1.
Prefectures of the People's Republic of China
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Prefectures, formally prefecture-level divisions as a term in the context of China, are used to refer to several unrelated political divisions in both ancient and modern China. There are 333 prefecture-level divisions in China and they include 17 prefectures and 283 prefecture-level cities. Other than provincial level divisions, prefectural level divisions are not mentioned in the Chinese constitution, the prefectural government is an administrative branch office with the rank of a national ministerial department and dispatched by the higher-level provincial government. The leader of the government, titled as prefectural commissioner, is appointed by the provincial government. The prefectures working committee of the committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference is a part of the prefectures committee of the CPPCC. This means that the working committee of CPPCC is a branch of the provincial committee of CPPCC. The same is valid for provincial CPPCC, which are sections of the national CPPCC. Prefectures are administrative subdivisions of provincial-level divisions, the term prefecture was developed from the former Circuit, which was a level between the provincial and the county level during the Qing dynasty. Consequently, in 1932, provinces were subdivided into several prefectures. At one point, prefectures were the most common type of prefecture-level division, today they have been mostly converted into prefecture-level cities, and the trend is still ongoing with only 8 prefectures remaining in China. Prefecture-level cities are municipalities that are given prefecture status and the right to govern surrounding counties, in practice, prefecture-level cities are so large that they are just like any other prefectures, and not cities in the traditional sense of the word at all. Prefecture-level cities are the most common type of division in mainland China today. Leagues are the prefectures of Inner Mongolia, the name comes from a kind of ancient Mongolian administrative unit used during the Qing Dynasty in Mongolia. To preempt any sense of Mongolian unity or solidarity, the Qing Dynasty executed divide, Leagues had no true ruler-ship, they only had conventional assemblies consisting of banners. During the ROC era, the leagues had an equivalent to provinces. Leagues contain banners, equivalent to counties, after the establishment of the provincial-level Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 1947, leagues of Inner Mongolia became equal to prefectures in other provinces and autonomous regions. The governments of the league, is the branch office dispatched by Peoples Government of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The leader of the government, titled as league leader, is appointed by Peoples Government of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
2.
Chinese characters
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Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters, in English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan,2,136 are taught through secondary school, the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, in South Korea, when Chinese characters are used they are of the traditional variant and are almost identical to those used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Old Chinese, most words were monosyllabic and there was a correspondence between characters and words. Rather, a character almost always corresponds to a syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes. Modern Chinese has many homophones, thus the same syllable may be represented by many characters. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. They typically have similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations and these foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones and it has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables. The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages. Polysyllabic words are written with one character per syllable
3.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
4.
Provinces of China
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Provinces, formally provincial-level administrative divisions or first-level administrative divisions, are the highest-level Chinese administrative divisions. There are 34 such divisions, classified as 23 provinces, four municipalities, five autonomous regions, the Peoples Republic of China claims sovereignty over the territory administered by the Republic of China, claiming most of it as its Taiwan Province. The ROC also administers some offshore islands which form Fujian Province and these were part of an originally unified Fujian province, which since the stalemate of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 has been divided between the PRC and ROC. Note that every province has a Communist Party of China provincial committee, the committee secretary is in effective charge of the province, rather than the nominal governor of the provincial government. The government of each province is nominally led by a provincial committee. The committee secretary is first-in-charge of the province, second-in-command is the governor of the provincial government, the Peoples Republic of China claims the island of Taiwan and its surrounding islets, including Penghu, as Taiwan Province. The territory is controlled by the Republic of China, a municipality or direct-controlled municipality is a higher level of city which is directly under the Chinese government, with status equal to that of the provinces. In practice, their status is higher than that of common provinces. The governor of each region is usually appointed from the respective minority ethnic group. A special administrative region is an autonomous and self-governing subnational subject of the Peoples Republic of China that is directly under the Central Peoples Government. Each SAR has an executive as head of the region. The regions government is not fully independent, as policy and military defence are the responsibility of the central government. Notes,1, as of 20102, per km23, km24, Abbreviation in the parentheses is informal 5, Since founding in 1949, however, the PRC has never controlled Taiwan. Taiwan currently administers Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, the subject of whether or not Taiwan is part of China is often debated, with no clear conclusion. The Ming Dynasty kept the system set up by the Yuan Dynasty, however. By the time of the establishment of the Qing Dynasty in 1644 there were 18 provinces, in addition, there was a zongdu, a general military inspector or governor general, for every two to three provinces. Outer regions of China were not divided into provinces, military leaders or generals oversaw Manchuria, Xinjiang, and Mongolia, while vice-dutong and civilian leaders headed the leagues, a subdivision of Mongolia. The ambans supervised the administration of Tibet, in 1884 Xinjiang became a province, in 1907 Fengtian, Jilin, and Heilongjiang were made provinces as well
5.
Xinjiang
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Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a provincial-level autonomous region of China in the northwest of the country. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and the 8th largest country subdivision in the world and it contains the disputed territory of Aksai Chin, which is administered by China. Xinjiang borders the countries of Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the rugged Karakoram, Kunlun, and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiangs borders, as well as its western and southern regions. Xinjiang also borders Tibet Autonomous Region and the provinces of Gansu, the most well-known route of the historical Silk Road ran through the territory from the east to its northwestern border. In recent decades, abundant oil and mineral reserves have been found in Xinjiang and it is home to a number of ethnic groups, including the Han, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Hui, Uyghur, Kyrgyz, Mongols, and Russians. More than a dozen autonomous prefectures and counties for minorities are in Xinjiang, older English-language reference works often refer to the area as Chinese Turkestan. Xinjiang is divided into the Dzungarian Basin in the north and the Tarim Basin in the south by a mountain range, only about 4. 3% of Xinjiangs land area is fit for human habitation. With a documented history of at least 2,500 years, the territory came under the rule of the Qing dynasty in the 18th century, which was later replaced by the Republic of China government. Since 1949, it has been part of the Peoples Republic of China following the Chinese Civil War, in 1954, Xinjiang Bingtuan was set up to strengthen the border defense against the Soviet Union, and also promote the local economy. In 1955, Xinjiang was turned into a region from a province. In the last decades, there have been tensions regarding Xinjiangs political status, amnesty International said that activists in Xinjiang have been arrested and tortured. Under the Han dynasty, which drove the Xiongnu empire out of the region in 60 BC, Xinjiang was previously known as Xiyu or Qurighar and this was in an effort to secure the profitable routes of the Silk Road. Dzungaria was known as Zhunbu and the Tarim Basin was known as Huijiang during the Qing dynasty before both regions were merged and became the region of Gansu Xinjiang, later simplified as Xinjiang. The name Xinjiang, which literally means New Frontier or New Borderland, was given during the Qing dynasty, according to the Chinese statesman Zuo Zongtangs report to the Emperor of Qing, Xinjiang means an old land newly returned. For instance, present-day Jinchuan County was known as Jinchuan Xinjiang, in the same manner, present-day Xinjiang was known as Xiyu Xinjiang and Gansu Xinjiang. After 1821, the Qing changed the names of the other regained regions, the name East Turkestan was created by Russian sinologist Hyacinth to replace the term Chinese Turkestan in 1829. East Turkestan was used traditionally to only refer to the Tarim Basin, in 1955, Xinjiang province was renamed Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The name that was proposed was simply Xinjiang Autonomous Region
6.
