Datong
Yungang Grottoes
A kilometre of cliff sixteen kilometres west of Datong, cut with more than fifty cave temples and some 51,000 figures between the 460s and 525, and a World Heritage Site since 2001.
A province where the buildings are the archive
Shanxi.
Timber, cliff, wall and salt
Shanxi is the high country west of the Taihang range: loess plateau cut by the Yellow River along its western and southern edge, with the Fen running through the middle to join it. The province keeps 531 nationally protected sites, 421 of them old buildings, and all three Tang-dynasty timber halls that survive in China. Read it as a working landscape rather than a monument list: a Liao timber tower still standing on its own joints, a carved cliff, merchant courtyards with their own banks, salt pans still worked.
Yingxian Wooden Pagoda
A timber tower of 1056 that has survived earthquakes and artillery, and says plainly what it is: a national monument, not a World Heritage site. Begin with the frame, then move out to the carved cliff, the walled town and the salt flats.
Explore this placeBegin with the classics
Three places take the province in three directions: north to a carved cliff, middle to a walled town, south to a salt lake.
Jinzhong
Pingyao Ancient City
The walled county town of Pingyao on the Fen River: walls raised in 1370, a street plan still readable from the ramparts, and the 1997 World Heritage inscription that covers the town and two outer temples.
Yuncheng
Yuncheng Salt Lake
Shanxi's largest lake, a sodium sulphate lake at the north foot of the Zhongtiao mountains, worked for salt for more than four thousand years and still a chemical base.
Look a little closer
Three longer reads: shops above a river, a hall full of bright figures, and vinegar that ripens outdoors.
From the journal
Qikou: A Trading Port on the Yellow River
A river port of the Ming and Qing in Linxian, read through its five-li street of shopfronts, the Black Dragon Temple above it and the seven clusters of dwellings the 2006 listing covers.
From the journal
Xiaoxitian: Colour and Craft in a Small Temple
A late Ming temple on Phoenix Hill in Xixian, where a five-bay hall holds more than 1,900 clay figures in suspended relief, begun under the last Ming emperor and finished under the first Qing.
From the journal
Sun, Pits and Vats: Vinegar in Qingxu
Shanxi mature vinegar is made from sorghum, barley and peas through steaming, fermenting, smoking, pouring and drying; the season that finishes the work is the winter, when ice is fished off the vats.
Keep exploring
Choose a city: start with its highlights or continue reading in the full article collection.
Taiyuan
Shanxi's capital stands where the Fen River leaves the mountains for the plain, a city of 2,500 years that keeps a Zhou shrine, a Song hall of painted figures, Ming pagodas and a museum of Jin bronzers within reach of the water.
All articlesJinzhong
Jinzhong keeps the record of Shanxi's merchant century: the walled city of Pingyao, the bank counters that moved money for half the empire, and the courtyard houses of Qi County, Lingshi and Yuci.
All articlesDatong
A basin city of northern Shanxi that kept the Northern Wei capital at Pingcheng, cut the cave temples of Yungang into the cliff outside it, and later became a Ming garrison town of walls, timber temples and a prince's dragon wall.
All articlesYangquan
The coal and iron city of eastern Shanxi, set in mountains against the Hebei border, with two counties, three districts and a Ming pass and a mountain shrine in its hills.
All articlesChangzhi
A basin city of south-east Shanxi, once called Shangdang and Luzhou, whose county temples keep Song halls, Song clay and a Ming hall of painted figures under glazed tile.
All articlesJincheng
The prefecture at Shanxi's south-east corner, a coal-and-iron country of river valleys where Ming fortresses, a scholar's estate and a temple of Tang clay stand within an hour of the city.
All articlesShuozhou
A prefecture-level city on the upper Fen where the frontier town of Mayi once stood: coal, power and ceramics now, with a Liao wooden pagoda at Yingxian and a Jin temple in its own old town.
All articlesXinzhou
The prefecture of the middle north: the Yanmen gap in its mountains, the old county town of Dai County below it, Mount Wutai in the east and the Luya range with its ice cave in the west.
All articlesYuncheng
Yuncheng is the southernmost prefecture-level city in Shanxi: a flat basin below the Zhongtiao mountains, with a worked salt lake, two old Yellow River crossings and the province's densest run of early temples.
All articlesLinfen
A prefecture-level city on the middle Fen, where a wide river plain runs between the Taiyue and Lüliang mountains, and where the old name Pingyang is tied both to the legend of Yao and to the walled site at Taosi.
All articlesLüliang
The prefecture that fills western Shanxi with loess hills, the Lüliang range and a long Yellow River border, holding river ports, a Daoist peak, a Pure Land temple and a distillery village.
All articlesPhoto credits and rights
-
The Yingxian timber pagoda, full height, against blue sky.Patrick20242023 / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
-
The entrance courtyard and gate of the Yungang Grottoes.Marcin Białek / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
-
Pingyao's gate tower above the stone signs at the foot of the wall.Tiger@西北 / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