinese medicine.
However, most of Gansu’s economy is based on mining and the extraction of minerals, especially rare earth elements. The province has significant deposits of antimony, chromium, coal, cobalt, copper, fluorite, gypsum, iridium, iron, lead, limestone, mercury, mirabilite, nickel, crude oil, platinum, troilite, tungsten, and zinc among others. The oil fields at Yumen and Changqing are considered significant.
Industries other than mining include electricity generation, petrochemicals, oil exploration machinery, and building materials.
Ethnic group
Most of the population of Gansu is the Han ,other minorities include the Hui, the Tibetan,the Dongxiang, the Tu, the Manchu, the Uyghur, the Yugur, the Bonan,the Mongolian,the Salar, and the Kazakh.
Culture
Most of the inhabitants of Gansu speak dialects of Northern Mandarin Chinese. On the border areas of Gansu you may hear Amdo Tibetan, Mongolian, and Kazakh.
The cuisine of Gansu is based on the staple crops grown there: wheat, barley, millet, beans, and sweet potatoes. Within China, Gansu is known for its pulled noodles, and Muslim restaurants which feature authentic Gansu cuisine are common in most major Chinese cities.