Administrative divisions of China
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Due to Chinas large population and area, the administrative divisions of China have consisted of several levels since ancient times. The constitution of China provides for three de jure levels of government, currently, however, there are five practical levels of local government, the provincial, prefecture, county, township, and village. Since the 17th century, provincial boundaries in China have remained largely static, the provinces serve an important cultural role in China, as people tend to identify with their native province. The Constitution of China provides for three levels, the provincial, county, and township, however, two more levels have been inserted in actual implementation, the prefecture, under provinces, and the village, under townships. There is a level, the district public office, below counties. As of 2017, China administers 33 provincial-level regions,334 prefecture-level divisions,2,862 county-level divisions,41,034 township-level administrations, each of the levels correspond to a level in the Civil service of the Peoples Republic of China. This table summarizes the divisions of the area administered by the Peoples Republic of China as of 2011, unlike the United States, the power of the central government was not exercised through a parallel set of institutions until the early 1990s. The actual practical power of the provinces has created what some economists call federalism with Chinese characteristics, most of the provinces, with the exception of the provinces in the northeast, have boundaries which were established long ago in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Sometimes provincial borders form cultural or geographical boundaries and this was an attempt by the imperial government to discourage separatism and warlordism through a divide and rule policy. Nevertheless, provinces have come to serve an important cultural role in China, people tend to be identified in terms of their native provinces, and each province has a stereotype that corresponds to their inhabitants. The most recent administrative changes have included the elevation of Hainan and Chongqing to provincial status. Provincial level governments vary in details of organization, Click any region for more info, for a larger version of this map, see here. Prefectural level divisions or second-level divisions are the level of the administrative structure. Most provinces are divided into only prefecture-level cities and contain no other second level administrative units, of the 22 provinces and 5 autonomous regions, only 3 provinces and 2 autonomous regions have more than three second level or prefectural level divisions that are not prefecture-level cities. Each of them have a committee to administer the dwellers of that neighborhood or community. Rural areas are organized into committees or villager groups. A village in this case can either be a village, one that spontaneously and naturally exists, or an administrative village. Five cities formally on prefectural level have a status in regard to planning
7.
Aksu City
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Aksu, is a city in and the seat of Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, lying at the northern edge of the Tarim Basin. The name Aksu literally means water, and is used for both the oasis town and the river. The economy of Aksu is mostly agricultural, with cotton, in particular long-staple cotton, also produced are grain, fruits, oils, and beets. The industry mostly consists of weaving, cement, and chemical industries, the land currently under the administration of the Aksu City is divided in two parts, separated by the Aral City. The northern part hosts the city center, while the part is occupied by the Taklamakan Desert. The name Aksu comes from the Uyghur word for white water and it is also transliterated Akesu, Ak-su, Akshu, Aqsu. It is also known as Bharuka and Bolujia, Po-lu-chia From the Former Han dynasty at least until the early Tang dynasty, the ancient capital town of Nan was likely well south of the present town. During the Han dynasty, Gumo is described as a kingdom containing 3,500 households and 24,500 individuals and it is said to have produced copper, iron and orpiment. The territory of Gumo was roughly situated in the counties of Baicheng and Wensu, the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang visited this kingdom in 629 CE and referred to it as Baluka. He recorded that there were tens of Sarvastivadin Buddhist monasteries in the kingdom and he said the kingdom was 600 li from east to west, and 300 li from north to south. Its capital was said to be six li in circumference and he also stated that fine cotton and hemp cloth made in the area was traded in neighbouring countries. In the 7th, 8th, and early 9th centuries, control of the region was often contested by the Chinese Tang dynasty, the Tibetan Empire. Tibet seized Aksu in 670, but Tang forces reconquered the region in 692, tibet regained the Tarim Basin in the late 720s, and the Tang dynasty again annexed the region in the 740s. The Battle of Talas led to the withdrawal of Chinese forces. Aksu was positioned on a junction of routes, the northern-Tarim route Silk road. In 1207–08, they submitted to Genghis Khan, around 1220, Aksu became the capital of the Kingdom of Mangalai. The area had been part of the whole Mongol Empire before it was occupied by the independent-minded Chagatai Khanate under the House of Ogedei in 1286 from the hands of Kublais Yuan Dynasty. After the decline of the Yuan Dynasty in the century and subsequently the Chagatai Khanate in the late 14th century, Aksu fell under the power of Turkic
8.
Metropolitan area
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As social, economic and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions. The Greater São Paulo is a term for one of the multiple definitions the large metropolitan area located in the São Paulo state in Brazil. A metropolitan area combines an urban agglomeration with zones not necessarily urban in character and these outlying zones are sometimes known as a commuter belt, and may extend well beyond the urban zone, to other political entities. For example, El Monte, California is considered part of the Los Angeles metro area in the United States, in practice, the parameters of metropolitan areas, in both official and unofficial usage, are not consistent. Population figures given for one area can vary by millions. A polycentric metropolitan area is one not connected by continuous development or conurbation, in defining a metropolitan area, it is sufficient that a city or cities form a nucleus that other areas have a high degree of integration with. The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines statistical divisions as areas under the influence of one or more major towns or a major city. However, this definition has become obsolete with the conurbation of several statistical divisions into a larger metropolitan areas. In Brazil, metropolitan areas are called metropolitan regions, each State defines its own legislation for the creation, definition and organization of a metropolitan region. The creation of a region is not intended for any statistical purpose, although the Brazilian Institute of Geography. Their main purpose is to allow for a management of public policies of common interest to all cities involved. They dont have political, electoral or jurisdictional power whatsoever, so living in a metropolitan region do not elect representatives for them. Statistics Canada defines a metropolitan area as an area consisting of one or more adjacent municipalities situated around a major urban core. To form a CMA, the area must have a population of at least 100,000. To be included in the CMA, adjacent municipalities must have a degree of integration with the core. As of the Canada 2011 Census, there were 33 CMAs in Canada, including six with a population over one million—Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. In Denmark the only area is Greater Copenhagen, consisting of the Capital Region of Denmark along with the neighboring regions Region Zealand. Greater Copenhagen has an population of 1.25 million people
9.
