31/03/2016
Xian, China Xi'an (Chinese: 西安), formerly romanized as Sian,is the capital of Shaanxi province, located in the northwest of China, in the center of the Guanzhong Plain. One of the oldest cities in China, the city was known as Chang'an before the Ming dynasty. Xi'an is the oldest of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, having held the position under several of the most important dynasties in Chinese history,including Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui, and Tang. Xi'an is the starting point of the Silk Road and home to the Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.
Since the 1990s, as part of the economic revival of interior China especially for the central and northwest regions, the city of Xi'an has re-emerged as an important cultural, industrial and educational centre of the central-northwest region, with facilities for research and development, national security and China's space exploration program. Xi'an currently holds sub-provincial status, administering 9 districts and 4 counties.As of 2014 Xi'an has a population of 8,627,500 and the Xi'an-Xianyang metropolitan area has a population of 13,569,700.It is the most populous city in Northwest China, as well as one of the three most populous cities in Western China. According to a July 2012 report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, it was recently named as one of the 13 emerging megacities, or megalopolises, in China.The report pinpoints and highlights the demographic and income trends that are shaping these cities' development.The two Chinese characters "西安" in the name Xi'an mean "Western Peace". During the Zhou dynasty, the area was called Fenghao, with the portion of the city on the west bank of the Feng River called Feng and the portion on the east called Hao. It was renamed Chang'an, meaning "Perpetual Peace", during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), although it was sometimes referred to as the Western Capital or Xijing (西京) during the Han dynasty after the capital was moved further east to Luoyang during Eastern Han. It changed in 581 CE to Daxing (大興) during the Sui dynasty then again became Chang'an from 618 during the Tang dynasty. During the Yuan dynasty (1270–1368), the city was first given the name Fengyuan (奉元), followed by Anxi (安西) then Jingzhao (京兆).
It finally became Xi'an in 1369 at the time of the Ming dynasty. This name remained until 1928, then in 1930 it was renamed Xijing (西京), or "Western Capital". The city's name once again reverted to its Ming-era designation of Xi'an in 1943.
Xi'an currently does not have a widely accepted one-character abbreviation as many other Chinese cities do, possibly due to fact that it was historically called Jing (京) or Du (都), both meaning "the Capital".[dubious – discuss] Several suggested abbreviations include Feng (丰, the city's first name when it was founded as the new capital of Zhou, meaning abundance, greatness, and bumper harvest), Hao (Chinese: 镐; pinyin: Hào, derived from the name of Zhou dynasty's capital Haojing), or Tang (Chinese: 唐; pinyin: Táng, from the name of the Tang dynasty).