Chapter Two: The Culture of Shanbei

Shanbei is a loose term to refer to the geographical areas north of the central plain of Shaanxi Province. In the administrative terms, Shanbei encompasses the two judicial areas: Yan'an and Yulin. The two judicial areas cover 92521.4 kilometers, close to half of the geographical area of the entire Shaanxi Province. As mentioned in the Introduction, the area is covered by powdery sand. Owing to the incessant erosion, the area has turned into terraced hills with valleys slicing the hills into a myriad of shapes. The most valuable resource is water, for rain is scarce and water is hard to preserve. As a consequence, man-made irrigation is virtually impossible. For hundreds of years, the locals depended completely on the rain for irrigation, which was few and far in between even in summer. To survive on such harsh land and hostile climate, one must be tough-minded, resilient and possess a positive attitude in life; that is exactly the characteristics of the people who live there.

Although the land is barren, it is a fertile ground to breed a rich culture. In Chinese mythology, this is the birthplace of the Chinese civilization. Over the span of thousands of years, there are at least five cultural highlights originating from this land: the creation of Chinese civilization by the mythological Yellow Emperor, the construction of the Great Wall during the first Chinese Empire, the Qin Dynasty (around 200 BCE), the cultural and economic culmination during the Eastern Han (25-220), the rebellious force led by Li Zicheng, a native of Shanbei, to topple the Ming Dynasty (1644) and the arrival of the Communist Red Army in 1935 that took its base at Shanbei to launch the anti-Japanese War and eventually unified the mainland to found the People's Republic of China. Each highlight, mythological or realistic, is an integral component of Chinese history and civilization. In a sense, Shanbei is the eyewitness of the epoch-making events that in one way or the other demonstrate to the world where Chinese come from and where they are heading.