1.
Kunlun (mythology)
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This article is about the mythological mountain of Chinese traditional belief. For the real mountain range in China, see Kunlun Mountains, Kunlun Mountain, or known just as Kunlun, is an important symbol in Chinese mythology representing the axis mundi and divinity. The mythological Kunlun Mountain should not be confused with the real, different locations of Kunlun Mountain have been given in the various legends, myths, and semi-historical accounts in which it appears. These accounts typically describe Kunlun as the place of various gods and goddesses. Many important events in Chinese mythology took place on Kunlun Mountain, as the mythology related to the Kunlun Mountain developed, it became influenced by the later introduction of ideas about an axis mundi from the cosmology of India. Kunlun Mountain became identified with Mount Sumeru, the Kunlun mythos was also influenced by developments within the Taoist tradition, and Kunlun came to be perceived more as a paradise than a dangerous wilderness. A pole replaced a former mythic system which opposed Penglai with Guixu, the Chinese name Kunlun 崑崙 is written with characters combining the mountain radical 山 with phonetics of kun 昆 and lun 侖. Alternate names for Kunlun shan include Kunling 崑陵 and Kunqiu 崑丘, the term Kunlun may be semantically related to two other terms, Hundun, which is sometimes personified as a living creature, and kongdong, according to Kristofer Schipper. Grotto-heavens were traditionally associated with mountains, as hollows or caves located in/on certain mountains, the term Kunlun Mountain can be translated as Cavernous Mountain, and, the mythological Kunlun mountain has been viewed as a hollow mountain. The term Kunlun however had also used in old texts to refer to people. It was, for example, used to transcribe the southern people called Gurong, edward H. Schafer quotes the Old Book of Tang description. They are the men of the islands, great and small. They are very black, and expose their naked Figures and they can tame and cow ferocious beasts, rhinoceroses, elephants, and the like. Schafer notes that besides Kunlun, these southerners were occasionally written Gulong 古龍 or Gulun 骨論, but then she goes on to say, These uses of kunlun are unrelated to the name of the Kunlun Mountains. She then goes on to say how Kunlun was used to refer to places in Southeast Asia, some believed Kunlun to be located to the far west, in this case the alleged location was relocated further and further to the west, along with advances in geographical knowledge. E. T. C. Werner identifies Kunlun with the Hindu Kush mountain range, Kunlun Mountain has been described in various texts, as well as being depicted in art. The base of the Kunlun Mountain is said to penetrate as far into the earth, generally, accounts emphasize the difficulty of access to the mountain and even more to its more hallowed places, due to surrounding waters and steep cliffs of immense heights. Kunlun typically also has an association with various means to obtain immortality
2.
Summit
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A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a maximum in elevation. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak, and zenith are synonymous, the UIAA definition is that a summit is independent if it has a prominence of 30 metres or more, it is a mountain if it has a prominence of at least 300 metres. This can be summarised as follows, A pyramidal peak is an exaggerated form produced by ice erosion of a mountain top, Summit may also refer to the highest point along a line, trail, or route. In many parts of the western United States, the term refers to the highest point along a road, highway. For example, the highest point along Interstate 80 in California is referred to as Donner Summit while the highest point on Interstate 5 is Siskiyou Mountain Summit, geoid Hill List of highest mountains Maxima and minima Nadir Summit accordance Peak finder
3.
