1.
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
2.
Yangtze
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The Yangtze River, known in China as the Cháng Jiāng or the Yángzǐ Jiāng, is the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world. The river is the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country and it drains one-fifth of the land area of the Peoples Republic of China and its river basin is home to one-third of the countrys population. The Yangtze is the sixth-largest river by volume in the world. The Yangtze River plays a role in the history, culture. The prosperous Yangtze River Delta generates as much as 20% of the PRCs GDP, for thousands of years, the river has been used for water, irrigation, sanitation, transportation, industry, boundary-marking and war. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world, in recent years, the river has suffered from industrial pollution, agricultural run-off, siltation, and loss of wetland and lakes, which exacerbates seasonal flooding. Some sections of the river are now protected as nature reserves, a stretch of the upstream Yangtze flowing through deep gorges in western Yunnan is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In mid-2014 the Chinese government announced it was building a transport network, comprising railways, roads and airports. Because the source of the Yangtze was not ascertained until modern times, Yangtze was actually the name of Chang Jiang for the lower part from Nanjing to the river mouth at Shanghai. In modern Chinese, Yangtze is still used to refer to the part of Chang Jiang from Nanjing to the river mouth. Yangtze never stands for the whole Chang Jiang, Chang Jiang is the modern Chinese name for the lower 2,884 km of the Yangtze from its confluence with the Min River at Yibin in Sichuan Province to the river mouth at Shanghai. Chang Jiang literally means the Long River, in Old Chinese, this stretch of the Yangtze was simply called Jiang/Kiang 江, a character of phono-semantic compound origin, combining the water radical 氵 with the homophone 工. Krong was probably a word in the Austroasiatic language of local peoples such as the Yue, similar to *krong in Proto-Vietnamese and krung in Mon, all meaning river, it is related to modern Vietnamese sông and Khmer kôngkea. By the Han Dynasty, Jiang had come to any river in Chinese. The epithet 長, means long, was first formally applied to the river during the Six Dynasties period, various sections of Chang Jiang have local names. From Yibin to Yichang, the river through Sichuan and Chongqing Municipality is also known as the Chuan Jiang or Sichuan River, in the Hubei Province, the river is also called the Jing Jiang or the Jing River after Jingzhou. In Anhui Province, the takes on the local name Wan Jiang after the shorthand name for Anhui. And Yangzi Jiang t 揚子江s 扬子江, p Yángzǐjiāng) or the Yangzi River, the name likely comes from an ancient ferry crossing called Yangzi or Yangzijin
3.
Yangtze River Delta
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The area lies at the heart of the region traditionally called Jiangnan. The Yangtze River drains into the East China Sea, the urban build-up in the area has given rise to what may be the largest concentration of adjacent metropolitan areas in the world. It covers an area of 99,600 square kilometres and is home to over 115 million people as of 2013, if based on the greater Yangtze River Delta zone, it has over 140 million people in this region. Having a fertile soil, the Yangtze River Delta abundantly produces grain, cotton, hemp, Hangzhou served as the Chinese capital during the Southern Song dynasty, and Nanjing was the early capital of the Ming dynasty before the Yongle Emperor moved the capital to Beijing in 1421. Other key cities of the region in pre-modern times include Suzhou, the ancient Suzhou was the capital of the Wu state, and the ancient Shaoxing was the capital of the Yue state. Nanjing first served as a capital in the Three Kingdoms period as the capital of Eastern Wu, in these periods, there were several concomitant states or empires in China and each one had its own capital. The delta is one of the most densely populated regions on earth, most of the people in this region speak Wu Chinese as their mother tongue, in addition to Mandarin. Wu is mutually unintelligible with other varieties of Chinese, including Mandarin, the area of the Yangtze River Delta incorporates more than twenty relatively developed cities in three provinces. The term can be used to refer to the entire region extending as far north as Lianyungang, Jiangsu and as far south as Wenzhou. The region includes some of the economies in China in recent years. Since the ninth century, the Yangtze Delta has been the most populous area in China, East Asia, Ningbo became one of the two biggest seaports in East Asia along with Quanzhou. