Welcome to Sichuan!
Sichuan (四川, Sìchuān, previously known as Szechwan), is a province in Southwest China. It is China's fourth most populous province, at 81 million (2013) it has about the population of Germany. Historically, Sichuan has been mainly an agricultural region, though with a few important cities. Over the past several decades, it has been a major supplier of migrant labour to more prosperous coastal provinces in East China and South China. Sichuan is now developing rapidly.
The western part of the province was formerly part of Kham province of the Tibetan Empire, and is still ethnically and culturally Tibetan. Unlike Tibet proper, foreigners are allowed to visit the Tibetan areas of Sichuan without any special permits or being limited to a guided tour, making it an excellent place if you want to experience Tibetan culture independently. See Yunnan tourist trail for one route into Kham.
Sichuan (Chinese: 四川, pinyin: Sìchuān, alternatively as Szechuan or Szechwan) is a landlocked province in Southwest China occupying most of the Sichuan Basin and the easternmost part of the Tibetan Plateau between the Jinsha River on the west, the Daba Mountains in the north and the Yungui Plateau to the south. Sichuan's capital city is Chengdu. The population of Sichuan stands at 83 million. Sichuan neighbors the Qinghai to the northwest, Gansu to the north, Shaanxi to the northeast, Chongqing to the east, Guizhou to the southeast, Yunnan to the south, and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the west.
In antiquity, Sichuan was the home of the ancient states of Ba and Shu. Their conquest by Qin strengthened it and paved the way for the Qin Shi Huang's unification of China under the Qin dynasty. During the Three Kingdoms era, Liu Bei's Shu was based in Sichuan. The area was devastated in the 17th century by Zhang Xianzhong's rebellion and the area's subsequent Manchu conquest, but recovered to become one of China's most productive areas by the 19th century. During World War II, Chongqing served as the temporary capital of the Republic of China, making it the focus of Japanese bombing. It was one of the last mainland areas captured by the People's Liberation Army during the Chinese Civil War and was divided into four parts from 1949 to 1952, with Chongqing restored two years later. It suffered gravely during the Great Chinese Famine of 1959–61 but remained China's most populous province until Chongqing Municipality was again separated from it in 1997.
The Han Chinese people of Sichuan speak a unique form of Mandarin, which took shape during the area's repopulation under the Ming. The family of dialects is now spoken by about 120 million people, which would make it the 10th most spoken language in the world if counted separately. The area's warm damp climate long caused Chinese medicine to advocate spicy dishes, the native Sichuan pepper helped to form modern Sichuan cuisine, whose dishes—including Kung Pao chicken and mapo tofu—have become staples of Chinese cuisine around the world.
In 1950, the province of Xikang was dissolved and its territory was later split between the newly established Tibet Autonomous Region and the Province of Sichuan. The western and northwestern part of Sichuan is made up of Tibetan and Qiang autonomous areas.