Tibet Autonomous Region
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The Tibet Autonomous Region or Xizang Autonomous Region, called Tibet or Xizang for short, is a province-level autonomous region of the Peoples Republic of China. Within China, Tibet is identified as an autonomous region, the current borders of Tibet were generally established in the eighteenth century and include about half of ethno-cultural Tibet. In 1950, the Peoples Liberation Army defeated the Tibetan army in a battle fought near the city of Chamdo, in 1951, the Tibetan representatives signed a 17-point agreement with the Chinese Central Peoples Government affirming Chinas sovereignty over Tibet and the incorporation of Tibet. The agreement was ratified in Lhasa a few months later, the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 and renounced the 17-point agreement. Tibet Autonomous Region was established in 1965, thus making Tibet an administrative division that is equivalent in status to a Chinese province. The Tibet Autonomous Region is located on the Tibetan Plateau, the highest region on earth, in northern Tibet elevations reach an average of over 4,572 metres. Mount Everest is located on Tibets border with Nepal, Chinas provincial-level areas of Xinjiang, Qinghai and Sichuan lie to the north, northeast, and east, respectively, of the Tibet AR. There is also a border with Yunnan province to the southeast. The PRC has border disputes with the Republic of India over the McMahon Line of Arunachal Pradesh, the disputed territory of Aksai Chin is to the west, and its boundary with that region is not defined. The other countries to the south are Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal. Physically, the Tibet AR may be divided into two parts, the region in the west and north-west, and the river region. On the south the Tibet AR is bounded by the Himalayas, the system at no point narrows to a single range, generally there are three or four across its breadth. Other lakes include Dagze Co, Namtso, and Pagsum Co, the lake region is a wind-swept Alpine grassland. This region is called the Chang Tang or Northern Plateau by the people of Tibet and it is some 1,100 km broad, and covers an area about equal to that of France. Due to its distance from the ocean it is extremely arid. The mountain ranges are spread out, rounded, disconnected, separated by flat valleys. The Tibet AR is dotted over with large and small lakes, generally salt or alkaline, due to the presence of discontinuous permafrost over the Chang Tang, the soil is boggy and covered with tussocks of grass, thus resembling the Siberian tundra. Salt and fresh-water lakes are intermingled, the lakes are generally without outlet, or have only a small effluent
4.
Qinghai
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Qinghai, formerly known in English as Kokonur, is a province of the Peoples Republic of China located in the northwest of the country. As one of the largest province-level administrative divisions of China by area, the province is ranked fourth-largest in size, but has the third-smallest population. Located mostly on the Tibetan Plateau, the province has long been a melting pot for a number of groups including the Han, Tibetans, Hui, Tu, Mongols. Qinghai borders Gansu on the northeast, Xinjiang on the northwest, Sichuan on the southeast, Qinghai province was established in 1928 under the Republic of China period during which it was ruled by Chinese Muslim warlords known as the Ma clique. The Chinese name, Qinghai is named after Qinghai Lake, the largest lake in China, the province was known formerly as Kokonur in English, derived from the Oirat name for Qinghai Lake. During Chinas Bronze Age, Qinghai was home to the Qiang people who made a living in agriculture and husbandry. The eastern part of the area of Qinghai was under the control of the Han dynasty about 2000 years ago and it was a battleground during the Tang and subsequent Chinese dynasties when they fought against successive Tibetan tribes. In the middle of 3rd century CE, nomadic people related to the Mongolic Xianbei migrated to lands around the Qinghai Lake. In the 7th century, Tuyuhun Kingdom was attacked by both the Tibetan Empire and Tang dynasty as both of them control over trade routes. Military conflicts severely weakened the kingdom and it was incorporated into the Tibetan Empire, after the disintegration of the Tibetan Empire, small local factions emerged, some under the titular authority of China. The Song dynasty defeated the Tibetan Kokonor Kingdom in the 1070s, most of Qinghai was once also a short time under the control of early Ming dynasty, but later gradually lost to the Khoshut Khanate founded by the Oirats. The Xunhua Salar Autonomous County is where most Salar people live in Qinghai, the Salars migrated to Qinghai from Samarkand in 1370. The chief of the four upper clans around this time was Han Pao-yuan and Ming granted him office of centurion, the other chief Han Shan-pa of the four lower Salar clans got the same office from Ming, and his clans were the ones who took Ma as their surname. From 1640 to 1724, a big part of the area that is now Qinghai was under Khoshut Mongol control and it was during the 1720s when Xining Prefecture was established and its borders were roughly those of modern Qinghai province. Xining, the capital of modern Qinghai province was built in this period as the administrative center, during the rule of the Qing dynasty, the governor was a viceroy of the Qing Emperor, but the local ethnic groups enjoyed much autonomy. Many chiefs retained their authority, participating in local administrations. The Dungan revolt devastated the Hui Muslim population of Shaanxi, shifting the Hui center of population to Gansu, another Dungan revolt broke out in Qinghai in 1895 when various Muslim ethnic groups in Qinghai and Gansu rebelled against the Qing. In July–August 1912, General Ma Fuxiang was Acting Chief Executive Officer of Kokonur, in 1928, Qinghai province was created
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.