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the became a large economic centre for the country. During the Qianlong era of the Qing dynasty, Shanghai began developing rapidly, from late 19th century to early 20th century, Shanghai was the biggest commercial centre in the Far East. The Yangtze River Delta became the first industrialized area in China and it is the centre of Chinese economic development, and surpasses other concentrations of metropolitan areas in China in terms of economic growth, productivity and per capita income. In 1982, the Chinese government set up the Shanghai Economic Area, besides Shanghai, four cities in Jiangsu and five cities in Zhejiang were included. In 1992, a 14-city cooperative joint meeting was launched, besides the previous 10 cities, the members included Nanjing, Zhenjiang and Yangzhou in Jiangsu, and Zhoushan in Zhejiang. In 1997, the joint meeting resulted in the establishment of the Yangtze River Delta Economic Coordination Association. In 2003, Taizhou in Zhejiang also joined the association, in 2010, the association accepted six new members after a six-year observation and review, including Yancheng and Huaian in Jiangsu, Jinhua and Quzhou in Zhejiang, and Maanshan and Hefei in Anhui
4.
Jiangsu
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Jiangsu, formerly romanized as Kiangsu, is an eastern-central coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. It is one of the provinces in manufacturing electronics and apparel items. Jiangsu is the third smallest, but the fifth most populous, Jiangsu has the second-highest GDP of Chinese provinces, after Guangdong. Jiangsu borders Shandong in the north, Anhui to the west, Jiangsu has a coastline of over 1,000 kilometres along the Yellow Sea, and the Yangtze River passes through the southern part of the province. Since the Sui and Tang dynasties, Jiangsu has been an economic and commercial center. Cities such as Yangzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou and Shanghai are all major Chinese economic hubs, since the initiation of economic reforms in 1990, Jiangsu has become a focal point for economic development. It is widely regarded as Chinas most developed province measured by its Human Development Index, Jiangsu is home to many of the worlds leading exporters of electronic equipment, chemicals and textiles. It has also been Chinas largest recipient of foreign investment since 2006. Its 2014 nominal GDP was more than 1 trillion US dollars and its name is a compound of the first elements of the names of the two cities of Jiangning and Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is 苏, the character of its name. The state of Wu was subjugated in 473 BC by the state of Yue, Yue was in turn subjugated by the powerful state of Chu from the west in 333 BC. Eventually the state of Qin swept away all the other states, during the Three Kingdoms period, southern Jiangsu became the base of the Eastern Wu whose capital, Jiankang, is modern Nanjing. When nomadic invasions overran northern China in the 4th century, the court of the Jin Dynasty moved to Jiankang. Cities in southern and central Jiangsu swelled with the influx of migrants from the north, Jiankang remained as the capital for four successive Southern Dynasties and became the largest commercial and cultural center in China. The Tang Dynasty relied on southern Jiangsu for annual deliveries of grain and it was during the Song Dynasty, which saw the development of a wealthy mercantile class and emergent market economy in China, that south Jiangsu emerged as a center of trade. From then onwards, south Jiangsu, especially cities like Suzhou or Yangzhou, would be synonymous with opulence. Today south Jiangsu remains one of the richest parts of China, the Mongols took control of China in the thirteenth century. The Ming Dynasty, which was established in 1368 after driving out the Mongols who had occupied China, following a coup by Zhu Di, however, the capital was moved to Beijing, far to the north
5.