Time in China
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The time in China follows a single standard time offset of UTC+08,00, despite China spanning five geographical time zones. The official national standard time is called Beijing Time domestically and China Standard Time internationally, daylight saving time has not been observed since 1991. The special administrative regions maintain their own authorities, with standards called Hong Kong Time. These have been equivalent to Beijing time since 1992, in addition, a second time standard is used in Xinjiang, two hours less than the Beijing Time, which is called Ürümqi Time or Xinjiang Time. In 1912, the Republic of China established five standard time zones, namely Kunlun, Sinkiang-Tibet, Kansu-Szechwan, Chungyuan, and Changpai. The unified time zone policy was adopted by the Communist Party of China or the Central People’s Government some time between 27 September 1949 and 6 October 1949, the date is unknown. However, recent research suggests that the policy was most likely adopted on 27 September 1949, daylight saving time was observed from 1986 to 1991. In 1997 and 1999, Hong Kong and Macau were transferred to China from the United Kingdom and Portugal, although the sovereignty of the SARs belongs to China, they retain their own policies regarding time zones for historical reasons. Due to their locations, both are within the UTC+08,00 time zone, which is the same as the national standard — Beijing time. Xinjiang Time, also known as Ürümqi Time, is set due to its location in the westernmost part of the country. The time offset is UTC+06,00, which is two hours behind Beijing, and is shared with neighbouring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Currently, timezone usage within Xinjiang is roughly split along the divide, with most ethnic Han following Beijing time. Some local authorities are now using both time standard side by side, the coexistence of two timezones within the same region causes some confusion among the local population, especially when inter-racial communication occur. Some ethnic Han in Xinjiang might not be aware of the existence of the UTC+6 Xinjiang Time because of language barrier, regardless, Beijing Time users in Xinjiang usually schedule their daily activities two hours later than those who live in eastern China. As such, stores and offices in Xinjiang are commonly opening from 10am to 7pm Beijing Time and this is known as the work/rest time in Xinjiang. Hong Kong maintains its own time authority after transfer of sovereignty in 1997, the Hong Kong Time is UTC+08,00 all year round, and daylight saving time has not been used since 1979. Greenwich Mean Time was adopted as the basis in 1904, before that, local time was determined by astronomical observations at Hong Kong Observatory using a 6-inch Lee Equatorial and a 3-inch Transit Circle. Macau maintains its own time authority after transfer of sovereignty in 1999, the Macau Standard Time is the time in Macau
10.
Vehicle registration plates of China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China issues vehicles licence plates at its Vehicle Management Offices, under the administration of the Ministry of Public Security. Hong Kong and Macau have their own administrations on licence plates, Vehicles from Hong Kong and Macau are required to apply for licence plates, usually from Guangdong, to travel on roads in Mainland China. Vehicles from Mainland China have to apply for Hong Kong or Macau licence plates to enter those territories, taiwan, on the other hand, also has plates administered by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in the Republic of China. The number of registered cars, buses, vans, and trucks on the road in China reached 62 million in 2009, and is expected to exceed 200 million by 2020. The font used on the plates were said to be modified from the East Asian gothic typeface, the current plates are of the 1992 standard, which consist of the one-character provincial abbreviation, a letter of the alphabet, and five numbers or letters of the alphabet. Previously, all plates had used the five-number designation. As the number of motor vehicles grew, however, the number had to exceed what was the maximum previously allowable—90,000 or 100,000 vehicles, therefore, there had become a need to insert Latin letters into the license plate to increase the number of possible combinations. This was first done in the cities with only one prefix. Nanjing, for example, began the change only the first number. Further changes allowed the first two places, or the place alone on the plate to be letters, allowing 792,000 more combinations mathematically. More recently, cities have taken to having the letter alone being a Latin letter. The numbers are produced at random, and are computer-generated at the issuing office, numbers with a sequence of 6s, 8s, or 9s are usually considered to be lucky, therefore special sequences like 88888 or 86888 can be purchased. The older black plates are issued to those who are dual-use vehicles. Licence plates for Chinas Police Service, Armed Police Force, and Military are in a background, with red. Police Service plates have a format of X·LLNNN警. These plates are issued to police, some patrol vehicles, court. Chinese Peoples Armed Police Force uses the pinyin wujing abbreviation WJ, the first two small letters behind the WJ are area prefixes, WJ01-NNNNN. = Hainan The Alphabet Numeral behind the area shows the section of the Armed police
11.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
12.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
13.
