Lantian County (蓝田县)
1,529 km² · Area 2019
Lantian County (蓝田县, Lántián Xiàn) is one of Xi'an's two counties — 蓝田 and 周至 are the two 县 in a city otherwise made of eleven districts — and it is the far south-east one, down past the edge of the built-up city at the Qinling's north-east end.
It came to Xi'an in October 1983, transferred in from Weinan prefecture (渭南地区); until then it belonged to the prefecture south of the Wei River. It covers about 1,529 km² on 2019-era aggregator data we have not yet checked against an official source, and its government seat is at Languan Subdistrict (蓝关街道) — named for 蓝关, the old Qinling pass on the road south into Shaanxi, which is still the county's line into the mountains.
What a visitor finds is a county town and a great deal of mountain slope. The mountains are why the county is named where it is: 玉山 (Yushan), a range that served as a Red Army base in the late 1930s, and 王顺山 (Wangshun Mountain) above the seat. The county's traditional product is 蓝田玉 — Lantian jade, a stone prized in Chinese culture and long since worked out — and 猕猴桃 (kiwifruit) orchards run along the valleys. None of that is arranged for a visitor yet: we have no place pages inside the county, and this page is here so the map adds up rather than so you book something.
What it is actually like
Honest assessment: there is no reason to base yourself in Lantian. It is not on the metro, it is over an hour from the city in every direction, and we have no place pages here — that is an honest description of how little is arranged, not an oversight.
The mountains are real and unremarkable as a day trip unless you want them specifically: fine-grained slope, scattered villages, very little signage, and villages that have been on the road south for a thousand years. If you do drive out, take the mountain road rather than the county town, and give it the whole day. The settlements between here and the city have whatever you actually need.
Two things trip people up. First, the 县 label is a real distinction and not a translation quirk — Lantian is administered as a county, its seat is a county town, and it is one of only two such units in Xi'an. Second, distances inside the county are large. The seat is not a hub for the mountains; it is the administrative centre, and the two are a long way apart, so an afternoon in the town and an afternoon in the hills are two separate outings.