Anhui
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Anhui is a landlocked province of the Peoples Republic of China located in the eastern region of the country. The name Anhui derives from the names of two cities, Anqing and Huizhou, the abbreviation for Anhui is Chinese, 皖, pinyin, wǎn after the historical State of Wan, Mount Wan, and the Wan river. The province of Anhui was formed in the 17th century, before then, there was no coherent concept of Anhui. In terms of culture, Northern Anhui was firmly a part of the North China Plain together with modern-day Henan province, northern Jiangsu, Central Anhui was densely populated and constituted mostly of fertile land from the Huai River watershed. In contrast, the culture of Southern Anhui, bordered mostly along the Yangtze, was closer to Jiangxi, the hills of southeastern Anhui formed a unique and distinct cultural sphere of its own. In the 2007 book China Road, author Rob Gifford stated that the Chinese refer to Anhui as a big agricultural province, according to Gifford, this is an euphemism for a very poor area and that people have referred to Anhui as the Appalachia of China. The north of the province is part of the North China Plain while the areas are part of the Huai River watershed. Both of these regions are flat and densely populated. The land becomes more uneven further south, with the Dabie Mountains occupying much of southwestern Anhui, the Yangtze River finds its way through south Anhui in between these two mountainous regions. The highest peak in Anhui is Lotus Peak, part of Huangshan in southeastern Anhui and it has an altitude of 1873 m. Major rivers include the Huai River in the north and the Yangtze in the south, the largest lake is Lake Chaohu situated in the center of the province, with an area of about 800 km2. The southeastern part of the province near the Yangtze River has many lakes as well, as with topography, the province differs in climate from north to south. The north is more temperate and has more clearcut seasons, january temperatures average at around -1 to 2 °C north of the Huai River, and 0 to 3 °C south of the Huai River, in July temperatures average 27 °C or above. Plum rains occur in June and July and may cause flooding, major cities, Anhui is divided into sixteen prefecture-level divisions, all prefecture-level cities, The sixteen prefecture-level divisions of Anhui are subdivided into 105 county-level divisions. Those are in turn divided into 1,845 township-level divisions, the Politics of Anhui Province is structured in a dual party-government system like all other governing institutions in mainland China. The Governor of Anhui is the official in the Peoples Government of Anhui. Agriculture in Anhui varies according to the zones that the province crosses. To the north of the Huai River, wheat and sweet potatoes are grown, while to the south of the Huai River it is rice, natural resources of Anhui include iron in Maanshan, coal in Huainan, and copper in Tongling
6.
Jiangxi
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Jiangxi is a province in the Peoples Republic of China, located in the southeast of the country. The name Jiangxi derives from the circuit administrated under the Tang dynasty in 733, the short name for Jiangxi is 赣, for the Gan River which runs across from the south to the north and flows into the Yangtze River. Jiangxi is also alternately called Ganpo Dadi which literally means the Great Land of Gan, Jiangxi is centered on the Gan River valley, which historically provided the main north-south transport route of south China. The corridor along the Gan River is one of the few easily traveled routes through the otherwise mountainous, as a result, Jiangxi has been strategically important throughout much of Chinas history. Jiangxi was outside the sphere of influence of early Chinese civilization during the Shang dynasty and it is likely that peoples collectively known as the Baiyue inhabited the region. During the Spring and Autumn period, the part of modern Jiangxi formed the western frontier of the state of Wu. After Wu was conquered by the state of Yue in 473 BC, Chu subjugated Yue in 333 BC. In 223 BC, when Qin conquered Chu, majority of Jiangxi area was recorded to be put under Jiujiang Commandary situated in Shouchun, however the commandary was ineffective and ended shortly when Qin falls. It was named after the Yuzhang River, the name of Gan River. Gan has become the abbreviation of the province, in 201, eight counties were added to the original seven of Qin, and three more were established in later years. Throughout most of the Han dynasty the commanderys eighteen counties covered most of the province of Jiangxi. The county seats of Nanchang, Gan, Yudu, Luling among others were located at the sites of major cities. Other counties, however, have moved or abolished in later centuries. Under the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, Yuzhang Commandery was assigned to Yangzhou Province, in 291 AD, during the Western Jin dynasty, Jiangxi became its own Zhou called Jiangzhou. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Jiangxi was under the control of the dynasties. During the Sui dynasty, there were seven commanderies and twenty-four counties in Jiangxi, during the Tang dynasty, another commandery and fourteen counties were added. Commanderies were then abolished, becoming zhou, circuits were established during the Tang dynasty as a new top-level administrative division. At first Jiangxi was part of the Jiangnan Circuit, in 733, this circuit was divided into western and eastern halves
7.
