The word “northwest” in the discussions on the water conservancy in the Ming and Qing Dynasties referred to the northern section of the Grand Canal, including Beijing sometimes. In the second half of the 19th century, the bureaucrats in the Qing Dynasty called the regions of Shangxi, Gansu and Xinjiang “northwest” in coping with the rebellions of Muslims and the issue of Yili. The word “northwest” hadn’t become a name of an internal region in China until the early 20th century. The expression of “our northwest” in the articles in the journal of The Voice of the Xia (Xia Sheng) tells us that it was based on the formation of China’s consciousness of national territory and maturity of regional identity in each province that the new meaning as a region, in addition to its original meaning as a direction, appeared. After the revocation of the large “northwest” administrative region in 1954, the word “northwest” remains to refer to a geographical region.