1.
Erhai Lake
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Er Lake or Erhai Lake, Chinese Erhai, is an alpine fault lake in Yunnan province, China. Its name means Ear-shaped Sea, due to its shape as seen by locals, er Lake was also known as Yeyuze or Kunming Lake in ancient times. Erhai is situated at 1,972 metres above sea level, in size, the North-South length of the lake is 40 kilometres and the East-West width is roughly 7–8 kilometres. Its area is 250 square kilometres, making it the second largest highland lake of China and its circumference reaches 116 kilometres, its average depth is of 11 metres and the total storage capacity of 2.5 billion cubic metres. The lake serves as a backdrop to all of Dali City, the lakes head is at Shangguan Town, its northern extremity, and its southernmost point is at Xiaguan Town. The lake receives water from the Miju and Mici Rivers in the north, the Bolou River in the east, yangbi River, to the south, is the lakes outlet and eventually flows into the Lancang River. The lakeshore can be explored by hiking, highlights include Erhai Lake Park and the Butterfly Springs on the Western bank. Islands on the lake – including Guanyin Ge, Jinsuo Island, Nanzhao Folklore Island, the lake is an important food source for the local people, who are famous for their fishing method, their trained cormorants catch fish and return them to fishmongers. The birds are prevented from swallowing their fish by rings fixed around their neck, there is, or was, a rich biodiversity in Erhai Lake. It is one of three major Yunnan lakes with a number of endemics, the two other being Fuxian and Dian. Among these, only C. barbatus and C. longipectoralis have been recorded since the year 2000, a few of the non-endemic natives have also been extirpated from the lake. In contrast, the lake is now home to more than 10 introduced fish species, a few native hydrophytes have also disappeared from the lake. The lake used to be a royal deer ranch for the Nanzhao Kingdom
2.
Dali City
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Dali City, formerly known as Tali, is the county-level seat of the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture in northwestern Yunnan. Dali City is administered through through 12 township-level districts, two of which are commonly referred to as Dali. Xiaguan is the city centre and usually conflated with Dali City by virtue of being its seat. This town is the destination of most long-distance transportation heading to Dali and is referred to as Dali New Town to avoid confusion. Dali Town is another division of Dali City, located 10km to the north of Xiaguan and this town, commonly referred to as Dali Old Town to distinguish it from the city seat in Xiaguan, is usually the Dali referred to in tourist publications. The old town is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Yunnan, known for its scenery, historical and cultural heritage. The Dali area was known as Jumie. The old town was the capital of both the Bai kingdom Nanzhao and the Kingdom of Dali. That city was razed and its records burnt during its conquest by Chinas Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, the present old town was organized in the late 14th century under the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The area became significantly Muslim under the Yuan and Ming and was the center of the Panthay Rebellion against the Qing from 1856–1863 and it was severely damaged during a massive earthquake in 1925. Rail and then air transport have permitted the area to become accessible to tourists in the 20th century and it is now one of Chinas official tourist cities and, along with nearby Lijiang, one of the most popular towns. In order to preserve the appeal of the old town, industrial development is restricted to newer townships such as Xiaguan. Building codes mandate that new construction in the old town and surrounding countryside must conform to the traditional Chinese style, with tiled roofs and bricks, plaster, Dali City is located in western Yunnan, approximately 250km northwest of the provincial capital of Kunming. Dali is situated in the area between the dramatic valleys of the eastern Tibetan Plateau and the distinctive mountains of the western Yungui Plateau. The county-level city surrounds Erhai Lake between the Cang Mountains to the west and Mount Jizu to the east, the county seat at Xiaguan is located at the outlet of the lake into the Yangbi River. Dali Old Town is situated on a plain between the Cang Range and Erhai. This plain has traditionally been settled by the Bai and Yi minorities and its low latitude tempered by its high elevation, Dali has a mild subtropical highland climate with short, mild, dry winters and warm, rainy summers. Frost may occur in winter but the days still generally warm up to 15 °C or more, during summer, a majority of the days features some rainfall and daytime temperatures rise to 24 °C
3.