Zhejiang
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Zhejiang, formerly romanized as Chekiang, is an eastern coastal province of China. The provinces name derives from the Zhe River, the name of the Qiantang River which flows past Hangzhou. Kuahuqiao culture was a neolithic culture that flourished in Hangzhou area in 6. Zhejiang was the site of the Neolithic cultures of the Hemudu, the area of modern Zhejiang was outside the major sphere of influence of the Shang civilization during the second millennium BC. Instead, this area was populated by peoples known as Dongyue. The kingdom of Yue began to appear in the chronicles and records written during the Spring, according to the chronicles, the kingdom of Yue was in northern Zhejiang. Shiji claims that its leaders were descended from the Shang founder Yu the Great, the Song of the Yue Boatman was transliterated into Chinese and recorded by authors in north China or inland China of Hebei and Henan around 528 BC. The song shows that the Yue people spoke a language that was mutually unintelligible with the dialects spoken in north, the Sword of Goujian bears bird-worm seal script. Yuenü was a swordswoman from the state of Yue, to check the growth of the kingdom of Wu, Chu pursued a policy of strengthening Yue. Under King Goujian, Yue recovered from its early reverses and fully annexed the lands of its rival in 473 BC, the Yue kings then moved their capital center from their original home around Mount Kuaiji in present-day Shaoxing to the former Wu capital at present-day Suzhou. With no southern power to turn against Yue, Chu opposed it directly and, in 333 BC, yues former lands were annexed by the Qin Empire in 222 BC and organized into a commandery named for Kuaiji in Zhejiang but initially headquartered in Wu in Jiangsu. Kuaiji Commandery was the power base for Xiang Liang and Xiang Yus rebellion against the Qin Empire which initially succeeded in restoring the kingdom of Chu. At the beginning of the Three Kingdoms era, Zhejiang was home to the warlords Yan Baihu and Wang Lang prior to their defeat by Sun Ce and Sun Quan, who eventually established the Kingdom of Wu. Despite the removal of their court from Kuaiji to Jianye, they continued development of the region, industrial kilns were established and trade reached as far as Manchuria and Funan. Zhejiang was part of the Wu during the Three Kingdoms, Wu, commonly known as Eastern Wu or Sun Wu, had been the economically most developed state among the Three Kingdoms. The historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms records that Zhejiang had the best-equipped, the story depicts how the states of Wei and Shu, lack of material resources, avoided direct confrontation with the Wu. In armed military conflicts with Wu, the two states relied intensively on tactics of camouflage and deception to steal Wus military resources including arrows and bows, the other two centers in the south were Jiankang and Chengdu. In 589, Qiantang was raised in status and renamed Hangzhou, some may have lost social privilege, and took refugee in areas south to Yangtze River
8.