Uyghur language
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Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language family, like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and is a left-branching language with subject–object–verb word order. More distinctly Uyghur processes include, especially in dialects, vowel reduction. In addition to influence of other Turkic languages, Uyghur has historically been influenced strongly by Persian and Arabic, the modified Arabic-derived writing system is the most common and the only standard in China, although other writing systems are used for auxiliary and historical purposes. Unlike most Arabic-derived scripts, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet has mandatory marking of all due to modifications to the original Perso-Arabic script made in the 20th century. Two Latin and one Cyrillic alphabet are used, though to a much lesser extent. The Arabic and Latin alphabets both have 32 characters, the Middle Turkic languages are the direct ancestor of the Karluk languages, including Uyghur and the Uzbek language. Kagan Arik wrote that Modern Uyghur is not descended from Old Uyghur, rather, according to Gerard Clauson, Western Yugur is considered to be the true descendant of Old Uyghur, and is also called Neo-Uyghur. Modern Uyghur is not a descendant of Old Uyghur, but is descended from the Xākānī language described by Mahmud al-Kashgari in Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk, the Western Yugur language, although in geographic proximity, is more closely related to the Siberian Turkic languages in Siberia. Robert Dankoff wrote that the Turkic language spoken in Kashgar and used in Kara Khanid works was Karluk, robert Barkley Shaw wrote, In the Turkish of Káshghar and Yarkand. This would seem in many case to be a misnomer as applied to the language of Kashghar. Other Kara-Khanid writers wrote works in the Turki Karluk Khaqani language, yusuf Khass Hajib wrote the Kutadgu Bilig. Ahmad bin Mahmud Yukenaki wrote the Hibat al-ḥaqāyiq, after Chaghatai fell into extinction, the standard versions of Uyghur and Uzbek were developed from dialects in the Chagatai-speaking region, showing abundant Chaghatai influence. Uyghur language today shows considerable Persian influence as a result from Chagatai, Modern Uyghur religious literature includes the Taẕkirah, biographies of Islamic religious figures and saints. The Taẕkirah is a genre of literature written about Sufi Muslim saints in Altishahr, the shrines of Sufi Saints are revered in Altishahr as one of Islams essential components and the tazkirah literature reinforced the sacredness of the shrines. Anyone who does not believe in the stories of the saints is guaranteed hellfire by the tazkirahs and it is written, And those who doubt Their Holinesses the Imams will leave this world without faith, and on Judgement Day their faces will be black. In the Tazkirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams, Shaw translated extracts from the Tazkiratul-Bughra on the Muslim Turki war against the infidel Khotan. The Turki-language Tadhkirah i Khwajagan was written by M. Sadiq Kashghari, historical works like the Tārīkh-i amniyya and Tārīkh-i ḥamīdi were written by Musa Sayrami
14.
Uyghur Latin alphabet
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The Uyghur Latin alphabet is an auxiliary alphabet for the Uyghur language based on the Latin script. Uyghur is primarily written in an Arabic alphabet and sometimes in a Cyrillic alphabet, in January 2008, the ULY project was amended and identified by Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional Working Committee of Minorities Language and Writing. The letters in the ULY are, in order, The creators of ULY strongly emphasized that “the proposed alphabet should not replace nor should its introduction represent a new reform of the writing system and it is to be used solely in computer-related fields as an ancillary writing system”. The importance of having one-to-one correspondence between both Latin and Arabic is noteworthy, the different orthographies are compared in the following table. Below follows an example of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Uyghur, Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi Uyghur alphabets An Introduction to LSU
15.
Uyghur alphabets
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Uyghur is a Turkic language with a long literary tradition spoken in Xinjiang, China by the Uyghurs. The Old Uyghur language and Modern Uyghur are distinct Turkic languages and are not different stages of the same language, the Old Uyghur language is ancestral to Western Yugur, while modern Uyghur is descended from one of the Karluk languages. In the 5th century Old Uyghur was written for the first time using the Sogdian alphabet and this fell out of use during the 10th century, when it evolved into the Old Uyghur alphabet, although it was taken into use again between the 15th and 16th century. While the Sogdian alphabet was still in use, it was written with the Old Turkic alphabet from the 6th-9th centuries, the Old Uyghur language evolved into the modern Western Yugur, and remained in use until the 18th century among the Yugur. An Arabic alphabet introduced along with Islam in the 10th century to the Karluk Kara Khanids, the Chagatai alphabet was known as Ⱪona Yeziⱪ. The Syriac alphabet has also used for writing Old Uyghur at some time between the 5th century and 19th century. The writing of Uyghur saw many changes during the 20th century mostly to do political decisions, in 1982 Uyghur new script was abolished, the Arabic alphabet was reinstated in a modified form as the Uyghur Arabic alphabet. However, due to the importance of information technology, there have been requests for a Latin alphabet. This resulted in five conferences between 2000 and 2001, where a Latin-derived auxiliary alphabet was devised known as the Uyghur Latin alphabet, today the Uyghur language is being written using four different alphabets. It is only grouped by phonemic proximity, each alphabet has its own sort order, some letter forms used for words borrowed from other languages, or kept occasionally from older orthographic conventions, are shown between parentheses. As it can be seen, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet, Uyghur New Script, some words may still use the Cyrillic soft sign. Also, loanwords of Russian origin are spelled as they are in Russian. Another notable feature of the Uyghur New Script was the use of the letter ⟨ƣ⟩ to represent /ʁ/ and this letter has erroneously been named LATIN LETTER OI in Unicode, although it is correctly referred to as gha and replaced by the digraph ⟨gh⟩ in the newer Uyghur Latin alphabet. In the Uyghur Latin alphabet, only the Basic Latin base alphabet is needed, with the common diaeresis being the only diacritic added above vowels, and supported in many fonts and encoding standards. The /ʒ/ may be represented in two ways, either as ⟨zh⟩ or as ⟨j⟩, although the latter is also used for /dʒ/. In the Arabic and Cyrillic orthographies, the distinction of /dʒ/ is only seen as a variant of /ʒ/. This variation is due to several opposing arguments, and therefore it was accepted that both are acceptable, as long as no semantic distinction is necessary, one of the major differences among the four alphabets is the rules of when the glottal stop /ʔ/ is written. In Uyghur Arabic alphabet it is written, using the hamza on a tooth ⟨ﺋ⟩
16.
Area
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Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a two-dimensional figure or shape, or planar lamina, in the plane. Surface area is its analog on the surface of a three-dimensional object. It is the analog of the length of a curve or the volume of a solid. The area of a shape can be measured by comparing the shape to squares of a fixed size, in the International System of Units, the standard unit of area is the square metre, which is the area of a square whose sides are one metre long. A shape with an area of three square metres would have the area as three such squares. In mathematics, the square is defined to have area one. There are several formulas for the areas of simple shapes such as triangles, rectangles. Using these formulas, the area of any polygon can be found by dividing the polygon into triangles, for shapes with curved boundary, calculus is usually required to compute the area. Indeed, the problem of determining the area of plane figures was a motivation for the historical development of calculus. For a solid such as a sphere, cone, or cylinder. Formulas for the areas of simple shapes were computed by the ancient Greeks. Area plays an important role in modern mathematics, in addition to its obvious importance in geometry and calculus, area is related to the definition of determinants in linear algebra, and is a basic property of surfaces in differential geometry. In analysis, the area of a subset of the plane is defined using Lebesgue measure, in general, area in higher mathematics is seen as a special case of volume for two-dimensional regions. Area can be defined through the use of axioms, defining it as a function of a collection of certain plane figures to the set of real numbers and it can be proved that such a function exists. An approach to defining what is meant by area is through axioms, area can be defined as a function from a collection M of special kind of plane figures to the set of real numbers which satisfies the following properties, For all S in M, a ≥0. If S and T are in M then so are S ∪ T and S ∩ T, if S and T are in M with S ⊆ T then T − S is in M and a = a − a. If a set S is in M and S is congruent to T then T is also in M, every rectangle R is in M. If the rectangle has length h and breadth k then a = hk, let Q be a set enclosed between two step regions S and T
17.
