ABSTRACT
Xi'an, which means 'Western Peace', occupies a historically important and strategic location in central western China. This region is also referred to as 'inner China', to distinguish those places distinctly inland from the booming eastern coastal cities. The present city is proud of its two thousand-year-old intact walls. Completely surrounding the old urban core, the walls now stand largely as they were restored in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1328-1644, the last ruled by a native Chinese ethnic Han). Not far away lies Banpo, where the oldest relics of Chinese civilization were unearthed on the banks of a tributary of the Yellow River. The tomb of fabled and feared emperor Qin Shi Huang (BC 259-210), brutally effective if short-term unifier of the Chinese state and first contractor for the Great Wall, also lies close by. As Chang'an, or 'Long Peace', the city served as the capital of the Han dynasty (BC 202), the first major kingdom to adopt Confucianism and anchor the Chinese end of the 'Silk Road'. This early trade affiliation consequently gives the city a Muslim flavor from its large Hui ethnic minority. Xi'an's relatively remote location by the mid-20th century commended it to Mao Zedong, who followed Stalin's World War II model by defensively moving development capacity of a militarily strategic nature to an inland location.
