Gansu 甘肃; Gānsù is a province in the North West region of China. Historically, it is the combination of the two regions, gan 甘 and su 肃, and marked the end or beginning of China proper depending upon if you were traveling east towards Xi'an or west towards Central Asia and Europe. Gansu's western frontier thus juts right into the borders of the vast steppes of Mongolia, the unforgiving deserts of Xinjiang and the high mountain wastelands of the Tibetan Plateau.