Tarim Basin
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The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in northwest China occupying an area of about 1,020,000 km2. Its northern boundary is the Tian Shan mountain range and its boundary is the Kunlun Mountains on the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The Taklamakan Desert dominates much of the basin, the historical Uyghur name for the Tarim Basin is Altishahr, which means six cities in Uyghur. They were governed separately until 1884, north side, The Chinese called this the Tien Shan Nan Lu or Tien Shan South Road, as opposed to the Bei Lu north of the mountains. Along it runs the modern highway and railroad while the middle Tarim River is about 100 km south, Kashgar was where the caravans met before crossing the mountains. Center, Most of the basin is occupied by the Taklamakan Desert which is too dry for permanent habitation, the Yarkand, Kashgar and Aksu Rivers join to form the Tarim River which runs along the north side of the basin. Formerly it continued to Loulan, but some time after 330AD it turned southeast near Korla toward Charkilik, the Tarim ended at the now-dry Lop Nur which occupied a changing position east of Loulan. Eastward is the fabled Jade Gate which the Chinese considered the gateway to the Western Regions, beyond that is Dunhuang with its ancient manuscripts and then Anxi at the west end of the Gansu Corridor. The modern road continues east to Tibet, there is no current road east across the Kumtag Desert to Dunhuang, but caravans somehow made the crossing thru the Yangguan pass south of the Jade Gate. Roads and passes, rivers and caravan routes, The Southern Xinjiang Railway branches from the Lanxin Railway near Turpan, follows the side of the basin to Kashgar. Roads, The main road from eastern China reaches Urumchi and continues as highway 314 along the side to Kashgar. Highway 315 follows the side from Kashgar to Charkilik and continues east to Tibet. There are currently four north-south roads across the desert,218 runs from Charkilik to Korla along the former course of the Tarim forming an oval whose other end is Kashgar. The Tarim Desert Highway, an engineering achievement, crosses the center from Niya to Luntai. The new Highway 217 follows the Khotan River from Khotan to near Aksu, a road follows the Yarkand River from Yarkand to Baqu. East of the Korla-Charkilik road travel continues to be very difficult, Rivers coming south from the Tien Shan join the Tarim, the largest being the Aksu. Rivers flowing north from the Kunlun are usually named for the town or oasis they pass through, Most dry up in the desert, only the Hotan River reaching the Tarim in good years. An exception is the Qiemo River which flowed northeast into Lop Nor, ruins in the desert imply that these rivers were once larger
18.
Tian Shan
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The Tian Shan, meaning the Mountain of Heaven or the Heavenly Mountain, is a large system of mountain ranges located in Central Asia. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is Jengish Chokusu,7,439 metres, the Chinese name for Tian Shan may have been derived from the Xiongnu word Qilian – according to Tang commentator Yan Shigu, Qilian is the Xiongnu word for sky or heaven. The Tannu-Ola mountains in Tuva has the meaning in its name. Tian Shan is sacred in Tengrism, and its second-highest peak is known as Khan Tengri which may be translated as Lord of the Spirits. Tian Shan is north and west of the Taklamakan Desert and directly north of the Tarim Basin in the region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan. In the south it links up with the Pamir Mountains and to north, Chinese cartography from the Han Dynasty to the present agrees, with the Tian Shan including the Bogda Shan and Barkol ranges. The Tian Shan are a part of the Himalayan orogenic belt and they are one of the longest mountain ranges in Central Asia and stretch some 2,800 kilometres eastward from Tashkent in Uzbekistan. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is the Victory Peak which, the Tian Shans second highest peak, Khan Tengri, straddles the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan border and at 7,010 metres is the highest point of Kazakhstan. Mountaineers class these as the two most northerly peaks over 7,000 metres in the world, the Torugart Pass, at 3,752 metres, is located at the border between Kyrgyzstan and Chinas Xinjiang province. The forested Alatau ranges, which are at an altitude in the northern part of the Tian Shan, are inhabited by pastoral tribes that speak Turkic languages. The Tian Shan are separated from the Tibetan Plateau by the Taklimakan Desert, the major rivers rising in the Tian Shan are the Syr Darya, the Ili River and the Tarim River. The Aksu Canyon is a feature in the northwestern Tian Shan. Continuous permafrost is found in the Tian Shan starting at the elevation of about 3. One of the first Europeans to visit and the first to describe the Tian Shan in detail was the Russian explorer Peter Semenov, who did so in the 1850s. Glaciers in the Tian Shan Mountains have been shrinking and have lost 27%, or 5.4 billion tons annually. It is estimated that by 2050 half of the glaciers will have melted. The Tian Shan have a number of named ranges which are mentioned separately. In China the Tian Shan starts north of Kumul City with the U-shaped Barkol Mountains, then the Bogda Shan run from 350 to 40 kilometres east of Ürümqi
19.
