This study resolved the metropolitan image of Xi’an by analyzing such scenic elements as the horizon, urban scale and structure, roads, landmarks and division of Xi’an before 1901 by adopting the records of social life and urban scenery contributed by F.H.Nichols, a journalist of Christian Vanguard in his Traveling through the Mysterious Shaanxi. It managed to recover the visible features of the irreproducible urban scenery of Xi’an in the Late Qing Dynasty by reorganizing varieties of spatial information revealed by the records. The results of the study show that it was by following a process from forming a comprehensive image through distinguishing inner scenic elements to establishing the urban image of spatial structure that the observer completed his cognition of the urban space.

in the late Qing Dynasty; Xi’an; the metropolitan image of Xi’an