Province · Northwest China
Shaanxi
陕西
The land of Qin, from the Loess Plateau to the Qinling Mountains
Shaanxi is a province in north-west China whose central plain, the Wei River valley, was the seat of the Western Zhou, Qin, Western Han, Sui and Tang dynasties. Its capital is Xi'an, the former Chang'an and eastern terminus of the Silk Road; the province stretches from the Loess Plateau in the north across the Qinling Mountains, China's north–south climate divide, to the Han River valley in the south.
Key facts
- Capital
- Xi'an
- Abbreviation
- 陕 (Shǎn) or 秦 (Qín)
- Area
- about 205,600 km²[1]
- Resident population
- 39.36 million(as of end of 2025)[2]
- Gross regional product
- CNY 3.66 trillion(as of 2025)[2]
- Census population
- 39.53 million(as of 2020 census)[3]
- Divisions
- 10 prefecture-level cities[1]
- UNESCO World Heritage sites
- 2 (1987, 2014; one shared)[4]
Profile
- Chinese name
- 陕西
- Abbreviation (简称)
- 陕 or 秦
- Type
- Province
- Region
- Northwest China
- Capital
- Xi'an
- Area
- about 205,600 km²
- Divisions
- 10 prefecture-level cities, plus the Yangling Agricultural Hi-tech Industries Demonstration Zone
- Ethnic groups
- Han, Hui, Manchu, Mongol
- Languages
- Guanzhong dialect, Northern Shaanxi speech, Southern Shaanxi speech
Languages
Guanzhong dialect
关中话
The Central Plains Mandarin of Xi'an and the Wei valley, the language of Qinqiang opera; mutually intelligible with standard Mandarin with some effort.
Northern Shaanxi speech
陕北话
Largely Jin Chinese, related to the dialects of Shanxi, and the language of the xintianyou folk songs.
Southern Shaanxi speech
陕南方言
Southwestern Mandarin close to Sichuanese around Hanzhong, with pockets of Jianghuai Mandarin and Gan brought by Qing-era migrants.
Name and abbreviation
Shaanxi means “west of Shan”. Shan (陕) was a place on the Yellow River near today's Sanmenxia in Henan; according to tradition the Duke of Zhou and the Duke of Shao divided the early Zhou realm there, the Duke of Shao governing the lands to the west. The name became an administrative term in the Song dynasty and a province under the Yuan. The official romanisation doubles the “a” to mark the third tone (Shǎnxī) and to distinguish the province from its eastern neighbour Shanxi (山西, Shānxī). The alternative abbreviation 秦 recalls the state of Qin, which rose in the Wei valley and unified China in 221 BCE.
Historic names
关中
“within the passes”
The Wei River plain, enclosed by the Hangu, Wu, Dasan and Xiao passes; the historic core of the province.
三秦
“the Three Qins”
After the fall of Qin in 206 BCE Xiang Yu divided its heartland into three kingdoms; the name is still used for the whole province.
京兆
“capital region”
Name of the metropolitan district around Chang'an from the Han to the Tang dynasty.
Northern and Southern Shaanxi
陕北·陕南
The loess uplands around Yan'an and Yulin, and the Qinling–Daba valleys around Hanzhong and Ankang — the two regions flanking Guanzhong.
Land and climate
Shaanxi runs some 870 km from north to south and crosses three landscapes. The north is the Loess Plateau, deeply cut into gullies and flat-topped ridges and edged by the Mu Us Sandy Land along the Great Wall. The centre is the Guanzhong Plain of the Wei River, the densely settled heartland. The south is mountain country: the Qinling range, which divides north from south China in climate, vegetation and farming, and beyond it the Han River basins and the Daba Mountains.
Landforms
Loess Plateau
黄土高原
Wind-blown silt hundreds of metres deep, eroded into gullies; the landscape of cave dwellings and of the Red Army's base at Yan'an.
Guanzhong Plain
关中平原
The Wei River graben between the plateau and the Qinling, known since the Warring States period as “eight hundred li of Qinchuan”.
Qinling Mountains
秦岭
East–west range that forms the watershed between the Yellow River and the Yangtze; habitat of the Qinling giant panda, golden snub-nosed monkey and crested ibis.
Mount Taibai
太白山
At 3,771 m the highest peak of the Qinling and of the province.
Mount Hua
华山
The Western of the Five Great Mountains, a granite massif with cliff paths and Daoist temples above the Wei plain.
Rivers and lakes
Yellow River
黄河
Forms the eastern border with Shanxi, falling through the Hukou Waterfall in the Jin–Shaan gorge.
Wei River
渭河
The main tributary of the Yellow River, flowing east through Baoji, Xianyang and Xi'an.
