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Places in China: Shanxi Province

Shanxi is a province which is situated largely on an upland plateau, reaching as high as 1500 metres in places. Soil erosion and the advancement of the Gobi Desert make farming quite unprofitable in the province. The government is working to control those negative elements in Shanxi. Forestry and lumber production are less than profitable in the province as well.

Shanxi's neighbouring provinces include Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Henan and Shaanxi. (Shaanxi is not the same as Shanxi although it is a neighbour.) The Great Wall also forms a part of the northern border of Shanxi Province. The province is situated east of Huang He (Yellow River) and west of the Taihang Mountains in northern China. Hedong is another name for Shanxi Province.

The land area of this province is 156,400 square kilometres with a population of over thirty-three million people. The population density, therefore, is around 213 per square kilometre. Over ninety-nine percent of the people in the province are Han Chinese with smaller numbers of Hui, Mongolian and Manchu ethnic groups.

Being a temperate zone province, the weather is typical for its location. Summers are warm while winters become quite cold and seem rather long.

As long as one hundred million years ago, ancestors of the Chinese occupied portions of the area. Many Neolithic sites are dotted across the province even today. According to legends in China, the Yellow Emperor who founded the nation of China lived for a while in what is now Shanxi Province.

Many tourist attractions exist in the province including one of the five sacred mountains of China, which is Mount Hengshan. Very old pagodas and Buddhist relics are also here. The Great Wall and the high mountains have had great impact on the province in the past to help protect from invasions. A UNESCO World Heritage site is also located in the province.

Coal reserves are found in two-thirds of the province's counties. Shanxi makes an important contribution to the country's energy supply. Light industry and textile production, along with heavy machinery production, add to the economic positives in Shanxi.

The capital city of the province is Taiyuan, a city with a modern downtown area containing banks, hotels and restaurants. It is about 450 kilometres from Beijing and serves as a stopover between Xian and Beijing. The city has experienced many intra-Chinese conflicts in the past as well as occupation by northern invaders.

Datong is an industrial city near the northern border of the province and near the Great Wall. Heavy industry and coal fields are important to this city's economy.

Clearly, businesses connected with coal production or heavy machinery production are the most likely types to find success in Shanxi.