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Tongxin County (, Xiao'erjing: طْوثٍ ثِيًا) is a county under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Wuzhong in the central part of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of China, bordering Gansu province to the east. It has a total area of 7,021 square kilometers with a population of approximately 360,000 people.
On the high, stout walls of Yu Wang Pao a squad of Red buglers was practicing, and from a corner of this fortlike city flew a big scarlet flag, its yellow hammer and ciskle cracking out in the breeze... We could look down on one side to a clean courtyard, where Muslim women were hulling rice and baking. Washing hung from a line on another side. In a distant square some Red soldiers were practicing wall scaling, broad jumping, and grenade throwing.
Yuwang (40 li north-west of Yuwang Bao), recently captured by the Reds from the troops of Ma Hongkui after a ten-day siege, was described as
an ancient Muslim city of four or five hundred families, with a magnificent wall of stone and brick. Outside of the wall was a Muslim mosque, with its own wall of beautiful glazed brick unscarred. But other buildings showed signs of the siege this city had undergone before it was taken by the Reds.
In October 1936, a public meeting was held at the Tongxin Great Mosque, establishing the Yuwang Hui Autonomous Government - the first autonomous county in Communist China. Although this autonomous unit was short-lived, the mosque building was protected as a revolutionary historical site, and became the only major Islamic building in Ningxia to survive destruction during the Cultural Revolution. "The Islamic Heritage in China": China Heritage Newsletter, No. 5, March 2006.
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