Cormorant
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Phalacrocoracidae is a family of some 40 species of aquatic birds commonly known as cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed recently, there is no consistent distinction between cormorants and shags as these appellations have been assigned to different species randomly. Cormorants and shags are medium-to-large birds, with weight in the range of 0. 35–5 kilograms. The majority of species have dark feathers, the bill is long, thin and hooked. Their feet have webbing between all four toes, all species are fish-eaters, catching the prey by diving from the surface. They are excellent divers, and under water they propel themselves with their feet with help from their wings and they have relatively short wings due to their need for economical movement underwater, and consequently have the highest flight costs of any bird. Cormorants nest in colonies around the shore, on trees, islets or cliffs and they are coastal rather than oceanic birds, and some have colonised inland waters – indeed, the original ancestor of cormorants seems to have been a fresh-water bird. They range around the world, except for the central Pacific islands, no consistent distinction exists between cormorants and shags. The names cormorant and shag were originally the names of the two species of the family found in Great Britain, Phalacrocorax carbo and P. aristotelis. Shag refers to the birds crest, which the British forms of the great cormorant lack, as other species were discovered by English-speaking sailors and explorers elsewhere in the world, some were called cormorants and some shags, depending on whether they had crests or not. Sometimes the same species is called a cormorant in one part of the world and a shag in another, e. g. the great cormorant is called the black shag in New Zealand. Van Tets proposed to divide the family into two genera and attach the name cormorant to one and shag to the other, but this flies in the face of common usage and has not been widely adopted. The scientific genus name is Latinised Ancient Greek, from φαλακρός, Cormorant is a contraction derived either directly from Latin corvus marinus, sea raven or through Brythonic Celtic. Cormoran is the Cornish name of the sea giant in the tale of Jack the Giant Killer, indeed, sea raven or analogous terms were the usual terms for cormorants in Germanic languages until after the Middle Ages. Cormorants and shags are medium-to-large seabirds and they range in size from the pygmy cormorant, at as little as 45 cm and 340 g, to the flightless cormorant, at a maximum size 100 cm and 5 kg. The recently extinct spectacled cormorant was rather larger, at a size of 6.3 kg. The majority, including nearly all Northern Hemisphere species, have dark plumage, but some Southern Hemisphere species are black and white. Many species have areas of coloured skin on the face which can be blue, orange, red or yellow
4.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
5.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
6.
Korea
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Korea is a historical state in East Asia, since 1945 divided into two distinct sovereign states, North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by China to the northwest and it is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait and the Sea of Japan. Korea emerged as a political entity after centuries of conflict among the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Later Silla divided into three states during the Later Three Kingdoms period. Goryeo, which had succeeded Goguryeo, defeated the two states and united the Korean Peninsula. Around the same time, Balhae collapsed and its last crown prince fled south to Goryeo, Goryeo, whose name developed into the modern exonym Korea, was a highly cultured state that created the worlds first metal movable type in 1234. However, multiple invasions by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty during the 13th century greatly weakened the nation, following the Yuan Dynastys collapse, severe political strife followed, and Goryeo eventually fell to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established Joseon in 1388. The first 200 years of Joseon were marked by peace and saw the creation of the Korean alphabet by Sejong the Great in the 14th century. During the later part of the dynasty, however, Koreas isolationist policy earned it the Western nickname of the Hermit Kingdom, by the late 19th century, the country became the object of imperial design by the Empire of Japan. Despite attempts at modernization by the Korean Empire, in 1910 Korea was annexed by Japan and these circumstances soon became the basis for the division of Korea by the two superpowers, exacerbated by their incapability to agree on the terms of Korean independence. To date, both continue to compete with each other as the sole legitimate government of all of Korea. Korea is the spelling of Corea, a name attested in English as early as 1614. It is a derived from Cauli, Marco Polos transcription of the Chinese 高麗. This was the Hanja for the Korean kingdom of Goryeo or Koryŏ, Goryeos name was a continuation of the earlier Goguryeo or Koguryŏ, the northernmost of the Samguk, which was officially known by the shortened form Goryeo after the 5th-century reign of King Jangsu. The original name was a combination of the go with the name of a local Yemaek tribe. The name Korea is now used in English contexts by both North and South Korea. In South Korea, Korea as a whole is referred to as Hanguk, the name references the Samhan—Ma, Jin, and Byeon—who preceded the Three Kingdoms in the southern and central end of the peninsula during the 1st centuries BC and AD. It has been linked with the title khan used by the nomads of Manchuria
7.
