Tongchuan is a former coal city on the plateau sixty-eight kilometres north of Xi'an, now reinventing itself around its cultural and historical assets as the mines have wound down. It sits at the transition zone between the Guanzhong Plain and the northern Shaanxi plateau, which gives it both a varied landscape and a history that runs from the Tang Dynasty forward in continuous material form.
Yaowang Mountain, on the edge of the city, is named for the "Medicine King" Sun Simiao, a Tang Dynasty physician and Taoist who is credited with writing the first systematic Chinese pharmacopoeia and who is venerated at the temple complex here. The site has cave temples, a forest of inscribed steles, and hilltop views that justify the climb. It is a place of active Taoist veneration and genuinely atmospheric.
The Yaozhou Kiln Museum, in the Huangbao district of the city, covers a ceramic tradition that ran for a thousand years from the Tang through the Ming dynasties — the Yaozhou kilns were renowned for their celadon glazes and their incised decoration, and the museum has both excavated kiln remains and a good collection of the vessels themselves. Chenlu Ancient Town, further into the hills, is a well-preserved traditional village where ceramic production still continues in workshops open to visitors.
Tongchuan is easy to reach from Xi'an by bus in about an hour. It makes a reasonable day trip for those interested in Tang culture outside the standard Xi'an circuit, combining the ceramics heritage at Yaozhou with the religious and medical history of Yaowang Mountain.