Shannxi Geography & Climate

Shaanxi is divided into three sharply different zones by two mountain ranges, and the differences are climatic as well as topographic.

The loess plateau

The north is covered in loess — fine wind-blown silt deposited from the Gobi over hundreds of thousands of years, in places more than two hundred metres deep. It is extraordinarily fertile and extraordinarily erodible, and centuries of farming have cut it into a maze of gullies and flat-topped ridges. The Yellow River carries away vast quantities of it, which is where the river gets its name and its colour, and the sediment it deposits downstream is why that river has changed course so catastrophically through Chinese history.

The Wei valley

The Guanzhong plain between the loess and the Qinling mountains is flat, well watered and fertile, defensible through mountain passes, and it is why the capital was sited here repeatedly.

The Qinling

The range across the south of the province is the climatic divide of China — it separates the wheat-growing, dry, freezing north from the rice-growing, humid, mild south, and the line is conventionally drawn along it. It reaches 3,767 metres and holds giant pandas, golden monkeys and takin.

The passes

The Guanzhong plain takes its name from being within the passes, and the four gateways into it — Hangu in the east above all — are why dynasties chose to sit here. An army coming from the east had to funnel through a defile that a small force could hold, which made the plain both defensible and, when its rulers wanted to expand, an excellent place to launch from. Chinese strategic writing returns to those passes repeatedly.

Cave dwellings

The yaodong cut into loess cliffs are warm in winter and cool in summer and are still home to millions of people.

Shaanxi straddles the line that divides northern from southern China, and the province experiences both.

The Guanzhong plain

Xian has a hot summer continental climate: July and August at 32 to 36°C with humidity, and January around −1°C with dry cold. Most of the year’s rain falls in July, August and September. Spring and autumn are short, mild and the best time to be there.

The loess north

Drier and harsher — under 500 millimetres of rain a year, with cold winters, hot summers and spring dust storms blown off the Gobi that can turn the sky yellow and reduce visibility for days.

South of the Qinling

A different country. The mountains block the cold northern air, and Hanzhong in the far south has a humid subtropical climate with rice paddies, bamboo and mild winters — the transition happens over a single mountain range.

Winter air quality

Xian sits in a basin between the loess and the Qinling, and winter inversions combine with coal heating across the plain to produce serious smog between November and February. Readings are published hourly and are worth checking before planning an outdoor day.

The line on the map

The Qinling-Huai line runs through this province and is one of the more consequential boundaries in Chinese life. North of it, historically, buildings got state-provided central heating and people ate wheat; south of it they did not and ate rice. The policy dates from the 1950s and still broadly holds, which means a winter journey across the Qinling takes you from heated buildings to unheated ones at roughly the same outdoor temperature.

On Huashan

Considerably colder and windier than the plain, with ice on the walkways from November to March.