Mount Liupan in the context of "Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region"

The Ordos Plateau, also known as the Ordos Basin, the Ordos, or the Shaan-Gan-Ning Basin, is a highland sedimentary basin in parts of northernmost China with an elevation of 1,000–1,600 m (3,300–5,200 ft), and consisting mostly of land enclosed by the "Ordos Loop", a northerly rectangular bend of the Yellow River. It is China's second largest sedimentary basin (after the Tarim Basin) with a total area of 370,000 km (140,000 sq mi). The Ordos includes territories from five provinces: Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, and a thin fringe of Shanxi (western border counties of Xinzhou, Lüliang and Linfen), but is demographically dominated by the former three, hence the area is sometimes also called the "Shaan-Gan-Ning Basin". The basin is bounded in the east by the Lüliang Mountains, north by the Yin Mountains, west by the Helan Mountains, and south by the Huanglong Mountains, Meridian Ridge and Liupan Mountains.

The name "Ordos" (Mongolian: ) comes from the orda, which originally means "palaces" or "court" in Old Turkic. The seventh largest prefecture of Inner Mongolia, Ordos City, is similarly named due to its location within the Ordos Loop.

Shaanxi is a province in north Northwestern China bordering the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to the west. Shaanxi covers an area of over 205,000 km (79,000 sq mi) with about 37 million people, the 16th-largest in China. Xi'an, which includes the sites of the former capitals Fenghao and Chang'an – is the provincial capital and largest city in Northwest China and also one of the oldest cities in China. It is also the oldest of the Four Ancient Capitals, being the capital for the Western Zhou, Western Han, Jin, Sui and Tang dynasties. Xianyang, which served as the capital of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC), is just north across the Wei River. The other prefecture-level cities into which the province is divided are Ankang, Baoji, Hanzhong, Shangluo, Tongchuan, Weinan, Yan'an and Yulin.

The province is geographically divided into three parts, namely Northern (or "Shaanbei"), Central ("Shaanzhong") and Southern Shaanxi (or "Shaannan"). Northern Shaanxi makes up the southeastern portion of the Ordos Basin and mainly comprises the two prefectural cities of Yulin and Yan'an on the northern Loess Plateau, demarcated from the Ordos Desert and the grasslands of Inner Mongolia's Ordos City by the Ming Great Wall. Central Shaanxi is also known as the Guanzhong region, and comprises the drainage basin of lower Wei River east of Mount Liupan and north of the Qinling Mountains, where the majority of Shaanxi's population reside. Southern Shaanxi comprises the three prefectural cities in the edge of the historical Bashu region south of the Qinling Mountains and includes the three mountainous cities of Hanzhong, Ankang and Shangluo.

Guanzhong (Chinese: 关中, formerly romanised as Kwanchung) region, also known as the Guanzhong Basin, Wei River Basin, or uncommonly as the Shaanzhong region, is a historical region of China corresponding to the crescentic graben basin within present-day central Shaanxi, bounded between the Qinling Mountains in the south (known as Guanzhong's "South Mountains"), and the Huanglong Mountain, Meridian Ridge and Long Mountain ranges in the north (collectively known as its "North Mountains"). The central flatland area of the basin, known as the Guanzhong Plain (关中平原; pinyin: Guānzhōng Píngyuán), is made up of alluvial plains along the lower Wei River and its numerous tributaries and thus also called the Wei River Plain. The region is part of the Jin-Shaan Basin Belt, a prominent section of the Shanxi Rift System, and is separated from its geological sibling — the Yuncheng Basin to its northeast — by the Yellow River section southwest of the Lüliang Mountains and north of the river's bend at the tri-provincial junction among Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan.

The name Guanzhong means "within the passes", referring to the four major mountain pass fortresses historically defending the region. The region was the traditional heartland of Qin state during Zhou dynasty and thus often nicknamed the "800 li of Qin land". The Yellow River, Lüliang Mountains and the eastern end of the Qinling separate the region from the (then) politically orthodox Central Plain, which is located east of the strategic Hangu Pass and therefore was historically referred as the Guandong ("east of the pass") region by the Qin people, who later conquered the eastern states and unified China as a centralized empire — the Qin dynasty — for the first time during the 3rd century BC. Afterwards, subsequent prominent dynasties such as the Han and Tang (both considered China's historical golden ages) also had the crownland established in the Guanzhong region.