Ningbo
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Ningbo, formerly written Ningpo, is a sub-provincial city in northeast Zhejiang province in China. It comprises the districts of Ningbo proper, three satellite cities, and a number of rural counties including islands in Hangzhou Bay and the East China Sea. Its port, spread across locations, is among the busiest in the world. As of the 2010 census, the entire administrated area had a population of 7.6 million, with 3.5 million in the six urban districts of Ningbo proper. To the north, Hangzhou Bay separates Ningbo from Shanghai, to the east lies Zhoushan in the East China Sea, on the west and south, Ningbo borders Shaoxing, the first character in the citys name ning means serene, while its second character bo translates to waves. The city is abbreviated Yǒng, after the Yong Hill, a prominent coastal hill near the city, the character ming was composed by two parts, representing two lakes inside the city wall, Sun Lake and Moon Lake. As a city with giant port, culture of Ningbo influences many countries near it, Ningbo is one of Chinas oldest cities, with a history dating to the Hemudu culture in 4800 BC. Since the Tang dynasty Ningbo was an important commercial port, arab traders lived in Ningbo during the Song dynasty when it was known as Mingzhou, as the ocean-going trade passages took precedence over land trade during this time. Another name for Mingzhou/Ningbo was Siming and it was a well known center of ocean-going commerce with the foreign world. These merchants did not intermingle with native Chinese, practicing their own customs and religion and they did not try to proselytize Islam to Chinese. Jews also lived in Ningbo, as evidenced by the fact that, after a flood destroyed Torah scrolls in Kaifeng. The city of Ningbo was known in Europe for a time under the name of Liampó. This is the spelling used e. g. in the standard Portuguese history, João de Barross Décadas da Ásia. The spelling Liampó is also attested in the Peregrination by Fernão Mendes Pinto, for the mid-16th-century Portuguese, the nearby promontory, which they called the cape of Liampó, after the nearby illustrious city was the easternmost known point of the mainland Asia. The Portuguese began trading in Ningbo around 1522, by 1542, the Portuguese had a sizable community in Ningbo. Portuguese activities from their Ningbo base included pillaging and attacking multiple Chinese port cities around Ningbo for plunder and they also enslaved people during their raids. The Portuguese were ousted from the Ningbo area in 1548, Ningbo was one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanjing at the end of the First Opium War between Britain and China. During the war, British forces took possession of the city of Ningbo briefly after storming the fortified town of Zhenhai at the mouth of the Yong River on October 10,1841
9.
Shaoxing
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Shaoxing is a prefecture-level city on the southern shore of Hangzhou Bay in eastern Zhejiang province, China. It was formerly known as Kuaiji and Shanyin and abbreviated in Chinese as 越 from the former inhabitants. Located on the bank of the Qiantang River estuary, it borders Ningbo to the east, Taizhou to the southeast, Jinhua to the southwest. As of 2010, its population was 4,912,339 inhabitants, among which,1,914,683 lived in the built-up metropolitan area of Hangzhou-Shaoxing, with a total of 8,156,154 inhabitants. Notable residents of Shaoxing include Wang Xizhi, the parents of Zhou Enlai, Lu Xun and it is also noted for Shaoxing wine, meigan cai, and stinky tofu, and was recently featured on A Bite of China. Its local variety of Chinese opera sung in the local dialect, in 2010, Shaoxing celebrated the 2, 500th anniversary of the founding of the city. Economically, the citys driven by manufacturing of textiles, electronics, Zhejiang has the fifth highest per capita GDP in the nation, with the city itself at 32nd nationally by GDP per capita. The city was first named Shaoxing in 1131 during the Southern Song dynasty, the name comes from the Shaoxing reign period of Emperor Gaozong of Song, and is a poetic term meaning inheriting the imperial task and resurging to prosperity. Modern-day Shaoxing lies north of the Kuaiji Mountains, which were an important center of the people of Yue during ancient Chinas Spring. Chinese legend connected them with events in the life of Yu the Great, around the early 5th century BC, the time of Yues famous king Goujian, his people began establishing permanent centers in the alluvial plain north of the hills. Following his freedom from captivity in Wu, Goujian commissioned his advisor Fan Li to erect a major fortification in the area of present-day Shaoxings Yuecheng District. Following Yues conquest of Wu, though, its royal court was removed to its former rivals capital until its own conquest by Chu in 334 BC. The commemorative stele he erected is now lost but was visited by Sima Qian during his 1st-century BC pilgrimage of Chinas historical sites and was preserved in his Records of the Grand Historian. The areas capital in present-day Yuecheng was then known as Kuaiji until the 12th century, the present site of Yus mausoleum dates to the 6th-century Southern Dynasties period. From the later Ming through the Qing, Shaoxing was famous for its network of native sons throughout the Chinese government bureaucracy, cooperating out of native-place loyalty. Under the Republic of China during the early 20th century, the prefecture was abolished, the prefecture-level city of Shaoxing administers three districts, two county-level cities and one county. Average Temperature,16 °C There are a number of historical places connected with the writer Lu Xun, xianheng Hotel, founded in 1894, mentioned in works by the novelist. In front of the gate is a statue of Kong Yiji, sanwei School, built around 1890, at the end of the Qing Dynasty
10.
