Located in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, Lanzhou is an intersection of the Loess Plateau, the Tibet Plateau and the Inner Mongolian Plateau. Human beings have inhabited the area since the Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages.

During the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, Lanzhou was occupied by the Qiang and Rong peoples. Since the Qin Dynasty, it has experienced eight large immigration waves. It has ever been the settlement of the minority groups like Xianbei, Tufan, Dangxian and Nvzhen. The multi-ethnic group settlement environment produced a multi-cultural background facilitating the intersection of Chinese, Indian and European civilization. All those elements combined have created copious cultural deposits of ethnic culture in Lanzhou.

An immigration city since ancient times, Lanzhou currently is a vast melting-pot of China’s 56 ethnic groups. All the Chinese ethnic groups can find their own traces there. Since the Han Dynasty, Lanzhou has become a significant town via the Hexi Corridor, which experienced the confrontation between the nomadic culture and cultivation culture on the Yellow River’s northern and southern banks. Thus, the ethnic culture in Lanzhou possesses a comprehensiveness and strong penetrability which witnesses the incorporation of China’s all ethnic groups.