Gansu is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It lies between Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, and the Huangtu Plateaus, and borders Mongolia to the north and Xinjiang to the west. The Yellow River passes the southern part of the province. It has a population of approximately 26 million (2004) and has a large concentration of Hui Chinese. The capital of the province is Lanzhou, located in the southeast part of Gansu. Gansu is abbreviated Gan or Long, and is also known as Long West or Long Right, in reference to the Long Mountain east of Gansu.

Gansu is one of the birthplaces of the Chinese nation and ancient Chinese civilization. In history, the world famous Silk Road traverses the whole province, thus made the province the earliest place opening to the outside world for economic and cultural exchanges between the east and the west as well as exchanges between different nationalities. As early as in the Old Stone Age of 200,000 years ago, the remote mankind had already lived and multiplied on this land. Fuxi and Shengnong, the earliest ancestors of the Chinese nation lived in compact communities in Tianshui. The ancestors of Zhou (11-256B.C) and Qin (221-206 B.C), both taking the eastern part of Gansu as their base, grew from strength to strength and fulfilled the great cause of unifying China. In the period of over 2,000 years from Han, Jin, Sui and Tang dynasties to Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties (206B.C-1911A.D), Gansu had added a glorious chapter to the Chinese history and made great contribution to the economic and cultural exchanges between China and the western countries.

Gansu province is home to 26,033,400 people. Most of the population, 73%, is still rural. Gansu is 92% Han and also has Hui, Tibetan, Dongxiang, Tu, Manchu, Uyghur, Yugur, Bonan, Mongolian, Salar, and Kazakh minorities. Prior to the Panthay Rebellion (also Muslim Rebellion), Gansu province had a large community of Chinese Hui Muslims, which was almost completely decimated by Qing authorities.

Gansu has rich land resources. Its total Land area is about 454,000 square kilometers, 2.3 hectares per capita. About 381 million mu (22.07 million hectares) of which is cultivated land, 14 million mu (0.93 million hectares) land has been used for construction and 287 million mu (19.13 million hectares) land remains untouched. Gansu is one of the five main pastoral areas in the whole country with 249 million mu (16.6 million hectares)of grasslands. The province has more mountainous area and less level ground. The mountainous and hilly areas consist of 78.2% of its total land area. The utilization ratio of land is about 56.93% and 42.05% hasn't been used, which include desert, Gebi desert, stone mountains in high and cold areas, naked rock, saline and alkali low-lying land and marshland. Among the unused land 11.2615 million mu (0.7509 million hectares) are wasteland that can be developed.

Gansu is one of China's main areas producing Chinese herbs with 9,500 kinds of crude drugs (including wild ones), ranking the second place in China. At present about 450 kinds of crude drugs have been under operation, such as Chinese angelica, Chinese rhubarb, Dangshen (Codonopsis pilosula), licorice root, the root of membranous milk vetch, safflower, the bulb of fritillary, the tuber elevated gastrodia, the bark of eucommia, glossy genoderma, notopterygium, Chinese caterpillar fungus and so on.. Especially the Chinese angelica produced in Minxian county and Dangshen produced in Wenxian county are well know both at home and abroad for the great quantity and good quality. According to statistics, there are about 1,080 kinds of animals, plants and minerals containing Chinese medicine, among which 951 kinds are medical plants, 87 are animals, 34 are minerals and 8 kinds are medicinal herbs. A lot of crude drugs have been introduced from other parts of the country, such as the dried rhizome of rehmannia, ginseng, the rhizome of Chinese gold thread, sweet potato, rhizome corydalis and Siberian fritillary bulb and the medicinal material cultivating area has been enlarged.