Suzhou
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Suzhou, formerly romanized as Soochow, is a major city located in southeastern Jiangsu Province of East China, about 100 km northwest of Shanghai. It is an economic center and focal point of trade and commerce. The city is situated on the reaches of the Yangtze River. Administratively, Suzhou is a city with a population of 4.33 million in its city proper. Its urban population grew at a rate of 6. 5% between 2000 and 2014, which is the highest among cities with more than 5 million people. Founded in 514 BC, Suzhou has over 2,500 years of history, with an abundant display of relics, around AD100, during the Eastern Han Dynasty, it became one of the ten largest cities in the world mostly due to emigration from Northern China. Since the 10th-century Song Dynasty, it has been an important commercial center of China, during the Ming and Qing Dynasty, Suzhou was a national economic, cultural, and commercial center, as well as the largest non-capital city in the world, until the 1860 Taiping Rebellion. When Li Hongzhang and Charles George Gordon recaptured the city three years later, Shanghai had already taken its predominant place in the nation. Since major economic reforms began in 1978, Suzhou has become one of the fastest growing cities in the world. The citys canals, stone bridges, pagodas, and meticulously designed gardens have contributed to its status as one of the top tourist attractions in China, the Classical Gardens of Suzhou were added to the list of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1997 and 2000. Suzhou is often dubbed the Venice of the East or Venice of China, during the Zhou, a settlement known as Gusu after nearby Mount Gusu became the capital of the state of Wu. From this role, it came to be called Wu as well. In 514 BC, King Helü of Wu established a new capital nearby at Helü City, during the Warring States period, Helü City continued to serve as the local seat of government. From the areas it administered, it known as Wuxian. Under the Qin, it was known as Kuaiji after its greatly enlarged commandery, the name Suzhou was first officially used for the city in AD589 during the Sui dynasty. The character 蘇 or 苏 is a contraction of the mountain, the sū in its name refers to the mint perilla. The character 州 originally meant something like a province or county, Suzhou is the Hanyu Pinyin spelling of the Mandarin pronunciation of the name. Prior to the adoption of pinyin, it was romanized as Soo-chow, Suchow, Su-chow
11.
Wenzhou
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Wenzhou is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Zhejiang province in the Peoples Republic of China. Wenzhou is located at the south east of Zhejiang Province with its borders connecting to Lishui on the west, Taizhou on the north. It is surrounded by mountains, the East China Sea, and 436 islands, while its lowlands are almost entirely along its East China Sea coast, most of Wenzhous area is mountainous as almost 76 percent of its 11, 784-square-kilometre surface area is classified as mountains and hills. It is said that Wenzhou has 7/10 mountains, 1/10 water, Wenzhou, which translates to a mild and pleasant land, derives its name from its climate, as it is neither extremely hot in summer nor extremely cold in the winter. Originally known as Yongjia, Yung-chia or Yungkia, Wenzhou was a prosperous treaty port. Wenzhou people make up a number of ethnic Chinese residents of Italy, France. Wenzhou has a history which goes back to about 2500 BC, when it became known for its production as one of the cities of origin of celadon in ancient China. Around 760AD in Tang Dynasty, the founding emperor Emperor Gaozu of Tang named Yongkia by its current name Wenzhou because of its mild weather, throughout its history, Wenzhous traditional economic role has been as a port giving access to the mountainous interior of southern Zhejiang Province. In early European sources, the name Wenzhou-Fu or -Foo was often transcribed Ouen-tcheou-fou after the accounts of French-speaking missionaries, in 1876, Wenzhou was opened for tea exports, but no foreign settlement was ever established there. Between 1937 and 1942, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Wenzhou achieved importance as one of the few ports still under Chinese control and it declined in the later years of the war, but began to recover after coastal trade along