Bailuyuan, the White Deer Plain, is the high loess tableland that rises east of Xi'an and separates the Wei River valley from the hills towards Lantian. It is farmland - wheat, orchards, villages and bare cut edges where the plateau drops away - and it would be unremarkable were it not for a novel. Chen Zhongshi's book of the same name, published in the early 1990s, set two feuding families on the plain across the first half of the twentieth century, and it became one of the best-known Chinese novels of its generation, read by millions and adapted for film and television.
The plain itself
Geographically the tableland is a loess platform: deep wind-blown soil, cut into gullies at the edges, well drained and easy to farm, which is why it has been settled for millennia. Driving or cycling along it, you pass through one village after another, with brick gateways, threshing yards, walnut and pomegranate orchards and the long views south to the Qinling. In autumn the wheat stubble and the turning fruit trees give the plain the dry, pale colour that the novel's adaptations made familiar. The plateau is also where several Han imperial tombs are located, so it is easy to combine a literary detour with archaeology.
What has been built for visitors
The success of the novel produced a cluster of attractions: a rebuilt village and film set on the plain in Lantian, a folklore village with workshops and snack stalls in the same area, and small museums and memorial rooms devoted to the author and to Guanzhong rural life. These are popular with domestic visitors and are frankly commercial, but the reconstructed village is well made and gives a reasonable picture of the courtyard architecture and farm implements that the book describes. The author's grave and memorial are on the plain as well.
Practical notes
The plain begins about half an hour east of Xi'an and the visitor sites are spread across it, so a car or a taxi for the day is the practical approach; public buses run to some of the villages but not conveniently between them. Allow a full day if you want the film set, a village walk and the memorial. Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons, and the plain is bare and windy in winter. Sites charge modest separate admissions and most are open daily; weekdays are much quieter than weekends.