Jing River
泾河
Joins the Wei north of Xi'an; the contrast between its water and the Wei's gave the idiom 泾渭分明, “as distinct as the Jing and the Wei”.
Han River
汉江
Rises in the south-west of the province and flows through Hanzhong and Ankang towards the Yangtze; a source of the South–North Water Transfer.
Climate
The north is semi-arid and temperate, with cold, dry winters and most rain in short summer storms. Guanzhong has a warm-temperate, semi-humid climate with hot summers, cold winters and dust in spring. South of the Qinling the climate becomes humid and subtropical — rice, tea and citrus replace wheat and millet. Spring and autumn are the most comfortable seasons for travel.
History
Shaanxi holds one of the longest records of human settlement in China, from the Lantian hominin fossils to the Neolithic village at Banpo. The Zhou rose in the Wei valley and ruled from Feng and Hao; the Qin built their capital at Xianyang and unified China in 221 BCE. The Western Han, Sui and Tang ruled from Chang'an, which by the eighth century was among the largest cities in the world and the eastern end of the Silk Road. After the Tang the political centre moved east and Shaanxi became a frontier province. It suffered the deadliest recorded earthquake in 1556 and devastating wars in the 1860s. In the twentieth century the Communist Party made Yan'an its headquarters from 1937 to 1947.
c. 1.6 million years ago
Lantian hominin
A Homo erectus skull found at Gongwangling in Lantian county is among the oldest hominin fossils in northern China.
c. 4800–4300 BCE
Banpo village
A moated Yangshao-culture village east of Xi'an, excavated from 1954, with painted pottery and the first site museum in China.
c. 1046–771 BCE
Western Zhou capitals Feng and Hao
The Zhou ruled from twin cities on the Feng River south-west of Xi'an; the Zhou homeland on the plain of Zhouyuan near Baoji has yielded many inscribed bronzes.
350 BCE
Qin moves its capital to Xianyang
Under the reforms of Shang Yang the state of Qin built its new capital on the Wei; from here it conquered the other states.
221 BCE
Unification under the First Emperor
Qin Shi Huang standardised script, weights and axle widths; his mausoleum near Lintong holds the Terracotta Army.
202 BCE
Han founds Chang'an
Liu Bang made Chang'an the capital of the Western Han; from here Zhang Qian set out for Central Asia in 138 BCE.
582
Sui builds Daxing
The planned grid city south-east of Han Chang'an became Tang Chang'an, the model for Nara and Heian-kyō in Japan.
645
Xuanzang returns to Chang'an
The monk brought back Buddhist scriptures from India; the Great Wild Goose Pagoda was built in 652 to house them.
904
End of Chang'an as a capital
The warlord Zhu Wen forced the Tang court to move to Luoyang and had the city dismantled; no later dynasty ruled China from the Wei valley.
23 January 1556
Jiajing earthquake
Centred near Huaxian, it killed about 830,000 people according to historical records — the deadliest earthquake known.
1862–1873
Northwest Hui war
Conflict between Hui and Han communities and the Qing army devastated Guanzhong and drove most of its Hui population to Gansu and beyond.
12 December 1936
Xi'an Incident
Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng detained Chiang Kai-shek at Huaqing Palace to force a united front against Japan.
1937–1947
Yan'an period
Yan'an was the headquarters of the Communist Party and the Red Army, which had reached northern Shaanxi at the end of the Long March in 1935.
1974
Discovery of the Terracotta Army
Farmers digging a well near Lintong found fragments of the life-size clay army buried with the First Emperor.
2014
Xixian New Area
The zone between Xi'an and Xianyang became a national-level new area, the first explicitly designed to merge two cities.
World heritage
World Heritage sites
Cultural · inscribed 1987
Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor
秦始皇陵及兵马俑坑
The burial mound of Qin Shi Huang and the pits of the Terracotta Army, several thousand life-size warriors, horses and chariots in battle formation.
Cultural · inscribed 2014 · shared
Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an–Tianshan Corridor
丝绸之路：长安—天山廊道的路网
Serial site shared with Henan, Gansu, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The Shaanxi components are the Weiyang and Daming palaces, the Great and Small Wild Goose pagodas, Xingjiao Temple Pagoda, the Bin County Cave Temple and the tomb of Zhang Qian.
Intangible cultural heritage (UNESCO lists)
Inscribed 2009
Xi'an wind and percussion ensemble
西安鼓乐
Ritual music of drums and wind instruments played by temple and village ensembles around Xi'an, preserved in notation that goes back to the Tang and Song.
Inscribed 2009
Chinese paper-cut
中国剪纸
Shared inscription; northern Shaanxi, notably Ansai and the Yan'an area, is one of its main regional traditions, with bold figures cut for windows, weddings and festivals.