the Zhejiang coast was re-established in 1955. When Guo Pu climbed to the top of West Guo Mountain in Wenzhou, he saw the range of mountains of Wenzhou together shaped as dipper and the city itself aside from mountains shaped as key. Therefore, Wenzhou is now nicknamed as the dipper city based on the popular geographical saying of the city mountains as dipper. Legends have it that during the time when Wenzhou was being established and developed, today, the Deer City District is the name of downtown Wenzhou and White Deer theater located at downtown is the most popular theater among the locals. Wenzhou is the city in China designed by the founder of Fengshui philosophical system Guo Pu. Nowadays, the local Wenzhounese people usually see Guo Pu as the architect, in 2003, the local Wenzhou government built and put up a statue of Guo Pu in downtown Wenzhou. Being the only city in China and the world designed by the pioneer of Fengshui, Wenzhou is usually considered as the city in China with the best Feng Shui condition. Other cities in China that are considered to possess excellent Fengshui nature are Beijing, Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, Kunming, Hengyang. However, none of these cities is designed entirely on the basis of philosophy of Fengshui or designed by the father of Fengshui Guo Pu, moreover, Wenzhou has an enormous cultural impact and influence on the history of China
12.
Zhenjiang
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Zhenjiang, formerly romanized as Chenkiang, is a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu Province, China. It lies on the bank of the Yangtze River near its intersection with the Grand Canal. It is opposite Yangzhou and between Nanjing and Changzhou, Zhenjiang was formerly the provincial capital of Jiangsu and remains as an important transportation hub. The town is best known in China and abroad for its fragrant black vinegar, zhènjiāng is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese name 鎮江 or 镇江, based on the names pronunciation in the Mandarin dialect. The name means Suppressing or Guarding the River and refers to the army garrisons placed in the city to protect Nanjing. The Postal Map used Chenkiang and it was known as Chen-chiang in the Wade-Giles system, other romanizations include Chin-keang-foo, Chen-kiang-fu, and Chinkiang. Former names include Jingjiang and Jingkou, Zhenjiang was the seat of feudal domains from the 8th century BC onwards, under the names Yi, Zhufang, and Guyang. After it was captured by the First Emperor of the Qin in 221 BC, a Chinese legend holds that the sites fengshui was so advantageous that the First Emperor ordered 3000 prisoners to dig a tunnel through one of Zhenjiangs hills to dissipate its qi. It became a seat during the middle of the 3rd century BC. The Sui took the city in AD581 and made it an important garrison on the lower Yangtze, in 595, it was made a commandery seat. Its importance grew with the construction of the Grand Canal, after which it served as the chief collection, the city flourished from the 10th to 13th centuries, when it produced fine silks, satins, and silverware for the Song emperors. The 11th-century scientist and statesman Shen Kuo composed his 1088 Dream Pool Essays during his retirement in an estate on the outskirts of the city. It was taken by the Mongolians during their 1275 campaign against the Song capital at Hangzhou, under the Yuan, some Nestorian Christians were reported living in the city. The city fell to Xu Da on 17 March 1356, under the Qing, Zhenjiang was a city of half a million surrounded by a circuit of brick city walls up to 35 feet high. It was captured by the British on 21 July 1842 during the First Opium War and after a fierce resistance, a decade later, massive floods of the Yellow River altered its course north of Shandong and closed the northern path of the Grand Canal. Soon after, the town was sacked by the Taiping rebels in 1853 and it was recaptured by the Qing in 1858 and opened as a treaty port in 1861. The population was estimated at 168,000 in 1904, the southern part of the Grand Canal was obstructed in the early 20th century, although by that point the city was connected by rail to Shanghai and Nanjing. From 1928 to 1949, while Nanjing served as the capital of the Republic of China, when the Communists won the Chinese Civil War and relocated the capital to Beijing, Nanjing resumed its role as Jiangsus capital