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
7.
Gobi Desert
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The Gobi Desert is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia, the Gobi is most notable in history as part of the great Mongol Empire, and as the location of several important cities along the Silk Road. The Gobi is a rain shadow desert, formed by the Himalayan mountain range blocking rain-carrying clouds from the Indian Ocean reaching the Gobi territory, the Gobi measures over 1,600 km from southwest to northeast and 800 km from north to south. The desert is widest in the west, along the joining the Lake Bosten. It occupies an arc of land 1,295,000 km2 in area as of 2007, it is the fifth-largest desert in the world, much of the Gobi is not sandy but has exposed bare rock. The Gobi is a desert, with frost and occasionally snow occurring on its dunes. Besides being quite far north, it is located on a plateau roughly 910–1,520 metres above sea level. An average of approximately 194 millimetres of rain falls annually in the Gobi, additional moisture reaches parts of the Gobi in winter as snow is blown by the wind from the Siberian Steppes. These winds cause the Gobi to reach extremes of temperature ranging from −40 °C or −40 °F in winter to 45 °C or 113 °F in summer, the climate of the Gobi is one of great extremes, combined with rapid changes of temperature of as much as 35 °C. These can occur not only seasonally but within 24 hours, in southern Mongolia, the temperature has been recorded as low as −32.8 °C. In contrast, in Alxa, Inner Mongolia, it rises as high as 37 °C in July, average winter minimums are a frigid −25 °C while summertime temperatures are warm to hot, with highs that range up to 50 °C. Most of the falls during the summer. Hence, the icy sandstorms and snowstorms of spring and early summer plus early January, the Gobi Desert is the source of many important fossil finds, including the first dinosaur eggs. They are occasionally visited by snow leopards, brown bears, drought-adapted shrubs in the desert included gray sparrows saltwort, gray sagebrush, and low grasses such as needle grass and bridlegrass. Several large nature reserves have established in the Gobi, including Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park, Great Gobi A. The area is vulnerable to trampling by livestock and off-road vehicles, in Mongolia, grasslands have been degraded by goats, which are raised by nomadic herders as source of cashmere wool. The economic trends of livestock privatization and the collapse of the economy have caused people to return to subsistence rural lifestyles. Large copper and gold deposits located at Oyuu Tolgoi, about 80 kilometres from the Chinese border into Mongolia, are being investigated for development as mining operations
8.
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
9.
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
10.
Chinese postal romanization
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Postal romanization was a system of transliterating Chinese place names developed by the Imperial Post Office in the early 1900s. The system was in use until the 1980s. For major cities and other places that already had widely accepted European names, with regard to other place names, the post office revised policy several times. Spellings given could reflect the pronunciation, Nanjing pronunciation, or Beijing pronunciation. At a conference held in 1906 in Shanghai, the post office selected a system of romanization developed by Herbert Giles called Nanking syllabary, although Beijing dialect had served as a national standard since the mid-19th century, the system adopted was based on Nanjing pronunciation. The system corresponded to traditional romanizations that were adopted in the 18th century when Nanjing dialect was considered standard. French-appointed administrators ran the post office at time, and they sought a less anglicized alternative to Wade-Giles. An imperial edict issued in 1896 renamed the Maritime Customs Post, reorganized this agency as a postal service. In 1899, Robert Hart, as general of posts. Although Hart asked for transliterations according to the pronunciation, most postmasters were reluctant to play lexicographer. The spellings that they submitted generally followed a system created by Thomas Francis Wade, the system had been developed in 1859 and was based on the Beijing pronunciation. It became the method of romanizing Chinese after Herbert Giles published a dictionary, using the system. The post office published a draft romanization map in 1903, disappointed with the Wade-based map, Hart made another attempt to promote localism in 1905. He directed the postmasters to submit romanizations not as directed by Wade, local missionaries could be consulted, Hart suggested. However, Wades system reflected pronunciation in most areas served by the post office, a more serious disadvantage was that the French viewed Wades system as anglophone. The top position in the post office was held by Postal Secretary Théophile Piry, until 1911, the post office remained part of the Maritime Customs Service. As customs inspector general, Hart was Pirys boss, but French backing effectively gave Piry a postal fiefdom, Piry responded to Harts moves by organising an Imperial Postal Joint-Session Conference in Shanghai in the spring of 1906. As it was a joint postal and telegraphic conference, it allowed Piry to go over Harts head, the conference resolved that existing spellings would be retained for all names already transliterated
11.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
12.