Taklamakan Desert
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The Taklamakan Desert /ˌtæk. lə. məˈkæn/, also spelled Taklimakan and Teklimakan, is a desert in southwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, northwest China. It is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the south, the Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan to the west and north, the name may be an Uyghur borrowing of the Persian tark, to leave alone/out/behind, relinquish, abandon + makan, place. Some sources claimed it means Place of No Return, more commonly interpreted as once you get in, another plausible explanation suggests it is derived from Turki taqlar makan, describing the place of ruins. The Taklamakan Desert has an area of 337,000 km2, making it smaller than Germany, and includes the Tarim Basin. It is crossed at its northern and at its edge by two branches of the Silk Road as travellers sought to avoid the arid wasteland. It is the second largest shifting sand desert with about 85% made up of shifting sand dunes ranking 16th in size in a ranking of the worlds largest deserts. Some geographers and ecologists prefer to regard the Taklamakan Desert as separate, the Peoples Republic of China has constructed two cross-desert highways. The Tarim Desert Highway links the cities of Hotan and Luntai, in recent years, the desert has expanded in some areas, its sands enveloping farms and villages as a result of desertification. Because it lies in the shadow of the Himalayas, Taklamakan is a paradigmatic cold desert climate. Its extreme inland position, virtually in the heartland of Asia and thousands of kilometres from any open body of water. The Taklamakan Desert has very little water, therefore it is hazardous to cross, merchant caravans on the Silk Road would stop for relief at the thriving oasis towns. The key oasis towns, watered by rainfall from the mountains, were Kashgar, Marin, Niya, Yarkand, and Khotan to the south, Kuqa and Turpan in the north, and Loulan and Dunhuang in the east. Now, many, such as Marin and Gaochang, are ruined cities in sparsely inhabited areas in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of the Peoples Republic of China, the archaeological treasures found in its sand-buried ruins point to Tocharian, early Hellenistic, Indian, and Buddhist influences. Its treasures and dangers have been described by Aurel Stein, Sven Hedin, Albert von Le Coq. Mummies, some 4000 years old, have found in the region. Later, the Taklamakan was inhabited by Turkic peoples, starting with the Han Dynasty, the Chinese sporadically extended their control to the oasis cities of the Taklamakan Desert in order to control the important silk route trade across Central Asia. Periods of Chinese rule were interspersed with rule by Turkic, Mongol, the present population consists largely of Turkic Uyghur people and ethnic Han people. This desert was explored by scientists as Xuanzang, a monk in the 7th century
20.
Tarim River
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The Tarim River, known in Sanskrit as the Śītā is the principal river of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the Peoples Republic of China. It gives its name to the great Tarim Basin between the Tian Shan and Kunlun Mountains systems of Central Asia and it is the longest inland river in China with an annual flow of 4 to 6 billion cubic metres or 158.5 cubic metres per second. Its basin is home to nearly 10 million Uyghur and other ethnic minorities, the Tarim river and most of its tributaries flow down from the Himalayas. The name Tarim is applied to the river formed by the union of the Aksu River, flowing from the north, and Yarkand River, coming from the southwest, near the Aral City in western Xinjiang. The third river, the Khotan River comes to the junction area from the south. Another river of western Xinjiang is the Kashgar River, which falls into the Yarkand River some 37 kilometres upstream from the Yarkands merger with the Aksu. By another definition, however, Tarim starts at the Kashgar/Yarkand merger, the Tarim flows in an eastward direction around the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The word tarim is used to designate the bank of a river flows into a lake or that is not able to be differentiated from the sands of a desert. This is a characteristic feature of many rivers that traverse the sands of the Taklamakan Desert. Another characteristic of the rivers of the Tarim Basin, including the Tarim River itself, is their migration, that is. The total length of the Yarkand-Tarim river system is 2,030 kilometres, although, as the Tarim frequently changes its channel and it is shallow, unsuitable for navigation, and because of its heavy silt load, forms a braided stream near its terminus. Prior to the completion of reservoirs and irrigation works in the mid-20th century, the rivers waters now drain intermittently into Taitema Lake, which is located about 160 kilometres southwest of Lop Nur. The area of the Tarim River Basin is about 557,000 square kilometres, a considerable part of the Tarims course is unformed, following no clearly defined riverbed. The water volume of the course of the river diminishes as a result of extensive evaporation and water-diversion schemes. The Tarims low-water period is from October through April, the spring and summer high waters begin in May and continue through September as the snows melt on the distant Tian Shan and Kunlun mountains. The Lower Tarim Basin is an arid plain composed of alluvium, the basin is the driest region of Eurasia. The predominant part of it is occupied by the Taklamakan Desert, in addition, there are several comparatively small sand massifs with areas of from 780 to 4,400 square kilometres. Sand dunes are the predominant relief, precipitation in the Tarim Basin is extremely scanty, and in some years it is nonexistent
21.
Aksu River (Xinjiang)
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The Aksu River is a transboundary river in the Xinjiang province in China and Ak-Suu District of Issyk Kul Province of Kyrgyzstan. In Kyrgyzstan it is known as the Saryjaz River, the total length of the river is 282 kilometres, of which 197 kilometres are in Kyrgyzstan. The Aksu River is the one of the Tarims source rivers to run throughout the year. The river takes its roots at the north west slopes of Kan Tenir mountains in Kyrgyzstan, from here it first runs towards the west, before turning south and breaking through the high mountains and into Xinjiang in the northern parts of the Tarim Basin. At the city of Aksu it meets its tributary, the Toshkan. After the confluence the river continues south and enters the edge of the Taklamakan Desert
22.
Uyghurs
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The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China and they primarily practice Islam, and are a physically diverse ethnic group ranging from Western Eurasian to a more East Asian appearance. An estimated 80% of Xinjiangs Uyghurs live in the portion of the region. Outside Xinjiang, the largest community of Uyghurs in China is in Taoyuan County, outside of China, significant diasporic communities of Uyghurs exist in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and in Turkey. Smaller communities are found in Afghanistan, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Uyghur is often pronounced /ˈwiːɡər/ by English speakers, though an acceptable English pronunciation closer to the Uyghur peoples pronunciation of it is /uː. iˈɡʊər/, several alternate romanizations also appear, Uighur, Uygur, and Uigur. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region provincial government recommends that the ethnonym, adopted in the early 20th century. The meaning of the term Uyghur is unclear, the Old Turkic inscriptions record a word uyɣur which was transcribed into Chinese as * > Huíhé in Tang dynasty annals. Later, in response to an Uyghur request, this was changed to > Huíhú in 788 or 809 as mentioned in the Old History of the Five Dynasties, the earliest record of an Uyghur tribe is from the Northern Wei. At that time the ethnonym * > Gaoche was used, and later, the first use of Uyghur as a reference to a political nation occurred during the interim period between the First and Second Göktürk Khaganates. The term Uyghur disappeared from records in the 15th century. Throughout its history, the term Uyghur has taken on an expansive definition. Initially signifying only a small coalition of Tiele tribes in Northern China, Mongolia, finally it was expanded into an ethnicity whose ancestry originates with the fall of the Uyghur Khaganate in the year 842, which caused Uyghur migration from Mongolia into the Tarim Basin. This fluid definition of Uyghur and the ancestry of modern Uyghurs create confusion about what constitutes true Uyghur ethnography. DNA analyses indicate that the peoples of central Asia such as the Uyghurs are all mixed Caucasian, the Uighurs are the people whom old Russian travellers called Sart, while Western travellers called them Turki, in recognition of their language. The Chinese used to call them Chan-tou but this term has dropped, being considered derogatory. As a matter of fact there was for centuries no national name for them, people identified themselves with the oasis they came from, the term Uyghur was not used to refer to any existing ethnic group in the 19th century, but to an ancient people. The inhabitants of Xinjiang were not called Uyghur before 1921/1934, westerners called the Turkic-speaking Muslims of the oases Turki, and the Turkic Muslims in Ili were known as Taranchi
23.
