China's largest park to display traditional culture and customs of Hui ethnic group has partly opened in this capital city of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

During a month-long trial operation, the China Hui Culture Park has received over 20,000 visitors from home and abroad, the park authority said.

It took three years and cost 80 million yuan (US$9.9 million) to build the park, which covers an area of 20 hectares in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia. Work on the park's main structures, in a Muslim style, has been completed.

The park comprises a museum of Hui culture, a hall for Hui rituals, a garden of Hui customs and miniatures of famous mosques in China.

The museum, the first with a history of Hui ethnic group as the theme, will display 500 exhibits of the group's cultural relics.     

Ningxia has 2.06 million people of Hui nationality, making up a quarter of the national total.

(Xinhua News Agency October 26, 2005)