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
13.
Mountain chain
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A mountain chain is a row of high mountain summits, a linear sequence of interconnected or related mountains, or a contiguous ridge of mountains within a larger mountain range. The term is used for elongated fold mountains with several parallel chains. While in mountain ranges, the mountain chain is common. Elongated mountain chains occur most frequently in the orogeny of fold mountains, other types of range such as horst ranges, fault block mountain or truncated uplands rarely form parallel mountain chains. However, if a truncated upland is eroded into a table land. The chain-like arrangement of summits and the formation of long, jagged mountain crests – known in Spanish as sierras – is a consequence of their formation by mountain building forces. In these fault zones, the rock, which has sometimes been pulverised, is easily eroded and these, so called longitudinal valleys reinforce the trend, during the early mountain building phase, towards the formation of parallel chains of mountains. The tendency, especially of fold mountains to produce roughly parallel chains is due to their rock structure, as a result of orogenic movements, strata of folded rock are formed that are crumpled out of their original horizontal plane and thrust against one another. The longitudinal stretching of the takes place at right angles to the direction of the lateral thrusting. The overthrust folds of a belt are formed in a similar way. Harder rock forms continuous arêtes or ridges that follow the strike of the beds and folds, the mountain chains or ridges therefore run approximately parallel to one another. They are only interrupted by short, usually narrow, transverse valleys, during the course of earth history, erosion by water, ice and wind carried away the highest points of the mountain crests and carved out individual summits or summit chains. Between them, notches were formed that, depending on altitude and rock-type, nappe or fold mountains, with their roughly parallel mountain chains, generally have a common geological age, but may consist of various types of rock. For example, in the Central Alps, granitic rocks, gneisses and metamorphic slate are found, the Northern Limestone Alps are, in turn, followed by soft flysch mountains and the molasse zone. In addition to height and climate, other factors are the layering of the rock, its gradient and aspect, the types of waterbody, for hard rock massifs, rugged rock faces and mighty scree slopes are typical. By contrast, flysch or slate forms gentler mountain shapes and kuppen or domed mountaintops, because the rock is not porous, orogeny Tectonics List of highest mountains on earth Wissen heute, Geologie. Kaiser-Verlag, Florence/Klagenfurt,1995 Der geologische Aufbau Österreichs, geologische Bundesanstalt, Springer-Verlag Vienna/ New York PanGeo, Erdwissenschaften in Österreich. Conference proceedings,200 pp. Sessions on the Neogene, TRANSALP I, salzburg,2005 Fischer-Lexikon Geographie, pp. 101–129, Frankfurt,1959 Großer Weltatlas, Enzyklopädischer Teil
14.