Han Chinese
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The Han Chinese, Han people or simply Han are an ethnic group native to East Asia. They constitute approximately 92% of the population of China, 95% of Taiwan, 76% of Singapore, 23% of Malaysia, Han Chinese are the worlds largest ethnic group with over 1.3 billion people. Similarly, the Chinese language also came to be named the Han language ever since, in the Oxford Dictionary, the Han are defined as The dominant ethnic group in China. In the Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania, the Han are called the dominant population in China, as well as in Taiwan, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the Han are the Chinese peoples especially as distinguished from non-Chinese elements in the population. The name Hanzhong, in turn, was derived from the Han River, which flows through the regions plains. The river, in turn, derives its name from such as Tianhan, Yinhan, Xinghan or Yunhan, all ancient Chinese poetic nicknames for the Milky Way. This gave rise to a commonly used nowadays by overseas Chinese for ethnic identity – Huaren. The term is used in conversation and is also an element in the Cantonese word for Chinatown. The vast majority of Han Chinese – over 1.2 billion of them – live in areas under the jurisdiction of the Peoples Republic of China, where they constitute about 92% of its population. Han Chinese also constitute the majority in both of the administrative regions of the PRC—about 95% and 96% of the population of Hong Kong and Macau. There are over 22 million Han Chinese in Taiwan, they began migrating from the coastal provinces of mainland China to Taiwan during the 13th to 17th century. At first, these migrants chose to settle in locations that bore a resemblance to the areas they had left behind in mainland China, hoklo immigrants from Quanzhou settled in coastal regions, and those from Zhangzhou tended to gather on inland plains, while the Hakka inhabited hilly areas. Clashes between these groups over land, water, and cultural differences led to the relocation of some communities, of about 40 million overseas Chinese worldwide, nearly 30 million live in Southeast Asia. They are collectively called Nanyang Chinese, according to a population genetic study, Singapore is the country with the biggest proportion of Hans in Southeast Asia. Up until the past few decades, overseas Han communities originated predominantly from areas in southern China, christmas Island has a Chinese majority at 70%, large Chinese populations also live in Malaysia and Thailand. Prior to the 1965 split, Malaysia and Singapore used to have the largest overseas Chinese population in the world and this position has since been taken by Thailand. The prehistory of the Han ethnic group is closely intertwined with both records and mythology. Han Chinese trace their ancestry from a confederation of late neolithic/early bronze-age agricultural tribes that lived along the Guanzhong, the Yellow Emperor is traditionally credited to have united with the neighbouring Shennong tribes after defeating their leader, Flame Emperor, at the Battle of Banquan
24.
County-level city
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A county-level municipality, county-level city, or county city is a county-level administrative division of mainland China. County-level cities are governed by prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by province-level divisions. Most county-level cities were created in the 1980s and 1990s by replacing counties, a county-level city is a city and county that have been merged into one unified jurisdiction. As such it is simultaneously a city, which is an entity. County-level cities are not cities in the strictest sense of the word, since they usually contain rural areas many times the size of their urban and this is because the counties that county-level cities have replaced are themselves large administrative units containing towns, villages, and farmland. To distinguish a city from its actual urban area, the term 市区 shìqū. In France, an equivalent of a city is an agglomeration community. For example, in New South Wales such a unit may often be called a city, city of Blue Mountains is made of a number of towns. Another example would be municipal government in the Canadian province of Ontario and this agglomeration includes all of the townships in the county of Kent, with cities and towns like Wallaceberg, Thamesville, Dresden, Wheatley. This amalgamation as it is referred to, was controversial when it was forced upon the constituents through provincial legislation. Today, instead of each city having its own mayor and city councillors, as of January 2017, there are 360 County-level city in total, A sub-prefecture-level city is a county-level city with powers approaching those of prefecture-level cities. Examples include, Xiantao, Qianjiang, Tianmen and Jiyuan, administrative divisions of China Counties of the Peoples Republic of China Prefecture-level city List of cities in China
25.
Counties of the People's Republic of China
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There are 1,464 counties in Mainland China out of a total of 2,862 county-level divisions. Xian have existed since the Warring States period, and were established nationwide during the Qin Dynasty, the term xian is usually translated as districts or prefectures when put in the context of Chinese history. This article, however, will try to keep the terminology consistent with the modern translation, xian have existed since the Warring States period and were set up nationwide by the Qin Dynasty. The number of counties in China proper gradually increased from dynasty to dynasty, as Qin Shi Huang reorganized the counties after his unification, there were about 1,000. Under the Eastern Han Dynasty, the number of counties increased to above 1,000, about 1400 existed when the Sui dynasty abolished the commandery level, which was the level just above counties, and demoted some commanderies to counties. The current number of counties mostly resembled that of the years of Qing Dynasty. Changes of location and names of counties in Chinese history have been a field of research in Chinese historical geography. Government below the county level was often undertaken through informal non-bureaucratic means, the head of a county was the magistrate, who oversaw both the day-to-day operations of the county as well as civil and criminal cases. Autonomous counties are a class of counties in Mainland China reserved for non-Han Chinese ethnic minorities. Autonomous counties are all over China, and are given, by law. There are 117 autonomous counties in Mainland China, as the Communist Party of China is central to directing government policy in Mainland China, every level of administrative division has a local CPC Committee. A countys is called the CPC County Committee and the called the Secretary. Policies are carried out via the Peoples government of the county, the governor is often also one of the deputy secretaries in the CPC Committee. County List of counties in the Peoples Republic of China List of county-level divisions of China History of the divisions of China
26.