Inscribed 2011
Chinese shadow puppetry
中国皮影戏
Shared inscription; the Guanzhong plain is one of the oldest centres of the art, with puppets cut from cowhide and plays sung in the Wanwanqiang and Laoqiang styles.
Culture
Shaanxi's culture is loud, plain-spoken and wheat-based. Guanzhong people are proud of the imperial past and of Qinqiang, the fierce, full-throated opera often counted the ancestor of northern Chinese opera. The loess north has its own culture of cave dwellings, waist drums, paper-cuts and the high, free-rhythm songs called xintianyou, while the south shares much with Sichuan. A popular rhyme, the “Eight Oddities of Shaanxi” (陕西八大怪), jokes about noodles as wide as belts and bowls the size of basins.
国破山河在，城春草木深。Guó pò shān hé zài, chéng chūn cǎo mù shēn.
“The state is broken, but hills and rivers remain; spring comes to the city, and grass and trees grow deep.”
— Du Fu, “Spring View” (春望), written in occupied Chang'an, 757
Opera, music and dance
Qinqiang opera
秦腔
Clapper opera of the Wei valley, accompanied by the high-pitched banhu fiddle and wooden clappers; its style influenced many northern regional operas.
Huayin Laoqiang
华阴老腔
Shadow-play singing from a village near Mount Hua, performed with a bench struck by a wooden block; now also staged by itself.
Ansai waist drums
安塞腰鼓
Mass drumming dance from northern Shaanxi, performed by hundreds of dancers raising dust on the loess.
Xintianyou
信天游
Folk songs of northern Shaanxi in paired lines, sung by shepherds and carters across the gullies.
Crafts
Fengxiang clay figures
凤翔泥塑
Painted clay animals and masks from Fengxiang near Baoji, especially the zodiac animals made for the new year.
Yaozhou ware
耀州窑
Olive-green celadon from Tongchuan, famous in the Song dynasty for its carved and moulded decoration.
Huxian peasant painting
户县农民画
Brightly coloured paintings of village life by farmers of Huyi district, known since the 1950s.
Festivals and customs
Cave dwellings
窑洞
Homes dug into the loess or built as vaulted stone arches, cool in summer and warm in winter.
Shehuo
社火
New-year processions with masks, stilts, drums and floats, strongest around Baoji.
Rites at the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor
黄帝陵祭典
State and public ceremonies at Huangling at Qingming and on the Double Ninth, honouring the legendary ancestor of the Chinese.
Cuisine
Shaanxi cooking belongs to the wheat world of the north-west: noodles of every width, flatbreads, steamed breads and lamb, seasoned with vinegar, chilli oil, garlic and cumin. The Muslim Quarter of Xi'an keeps a Hui tradition of beef and lamb dishes, and the province has more named noodle styles than most. Northern Shaanxi adds millet, buckwheat and potatoes; the south, rice and Sichuan-style heat.
Signature dishes
Roujiamo
肉夹馍
A flatbread split and filled with chopped stewed pork — or beef or lamb in Hui shops — often called the Chinese hamburger.
Yangrou paomo
羊肉泡馍
Unleavened bread broken into small pieces by the diner and simmered in lamb broth; served with pickled garlic and chilli paste.
Hot-oil noodles
油泼面
Wide hand-pulled noodles topped with chilli flakes and garlic over which smoking oil is poured; the belt-wide biangbiang noodle is its best-known form.
Liangpi
凉皮
Cold wheat or rice sheet noodles with vinegar, chilli oil and gluten; the rice version from Qinzhen is the most famous.
Qishan saozi noodles
岐山臊子面
Thin noodles in a sour, spicy broth with diced pork, egg and vegetables, from Qishan near Baoji.
Specialities
Luochuan apples
洛川苹果
Apples from the loess tableland of Luochuan in Yan'an; the Loess Plateau is one of China's main apple regions.
Zhouzhi kiwi fruit
周至猕猴桃
Grown along the northern foot of the Qinling, where the fruit is native.
Lintong pomegranates
临潼石榴
Grown around Mount Li and Huaqing Palace since, by tradition, the Han dynasty.
Jingyang Fu brick tea
泾阳茯茶
Dark tea pressed into bricks and fermented with a golden mould; historically traded to the herders of the north-west.
Xifeng liquor
西凤酒
Baijiu from Fengxiang near Baoji, the reference style for “phoenix-aroma” liquor.
Notable people
Sima Qian (c. 145–c. 86 BCE)
司马迁
Author of the Records of the Grand Historian (史记), born at Longmen near Hancheng.
Ban Gu (32–92)
班固
Historian of the Book of Han (汉书), from a family of the Xianyang area.
