ABSTRACT
Shanxi Province is situated in the north of China, with its capital, Taiyuan, lying some 500 km south-west of Beijing. The province covers an area of 58,000 square miles, which is roughly equivalent to the combined size of England and Wales, and has a population of around 26 million people. In modern times Shanxi’s fame has centred on the warlord Yan Xishan (Yen Hsi-shan) who ruled the province by virture of his command of one of the most powerful armies in China after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Willian Hinton’s Fanshen novels depicting life in a Shanxi village, 1 and the importance of Shanxi’s coal deposits.
