the county seat, Liujiaxia Town). The conflict was further complicated by the fact that some members of the Kong clan had, in fact, intermarried with the Hui people. Large number of people lost their lives on both sides of the conflict, in particular during the rebels' attacks on Kong clan's villages around Dachuan 1864. After the Qing general Zuo Zongtang had finally destroyed the rebels farther east, in Shaanxi and Ningxia, he tried to take Hezhou in the late 1872, but his troops were badly defeated by Ma Zhan'ao's Muslim fighters at the battle of Taizi Mosque, and he failed to make a foothold west of the Tao River (which today more or less forms the border between Dingxi and Linxia Prefectures). Ma Zhan'ao, however, realized that he could not hold against the Qing armies forever and made a deal with Zuo Zongtang: he surrendered Hezhou to the government forces, executed those locals who objected to the surrender and joined the government side himself, to fight against the rebels farther west. In exchange, Zuo Zontang did not disperse the local Muslim community, forcibly relocating the survivors to a remote region, but, in a unique gesture during that war, acted to reduce the inter-communal tension by relocating some of the local Han people away from the Muslims. Nonetheless, in order to ensure the government's control over the region, since 1873 Muslims were prohibited to live within the city walls of Hezhou. Linxia (Hezhou) was often wracked by these frequent rebellions. The entire southern suburbs of the city (ba fang) "eight blocks" was ruined in 1928 by savage fighting between the Muslims and Guominjun forces during the Muslim Conflict in Gansu (1927–1930). Well-known Muslim individuals in Hezhou in the 1940s included La Shih-Chun, who was part of the Gansu Provincial Government Committee and Ma Chuanyuan, the supermagistrate of five districts. The hydro dams In 1955, just a few years after the creation of the People's Republic of China, the Communist government announced a large-scale program of hydroelectric dam construction on the Yellow River. Two of them were constructed in Linxia Prefecture's Yongjing County: the 57-meter high Yanguoxia Dam (1958–1961) and the 147-meter high Liujiaxia Dam (1958–1969). One more - the 33-meter high Bapanxia Dam (1968–1975) - although located in Lanzhou's Xigu District, had much of its reservoir within Yongjing County as well. The dams contributed greatly to the national economy - Liujiaxia