Wa (Japan)
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Japanese Wa is the oldest recorded name of Japan. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese scribes regularly wrote Wa or Yamato Japan with the Chinese character 倭 until the 8th century, the earliest textual references to Japan are in Chinese classic texts. Within the official Chinese dynastic Twenty-Four Histories, Japan is mentioned among the so-called Dongyi 東夷 Eastern Barbarians, note that the following texts are chronologically ordered by date of compilation, which does not always correspond with the sequence of Dynasties in Chinese history. In traditional Chinese units of measurement, distance is recorded in lǐ 里, ryūsaku Tsunoda cautions that great distances in thousands of lǐ are, of course, not to be taken literally. The historian Wang Zhenping summarizes Wo contacts with the Han State, in A. D.57, the first Wo ambassador arrived at the capital of the Eastern Han court, the second came in 107. Wo diplomats, however, never called on China on a regular basis, a chronology of Japan-China relations from the first to the ninth centuries reveals this irregularity in the visits of Japanese ambassadors to China. There were periods of frequent contacts as well as of lengthy intervals between contacts and this irregularity clearly indicated that, in its diplomacy with China, Japan set its own agenda and acted on self-interest to satisfy its own needs. No Wo ambassador, for example, came to China during the second century and this interval continued well past the third century. Then within merely nine years, the female Wo ruler Himiko sent four ambassadors to the Wei court in 238,243,245, after the death of Himiko, diplomatic contacts with China slowed. Iyo, the successor to Himiko, contacted the Wei court only once. The fourth century was another period in China-Wo relations except for the Wo delegation dispatched to the Western Jin court in 306. With the arrival of a Wo ambassador at the Eastern Jin court in 413, over the next sixty years, ten Wo ambassadors called on the Southern Song court, and a Wo delegation also visited the Southern Qi court in 479. The sixth century, however, saw only one Wo ambassador pay respect to the Southern Liang court in 502, possibly the earliest record of Wō 倭 Japan occurs in the Shan Hai Jing 山海經 Classic of Mountains and Seas. The textual dating of this collection of geographic and mythological legends is uncertain, the Haineibei jing 海內北經 Classic of Regions within the North Seas chapter includes Wō 倭 Japan among foreign places both real, such as Korea, and legendary. Kai Land is south of Chü Yen and north of Wo, ch’ao-hsien is east of Lieh Yang, south of Hai Pei Mountain. Nakagawa notes that Zhuyan 鉅燕 refers to the kingdom of Yan, 70-80 CE Lunheng 論衡 Discourses weighed in the balance is a compendium of essays on subjects including philosophy, religion, and natural sciences. The Rŭzēng 儒増 Exaggerations of the Literati chapter mentions Wōrén 倭人 Japanese people, in disputing legends that ancient Zhou bronze ding tripods had magic powers to ward off evil spirits, Wang says. During the Chou time there was universal peace, the Yuèshāng offered white pheasants to the court, the Japanese odoriferous plants
8.