Asia
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Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometres, about 30% of Earths total land area and 8. 7% of the Earths total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Asia is notable for not only its large size and population. In general terms, Asia is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean, the western boundary with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. The most commonly accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal, the Ural River, and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains, China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 A. D. The accidental discovery of America by Columbus in search for India demonstrates this deep fascination, the Silk Road became the main East-West trading route in the Asian hitherland while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may actually have more to do with human geography than physical geography. Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties, the boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Suez Canal. This makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Asia, the border between Asia and Europe was historically defined by European academics. In Sweden, five years after Peters death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Urals as the border of Asia, the Russians were enthusiastic about the concept, which allowed them to keep their European identity in geography. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg, the latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century, the border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, the border between Asia and the loosely defined region of Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Malay Archipelago. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Malay Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the possessions of the various empires there. Lewis and Wigen assert, The narrowing of Southeast Asia to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process, Asia is larger and more culturally diverse than Europe. It does not exactly correspond to the borders of its various types of constituents. From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system on the grounds there is no or is no substantial physical separation between them
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Tibetan Plateau
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It stretches approximately 1,000 kilometres north to south and 2,500 kilometres east to west. Sometimes termed the Third Pole, the Tibetan Plateau contains the headwaters of the basins of most of the streams in surrounding regions. Its tens of thousands of glaciers and other geographical and ecological features serve as a water tower storing water, the impact of global warming on the Tibetan Plateau is of intense scientific interest. The Tibetan Plateau is surrounded by mountain ranges. In the west the curve of the rugged Karakoram range of northern Kashmir embraces the plateau, the Indus River originates in the western Tibetan Plateau in the vicinity of Lake Mansarovar. The Tibetan Plateau is bounded in the north by an escarpment where the altitude drops from around 5,000 metres to 1,500 metres over a horizontal distance of less than 150 kilometres. Along the escarpment is a range of mountains, in the west the Kunlun Mountains separate the plateau from the Tarim Basin. About halfway across the Tarim the bounding range becomes the Altyn-Tagh, in the V formed by this split is the western part of the Qaidam Basin. The Altyn-Tagh ends near the Dangjin pass on the Dunhuang-Golmud road, to the west are short ranges called the Danghe, Yema, Shule, and Tulai Nanshans. The easternmost range is the Qilian Mountains, the line of mountains continues east of the plateau as the Qin Mountains which separate the Ordos Region from Sichuan. North of the runs the Gansu or Hexi Corridor which was the main silk-road route from China proper to the West. The plateau is an arid steppe interspersed with mountain ranges. Annual precipitation ranges from 100 to 300 millimetres and falls mainly as hail, the southern and eastern edges of the steppe have grasslands which can sustainably support populations of nomadic herdsmen, although frost occurs for six months of the year. Permafrost occurs over parts of the plateau. Proceeding to the north and northwest, the plateau becomes progressively higher, colder and drier, here the average altitude exceeds 5,000 metres and winter temperatures can drop to −40 °C. The geological history of the Tibetan Plateau is closely related to that of the Himalayan mountain range, the Himalayas are among the youngest mountain ranges on the planet and consist mostly of uplifted sedimentary and metamorphic rock. Their formation is a result of a collision or orogeny along the convergent boundary between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Eurasian Plate. The collision began in the Upper Cretaceous period about 70 million years ago, since these sediments were light, they crumpled into mountain ranges rather than sinking to the floor
16.
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
17.
Altyn Tagh
