Shannxi Region Guide

Shaanxi is where Chinese civilisation was assembled, and its capital was the largest city in the world for several centuries.

The Terracotta Army is the reason most people come: around eight thousand life-size soldiers, horses and chariots buried in formation to guard the first emperor, discovered in 1974 by farmers digging a well and still only partly excavated. Every face is different.

Xian itself retains the most complete set of city walls in China — fourteen kilometres of them, cyclable in an afternoon — along with the Tang-era Big Wild Goose Pagoda and a Muslim quarter whose food is the best street eating in the country.

Beyond it: Huashan, one of the sacred mountains, with plank walkways bolted to a vertical cliff; the imperial tombs scattered across the plain; and the loess plateau to the north where people still live in cave dwellings.

The Terracotta Army

An hour east of the city. Three pits under hangars: Pit 1 holds the main infantry formation, eleven columns of figures in battle order stretching away under an aircraft-hangar roof; Pit 2 has cavalry and kneeling archers; Pit 3 appears to be the command post. The bronze chariots in the museum hall are the single finest objects on site. The emperor’s tomb mound itself, a kilometre away, has never been opened.

Xian

Cycle the city wall, fourteen kilometres around the old centre and wide enough to drive on. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda, built in 652 to house sutras brought from India. The Shaanxi History Museum, which is the best provincial museum in China. And the Muslim quarter after dark.

Huashan

One of the five sacred mountains, an hour and a half by high-speed rail: granite peaks, a cable car, and the notorious plank walk — a metre-wide boardwalk bolted to a vertical face with a harness and a very long drop.

The tombs

The Qianling mausoleum of Emperor Gaozong and Empress Wu Zetian, approached by an avenue of stone figures, and the Han Yangling with its miniature painted attendants.

The north

Yanan, endpoint of the Long March, and the loess cave villages around it.

Shaanxi carries the weight of being where it all started, and the province knows it.

Thirteen dynasties

Xian — as Chang’an — was the capital of thirteen dynasties over more than a thousand years, including the Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui and Tang. Under the Tang it held perhaps a million people and was the largest city in the world, the eastern terminus of the Silk Road and a genuinely cosmopolitan place with Persian, Sogdian, Japanese and Korean communities. The province’s sense of itself rests on that.

The Hui

Xian’s Hui Muslim community descends from Silk Road traders and has been in the city for over a thousand years. The Great Mosque, founded in 742, is built entirely in Chinese architectural style — courtyards, pavilions and a minaret shaped like a pagoda — and is one of the more striking buildings in China for that reason.

The loess north

A distinct culture of cave dwellings, waist-drum dancing and paper cuts, and a strong association with the communist base at Yanan.

Qinqiang opera

The oldest of the major Chinese operatic forms, loud and declamatory, and locally described as shouting rather than singing — affectionately.

Go early to the Terracotta Army. It receives several million visitors a year and the pits are genuinely crowded by mid-morning. Opening time gives you half an hour of something like quiet, and the museum recommends starting at Pit 3 and finishing at Pit 1 to work against the flow.

Do not photograph with flash in the pits — the surviving pigment on the figures is extraordinarily fragile, and most of the original colour was lost within minutes of exposure to air during early excavation. Much of the site is deliberately left unexcavated for exactly that reason.

Water is scarce across the loess plateau and the north of the province, which is among the driest inhabited parts of China.

Hui Muslim quarter: this is a residential neighbourhood as well as a food street. Ask before photographing people, and be aware during Ramadan.

Use the metro and the trains; Xian’s system reaches most of what matters.

March to May and September to early November are the best windows: mild, dry and clear, with spring blossom and autumn colour on the mountains.

June to August is hot — Xian regularly exceeds 35°C and the Wei valley traps the heat — and humid, with the summer rains arriving in July and August.

December to February is cold, dry and often severely polluted, with temperatures below freezing and a persistent winter smog that can be among the worst in China. It is also the quietest and cheapest time, and the sites are almost empty.

Chinese New Year in late January or February fills the city for the lantern displays on the walls, which are spectacular, and makes travel difficult.

Huashan is climbed year round but is icy and dangerous in winter; the plank walk closes in bad weather.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

Shaanxi is inexpensive, and Xian’s street food in particular offers an extraordinary amount for very little.