Sui dynasty
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The Sui Dynasty was a short-lived imperial dynasty of China of pivotal significance. It was succeeded by the Tang dynasty, which inherited its foundation. Founded by Emperor Wen of Sui, the Sui dynasty capital was Changan and they also spread and encouraged Buddhism throughout the empire. By the middle of the dynasty, the unified empire entered a golden age of prosperity with vast agricultural surplus that supported rapid population growth. A lasting legacy of the Sui dynasty was the Grand Canal, the dynasty, which lasted only thirty-seven years, was undermined by ambitious wars and construction projects, which overstretched its resources. Particularly, under Emperor Yang, heavy taxation and compulsory labor duties would eventually induce widespread revolts, the dynasty is often compared to the earlier Qin dynasty for unifying China after prolonged division. Wide-ranging reforms and construction projects were undertaken to consolidate the newly unified state, after crushing an army in the eastern provinces, Yang Jian usurped the throne to become Emperor Wen of Sui. In a bloody purge, he had fifty-nine princes of the Zhou royal family eliminated, Emperor Wen abolished the anti-Han policies of Zhou and reclaimed his Han surname of Yang. In his campaign for southern conquest, Emperor Wen assembled thousands of boats to confront the forces of the Chen dynasty on the Yangtze River. The largest of ships were very tall, having five layered decks. They were outfitted with six 50-foot-long booms that were used to swing and damage enemy ships, besides employing Xianbei and other Chinese ethnic groups for the fight against Chen, Emperor Wen also employed the service of people from southeastern Sichuan, which Sui had recently conquered. In 588, the Sui had amassed 518,000 troops along the bank of the Yangtze River. The Chen dynasty could not withstand such an assault, by 589, Sui troops entered Jiankang and the last emperor of Chen surrendered. Although Emperor Wen was famous for bankrupting the treasury with warfare and construction projects. He established granaries as sources of food and as a means to market prices from the taxation of crops. The large agricultural surplus supported rapid growth of population to historical peak, the state capital of Changan, while situated in a military-secured heartland of Guanzhong, was remote from the economic centers to the east and south of the empire. Emperor Wen initiated the construction of the Grand Canal, with completion of the first route that directly linked Changan to the Yellow River, Later Emperor Yang would enormously enlarge the scale of the Grand Canal construction. Externally, the emerging nomadic Turkic Khaganate in the north posed a threat to the newly founded dynasty
9.
Gifu
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Gifu is a city located in the south-central portion of Gifu Prefecture, Japan, and serves as the prefectural capital. The city has played an important role in Japans history because of its location in the middle of the country, during the Sengoku period, various warlords, including Oda Nobunaga, used the area as a base in an attempt to unify and control Japan. Gifu continued to flourish even after Japans unification as both an important shukuba along the Edo period Nakasendō and, later, as one of Japans fashion centers. Before becoming a city, it was part of the former Atsumi District. Mount Kinka, one of the major symbols, is home to a nationally designated forest and Gifu Castle. Gifu also hosts festivals and events throughout the year. Two major rail lines connect Gifu to Japans national and international transportation infrastructure, JR Centrals Tōkaidō Main Line runs through the city, connecting it with Nagoya, one of Japans largest cities, and the surrounding area. The city has a train route to Chūbu Centrair International Airport. Gifu has active relationships with six sister cities, as of July 2011, the city has an estimated population of 412,895 and a population density of about 2,000 persons per km2. The total area is 202.89 km², two archaeological sites in the city of Gifu have shown that the area around modern-day Gifu has had residents since pre-history because of Gifus location in the fertile Nōbi Plain. The Ryomonji and Kotozuka sites have produced large burial mounds that are representative of the late-Yayoi period, as civilization in Japan grew, permanent settlements began to appear and, eventually, the village of Inokuchi was established, which would eventually become the modern city of Gifu. Control Gifu and you control Japan was a common phrase during the Sengoku period, for over 200 years, the Mino Province was under control of the Toki Clan, a powerful regional clan. However, it would be Nobunaga that eventually absorbed Dōsans Saitō clan in the mid-sixteenth century and it was during Nobunagas reign of power that the area finally received its modern name. After consulting with a Buddhist priest, Nobunaga renamed the village and he took the first character from Qishan, the legendary mountain from which most of ancient China was unified. The second character means base of the mountain and comes from Qufu, though he was not originally from the area, Nobunaga chose to use Dōsans castle and mountain as his base of operations, which he renamed Gifu Castle and Mount Kinka, respectively. Gifus economy grew immensely during this period, primarily due to its location at the center of Nobunagas expanding empire, additionally, Nobunaga established Rakuichi Rakuza, a free market for his citizens to use, in direct response to the commercial monopoly of the areas temples and shrines. The liveliness of the town caused Louis Frois, a Portuguese Jesuit Missionary and guest of Nobunaga, following the death of Nobunaga, Gifus growth continued through the Edo period with the establishment of the Nakasendō as one of Tokugawas five routes. Although the route did not pass directly through Gifu, the nearby post towns of Kanō-juku and Gōdo-juku provided traffic and were amalgamated into the modern city of Gifu