Uyghur Arabic alphabet
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The Uyghur Perso-Arabic alphabet is an Arabic alphabet used for writing the Uyghur language, primarily by Uyghurs living in China. It is one of several Uyghur alphabets, and it is the alphabet of Uyghur language since 1982. The first Perso-Arabic derived alphabet for Uyghur was developed in the 10th century, the version used for writing the Chagatai language. It became the literary language, now known as the Chagatay alphabet. It was used nearly exclusively up to the early 1920s, between 1937 and 1954 the Perso-Arabic alphabet used to write Uyghur was modified by removing redundant letters and adding markings for vowels. A Cyrillic alphabet was adopted in the 1950s and a Latin alphabet in 1958, the modern Uyghur Perso-Arabic alphabet was made official in 1978 and reinstituted by the Chinese government in 1983, with modifications for representing Uyghur vowels. The pre-modification alphabet used Arabic diacritics to mark short vowels, several of these alternatives were influenced by security-policy considerations of the Soviet Union or the Peoples Republic of China. A Pinyin-derived Latin-based alphabet, then called “New script” or Uyghur Yëngi Yëziq or UYY, was for a time the only officially approved alphabet used for Uyghur in Xinjiang
27.
Wensu County
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The Wensu County is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and is under the administration of the Aksu Prefecture. It contains an area of 14,309 km2, according to the 2002 census, it has a population of 210,000. The toponym Wensu had appeared in records of the Western Han Dynasty of China as one of the 36 states in the Western Regions
28.
Kuqa County
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Kuqa County is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region under the administration of the Aksu Prefecture. It covers an area of 15,200 km2 and at the 2002 census had a population of 450,000 and it was once the homeland of the ancient Buddhist Kingdom of Kucha. The county is located at the periphery of the Tian Shan range, the northern portion of the Tarim Basin. It occupies part of the portion of Aksu Prefecture, bordering Xinhe County, Xayar County, and Luntai County, Heiing County. Kuqa County has nine towns and six townships under its administration, including Kuqa City, Wuqia Town, Alakaga Town, Yaha Town, Uzun Township, Bixibage Township, Agger Township. Kuqa has a desert climate, with an average annual precipitation of 74.6 millimetres. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from −7.2 °C in January to 25.3 °C in July, the frost-free period lasts for 266 days on average. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 54% in March to 69% in September and October, sunshine is abundant, Kuqa is served by China National Highway 217 and the Southern Xinjiang Railway
29.
Xinhe County, Xinjiang
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Xinhe County, formerly Toqsu County is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, and is under the administration of the Aksu Prefecture. It contains an area of 5,821 km2, according to the 2002 census, it has a population of 140,000. The countys original name Toksu was changed into Xinhe in 1941, Xinhe is the abbreviation of Xinjiang Heping, literally Xinjiang Peace. Xinhe is served by the Southern Xinjiang Railway
30.
Uqturpan County
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Uqturpan County or Uchturpan County is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region under the administration of Aksu Prefecture. It has an area of 9,012 square kilometres and as of the 2002 census a population of 180,000. During the Battle of Aksu, the Umayyad Caliphate and their Turgesh, ush Turfan was the site of a battle between Barhanuddin and Abdulla during the Revolt of the Altishahr Khojas. Six years after the Revolt of the Altishahr Khojas, ten years after the Qings rescue of the Khoja Brothers from Dzungars, legend says that a local rebel leader was married to Iparhan, known as the Fragrant Concubine a descendant of Apaq Khoja. During the turmoil, many fled, and the thousands who remained were killed by Sino-Manchu forces, later, the area was repopulated by migrants from what is now Southern Xinjiang
31.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
32.
Autonomous regions of China
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An autonomous region is a first-level administrative subdivision of China. Like Chinese provinces, a region has its own local government. An autonomous region is a minority entity which has a population of a particular minority ethnic group. The Inner Mongolia autonomous region was established in 1947, Xinjiang was made autonomous in 1955, Guangxi and Ningxia in 1958, and Tibet in 1965. The designation of Guangxi and Ningxia as Zhuang and Hui autonomous areas, respectively, was protested by the local Han Chinese. Although Mongols made up less than a percentage of Inner Mongolia. Note, In the Third Largest Ethnic Group column is the group given in brackets, after the names of the autonomous regions. Administrative divisions of China Provinces of China Special administrative regions of China Autonomous prefectures of China
33.
Prefecture-level city
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Prefectural level cities form the second level of the administrative structure. Administrative chiefs of prefectural level cities generally have the rank as a division chief of a national ministry. Since the 1980s, most former prefectures have been renamed into prefectural level cities, a prefectural level city is a city and prefecture that have been merged into one unified jurisdiction. The larger prefectural level cities span over 100 kilometres, prefectural level cities nearly always contain multiple counties, county level cities, and other such sub-divisions. To distinguish a prefectural level city from its urban area. The first prefectural level cities were created on 5 November 1983, over the following two decades, prefectural level cities have come to replace the vast majority of Chinese prefectures, the process is still ongoing. Most provinces are composed entirely or nearly entirely of prefectural level cities, shijiazhuang and Zhengzhou are the largest prefectural level cities with populations approaching or exceeding some sub-provincial cities. A sub-prefecture-level city is a city with powers approaching those of prefectural level cities. There are total of three classification of prefecture-level city, Regular prefectural level city which consist of counties, county level cities, consolidated district-governed prefectural level city which only consist of districts as it subdivisions. Thus, Bloomington, Indiana is indicated on the map by a point, which is distinct from, and enclosed by, in China, however, large cities such as City of Xianning may, in reality, contain both urban and rural elements. Moreover, they may enclose counties or other cities, on a less detailed map, City of Xianning would be indicated by a point, more or less corresponding to the coordinates of its city government. Other populous areas may also be exhibited as points, such as County of Tongshan, with no indication that County of Tongshan is, in fact, enclosed by City of Xianning. On a more detailed map, City of Xianning would be drawn as an area, similar to a county of the United States and this convention may lead to difficulty in the identification of places mentioned in older sources. For example, Guo Moruo writes that he was born in Town of Shawan, within Prefecture of Leshan, and attended primary school in Town of Jiading. A modern map is unlikely to show either town, Shawan, because it is too small, and Jiading, because it is the seat of City of Leshan, and is therefore indicated on the map by a point labelled Leshan. A more detailed map would show Shawan as a district within City of Leshan, statistics of China such as population and industrial activity are generally reported along prefectural city lines. Thus, the relatively unknown City of Huangshi has 2.5 million residents, more than most European capitals, but upon closer inspection, furthermore, Huangshi contains several other cities, such as City of Daye. If a person wished to calculate the population of the area of Huangshi, and had a map of Huangshi, and a table of its population by district
