Provinces | Shaanxi Province

Index

	Population	36,269,000
	Area	205,600
	Capital	Xian
	Main Industries	aviation, textiles
	GDP	3,707
	Trade	14,443
	Ethnic minorities	0.7%
	Urbanization	26.2%
	Data Source

Shaanxi Province is near the geographical centre of China and is certainly one of the oldest centres of Chinese civilization. An ancient neolithic village at Banpo takes the story back to 4,500BC.

The reason that the name is so confusingly similar to Shanxi Province is that the names only are different in the tone of the 'a' sound. In order to make the provinces distinct when tone marks are not shown the name is printed with a double 'a' to indicate it is of third tone.

The first emperor to unify China, Qin Shihuangdi (221 to 221 BC) is buried with his terracotta army at Xian the provincial capital of Shaanxi. Early Chinese people settled on the fertile loess valleys around the Yellow River (Huang He). Thereafter Xi'an was capital to China for a thousand years. It is a popular tourist destination but is also an industrial city noted for aviation and textile industries.

The province stretches NE to the Great Wall and SW to the Daba Shan mountains. In communist times it is famous for Chairman Mao's base at Yan'an - the eventual destination for the Long March. It is rich in natural resources particularly coal and oil.