40 Facts About Shanxi

Shanxi is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region.

Name Shanxi means "West of the Mountains", a reference to the province's location west of the Taihang Mountains.

Shanxi's terrain is characterised by a plateau bounded partly by mountain ranges.

Shanxi is a leading producer of coal in China, possessing roughly a third of China's total coal deposits.

Shanxi was initially home to the jiedushi of Hedong, Li Cunxu, who overthrew the first of the Five Dynasties, Later Liang to establish the second, Later Tang .

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Shanxi founded his dynasty by launching a military coup against the Turkic Later Han Emperor, however his newly established dynasty was short-lived and was conquered by the Song Dynasty in 960.

Shanxi only gained its present name and approximate borders during the Ming Dynasty which were of the same land area and borders as the previous Hedong Commandery of the Tang Dynasty.

From 1911 to 1949, during the period of the Republic of China's period of rule over Mainland China, Shanxi was mostly dominated by the warlord Yan Xishan until the Chinese Communist Party took full control in 1949; Communists had already set up secret bases in 1936, but did not completely overturn Yan and the Nationalist government until 1949.

Yan devoted himself to modernizing Shanxi and developing its resources during his reign over the province.

Shanxi has been viewed by Western biographers as a transitional figure who advocated using Western technology to protect Chinese traditions, while at the same time reforming older political, social and economic conditions in a way that paved the way for the radical changes that would occur after his rule.

Yan invested in Shanxi's industrial infrastructure, and by 1949 the area around Taiyuan was a major national producer of coal, iron, chemicals, and munitions.

Yan's army was successful in eradicating banditry in Shanxi, allowing him to maintain a relatively high level of public order and security.

Shanxi insisted that all men in Shanxi abandon their Qing-era queues, giving police instructions to clip off the queues of anyone still wearing them.

Shanxi attempted to combat widespread female illiteracy by creating in each district at least one vocational school in which peasant girls could be given a primary-school education and taught domestic skills.

Shanxi discouraged the use of the traditional lunar calendar and encouraged the development of local boy scout organizations.

Shanxi then negotiated a secret anti-Japanese "United Front" with the Communists in October 1936 and invited them to establish operations in Shanxi.

Zhu De became the commander of the Eighth Route Army active in Shanxi and was named the vice-commander of the Second War Zone, under Yan himself.

Possibly because of the severity of his losses in northern Shanxi, Yan abandoned a plan of defense based on positional warfare, and began to reform his army as a force capable of waging guerrilla warfare.

Shanxi became the site of Mao's "model brigade" of Dazhai: a utopian communist scheme in Xiyang County that was supposed to be the model for all other peasants in China to emulate.

Shanxi is located on a plateau made up of higher ground to the east and the west and a series of valleys in the center through which the Fen River runs.

The largest natural lake in Shanxi is Xiechi Lake, a salt lake near Yuncheng in southwestern Shanxi.

Shanxi has a continental monsoon climate, and is rather arid.

Shanxi is one of the sunniest parts of China; early summer heat waves are common.

Outline of Shanxi's territory is a parallelogram that runs from southwest to northeast.

Shanxi is located in the inland of the mid-latitude zone and belongs to the temperate continental monsoon climate in terms of climate type.

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Shanxi is divided into eleven prefecture-level divisions: all prefecture-level cities:.

Governor of Shanxi is the highest-ranking official in the People's Government of Shanxi.

Since Xi Jinping's ascendancy to General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party at the 18th Party Congress, numerous highly ranked officials in Shanxi have been placed under investigation for corruption-related offenses, including four incumbent members Bai Yun, Chen Chuanping, Du Shanxue, Nie Chunyu of the province's highest ruling council, the provincial Communist Party Standing Committee.

Shanxi was therefore the "hardest hit" province during the anti-corruption campaign under Xi Jinping.

Shanxi possesses 260 billion metric tons of known coal deposits, about a third of China's total.

Shanxi contains about 500 million tonnes of bauxite deposits, about a third of total Chinese bauxite reserves.

Industry in Shanxi is centered around heavy industries such as coal and chemical production, power generation, and metal refining.

Shanxi is affected by cases of bad working conditions in coal mining and other heavy industries.

Predominant religions in Shanxi are Chinese folk religions, Taoist traditions and Chinese Buddhism.

Dialects spoken in Shanxi have traditionally been included in the Northern or Mandarin group.

Shanxi cuisine is most well known for its extensive use of vinegar as a condiment, as well as for a huge variety of noodle dishes, particularly knife-cut noodles or daoxiao mian, which are served with a range of sauces.

Also called Zhonglu Bangzi, it is a type of bangzi opera, a group of operas generally distinguished by their use of wooden clappers for rhythm and by a more energetic singing style; Shanxi opera is complemented by quzi, a blanket term for more melodic styles from further south.

Puzhou Opera, from southern Shanxi, is a more ancient type of bangzi that makes use of very wide linear intervals.

Shanxi merchants constituted a historical phenomenon that lasted for centuries from the Song to the Qing Dynasty.

Shanxi merchants ranged far and wide from Central Asia to the coast of eastern China; by the Qing Dynasty they were conducting trade across both sides of the Great Wall.