Du Mu (803–852)
杜牧
Late Tang poet born in Chang'an, known for his quatrains on history and on the south.
Li Zicheng (1606–1645)
李自成
Rebel leader from Mizhi in northern Shaanxi whose army took Beijing in 1644, ending the Ming dynasty.
Yu Youren (1879–1964)
于右任
Revolutionary, statesman and master of cursive calligraphy from Sanyuan.
Lu Yao (1949–1992)
路遥
Novelist from Qingjian in northern Shaanxi, author of the widely read Ordinary World (平凡的世界).
Chen Zhongshi (1942–2016)
陈忠实
Author of White Deer Plain (白鹿原), a family saga of the Guanzhong countryside.
Economy
Shaanxi combines an energy base in the north with a science, education and manufacturing centre in Xi'an. The Ordos Basin under northern Shaanxi holds large reserves of coal, oil and natural gas, which Yulin and Yan'an extract and process. Xi'an has one of the highest concentrations of universities and research institutes in China and is a centre of aerospace, aviation, semiconductors and vehicle production. Agriculture is known for apples and kiwi fruit.
Main industries
- Coal, oil, natural gas and coal chemicals in Yulin and Yan'an
- Aerospace and aviation (the Xi'an aircraft industry and the Yanliang aviation base)
- Semiconductors and electronics
- Motor vehicles, including new-energy vehicles
- Higher education, research and software
- Tourism based on the imperial heritage of Xi'an
- Fruit growing: apples, kiwi fruit, pomegranates
Zones, ports and hubs
Xixian New Area
西咸新区
National-level new area between Xi'an and Xianyang, approved in 2014.
China (Shaanxi) Pilot Free Trade Zone
中国（陕西）自由贸易试验区
Established in 2017 with areas in central Xi'an, the international port district and Yangling.
Xi'an International Port Area
西安国际港务区
Dry port and rail freight hub, base of the Chang'an China–Europe freight trains since 2013.
Yangling Agricultural Hi-tech Demonstration Zone
杨凌农业高新技术产业示范区
National agricultural science zone set up in 1997 around Northwest A&F University.
Cities
- Xi'an西安Capital · Historic city · Cultural centreChang'an, imperial capital of Qin, Han and Tang
- Xianyang咸阳Historic cityCapital of Qin and valley of the Han and Tang imperial tombs
- Baoji宝鸡Historic city · Industrial centreHomeland of the Zhou and Qin, city of bronzes
- Yan'an延安Historic city · Cultural centreLoess Plateau city of the Communist Party's wartime base
- Hanzhong汉中Historic city · Scenic areaWhere the Han dynasty took its name, between the Qinling and the Daba
Mountains and nature
Getting there
- Xi'an Xianyang International Airport, between the two cities, is the main air gateway to north-west China.
- Xi'an North Station is the hub of high-speed lines east to Zhengzhou, west to Baoji and Lanzhou, south through the Qinling to Chengdu, and north to Yinchuan.
- Conventional railways run north to Yan'an and Yulin and south to Hanzhong and Ankang; Yan'an, Yulin and Hanzhong also have airports.
Travel guide: xian
Entry rules for foreign visitors are on the visa and entry pages.
Frequently asked questions
Sources
- Shaanxi Provincial People's Government — Shaanxi Provincial People's Government (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- 2025年陕西省国民经济和社会发展统计公报 (Statistical Communiqué of Shaanxi on the 2025 National Economic and Social Development) — Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Statistics (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- Seventh National Population Census communiqués — National Bureau of Statistics of China (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- World Heritage List: China — UNESCO World Heritage Centre (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- Intangible Cultural Heritage: China — UNESCO (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- Shaanxi — Encyclopaedia Britannica (retrieved 27 September 2026)
All provinces · 中国省级行政区
Related
Destination
Xi'an →
Walk through 3,000 years of Chinese history in the eternal city where emperors ruled and the Silk Road began its legendary journey to the West.
Dynasty
Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE) →
Established Mandate of Heaven concept that legitimized dynastic change throughout Chinese history, created feudal political system, fostered…
Dynasty
Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE) →
Despite lasting only 15 years, created unified China and imperial system that defined Chinese political structure for over 2,000 years. Standardized…
Dynasty
Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) →
The Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) was the second imperial dynasty of China, founded by the commoner Liu Bang after the collapse of the Qin. Divided…
Dynasty
Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) →
The Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) was the imperial dynasty founded by Li Yuan that ruled China for nearly three centuries from Chang'an, then the largest…
Art Form
Chinese Opera →
Chinese opera is a comprehensive performing art combining singing, speaking, acting, and acrobatics. With over 300 regional varieties, it presents…