Soil bulk density (BD, g/cm³) is one of most important properties of soil. BD can be used to characterize the conditions of soil quality and soil productivity and is an important parameter used for estimation of soil carbon storage within a plot or on regional and national scales. In practice, the common methods used to measure BD in the field are laborious and expensive, particularly for deeper soil layers. Moreover, it is difficult to control the quality of BD data when classical protocols utilizing soil cores are used. Therefore, large-scale field investigations of BD have not been conducted, resulting in a deficiency of BD data in databases in China and other countries. In this study, we collected BD data (11845 records) for Chinese terrestrial ecosystems from sources including the database of China's Second National Soil Survey, the database of the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, and public publications from 1980 to 2014 in order to explore the properties of BD on a national scale and to identify general changes in BD with soil depth and types. The results showed that the reported BD data in China were normally distributed across all soil types and at different soil depths. The mean and median values of BD were (1.32±0.21) g/cm³ and 1.35 g/cm³, respectively. BD increased with increasing soil depth along the soil profile, which could be well depicted by power functions. There was a significant positive correlation between BD and soil organic matter content and a weak negative correlation between BD and sand content. Furthermore, the values of BD seemed to vary among different soil types, and the mean values of BD ranged from 0.93 g/cm³ (alpine soil) to 1.41 g cm^-3 (alkali-saline soil). In summary, our study demonstrated the patterns of BD distribution among different soil depths and types on a national scale, and the findings may be used to estimate soil carbon storage both regionally and nationally.