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The western third is in Xinjiang while the eastern part forms the border between Qinghai to the south and Xinjiang and Gansu to the north. Altun Shan is also the name of a 5,830 metres mountain near the end of the range. Altyn Tag means Gold Mountain in Turkic, and Shan is Chinese for mountain, a series of mountain ranges run along the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. In the west are the Kunlun Mountains, about halfway across the south side of the Tarim Basin, the Altyn-Tagh Range diverges northeast while the Kunluns continue directly east, forming a relatively narrow V. Inside the V are a number of endorheic basins, the eastern end of the Altyn-Shan is near the Dangjin Pass on the Dunhuang-Golmud road in far western Gansu. East of the Altyn-Tagh the border range rises to the Qilian Mountains, the range separates the Tarim Basin, to the north, and Lake Ayakkum, to the south. The range can be divided into three portions, the southwest portion borders the Kunlun Mountains, is very rugged, with peaks reaching more than 6,100 metres and many perennial snow fields. The central portion is lower in elevation, around 4,000 metres, the eastern portion is higher in elevation, about 5,000 metres and consists of a group of smaller ranges oriented in a south-east to north-west trend. Along the northern side of the mountains ran the main Silk road trade route from China proper to the Tarim Basin, the Altyn-Tagh and Qilians were sometimes called the Nan Shan because they were south of the main route. Near the east end of the Altyn-Shan, the Gansu or Hexi Corridor ends, one branch follows the Altyn-Tagh along the south side of the Tarim Basin while the other follows the north side. There are a dearth of rivers and streams in these mountains, the western portion has some small streams that either head north into the desert or south into Lake Ayakkum. The remainder of the range is lacking in rivers, inside the V shaped area between the Altyn-Tagh and the main Kunlun range a number of endorheic basins are located. Within southeastern Xinjiang, the main of these basins is the Kumkol Basin The two main lakes in this basin are the saline Lake Aqqikkol and Lake Ayakum. These lakes are two of the few bodies of water in this extremely arid area, the area around them is officially protected as the Altun Shan Nature Reserve. The five highest peaks are Sulamutag Feng, Yusupu Aleketag Shan, Altun Shan, China National Highway 315 crosses the Altyn-Tagh on its way between Qinghai and Xinjiang. As of the late 2013, preliminary planning is conducted for the Kurla-Golmud Railway, the Columbia Gazetteer of the World. New York, NY, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-11040-5. de Ferranti, Jonathan, Jurgalski, Eberhard, Maizlish, Aaron. Archived from the original on 23 August 2010, hoiberg, Dale H. ed. A-erh-chin Mountains
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Qilian Mountains
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The range stretches from the south of Dunhuang some 800 km to the southeast, forming the northeastern escarpment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the southwestern border of the Hexi Corridor. The eponymous Qilian Shan peak, situated some 60 km south of Jiuquan, at 39°12′N 98°32′E, rises to 5,547 m. It is the highest peak of the range, but there are two higher peaks further south, Kangzegyai at 38°30′N 97°43′E with 5,808 m and Qaidam Shan peak at 38°2′N 95°19′E with 5,759 m. Other major peaks include Gangshiqia Peak in the east, the Nan Shan range continues to the west as Yema Shan and Altun Shan. To the east, it passes north of Qinghai Lake, terminating as Daban Shan and Xinglong Shan near Lanzhou, sections of the Ming Dynastys Great Wall pass along its northern slopes, and south of northern outlier Longshou Shan. The best known of these streams is the Ejin River, the characteristic ecosystem of the Qilian Mountains has been described by the World Wildlife Fund as the Qilian Mountains conifer forests. Biandukou, with an altitude of over 3500 m, is a pass in the Qilian Mountains and it links Minle County of Gansu in the north and Qilian County of Qinghai in the south. The Shiji mentions the Qilian mountains together with Dunhuang in relation to the homeland of the Yuezhi and this Qilian however has been suggested to be the mountains now known as Tian Shan,1,500 km to the west. Dunhuang has also argued to b the Dunhong mountain. Qilian is said to be as a Hunnic word meaning sky according to Yan Shigu, the mountain range was formerly known in European languages as Richthofen Range after Ferdinand von Richthofen, who was the Red Barons explorer-geologist uncle. The mountain range gives its name to Qinghais Qilian County, the Man Who Loved China, the Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. ISBN 978-0-06-088459-8 peakbagger. com Climatological Information for Qilian Shan
19.
Sima Qian
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Sima Qian, formerly romanized Ssu-ma Chien, was a Chinese historian of the Han dynasty. Sima Qian was born at Xiayang in Zuopingyi around 145 BC, Simas precise year of birth is still debated, but it is generally agreed that he lived most of his life during the reign of the Emperor Wu whose long reign lasted from 141-87 BC. His father, Sima Tan, around 136 BC received an appointment to the relatively low-ranking position of grand historian. The grand historians primary duty was to formulate the yearly calendar, identifying which days were ritually auspicious or inauspicious, and present it to the emperor prior to New Years Day. Besides these duties, the historian was also to travel with the emperor for important rituals. By his account, by the age of ten Sima was able to read the old writings and was considered to be a promising scholar, Sima grew up in a Confucian environment, and Sima always regarded his historical work as an act of Confucian filial piety to his father. In 126 BC, around the age of twenty, Sima Qian began a tour around China as it existed in the Han dynasty. He then went to seek the place of the legendary Xia dynasty rulers Yu on Mount Kuaiji. He then went north to Huaiyin to see the grave of Han dynasty general Han Xin, then continued north to Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, where he studied ritual and other traditional subjects. After his travels, Sima was chosen to be a Palace Attendant in the government, Sima married young and had one daughter. In 110 BC, at the age of thirty-five, Sima Qian was sent westward on an expedition against some barbarian tribes. That year, his father ill and could not attend the Imperial Feng Sacrifice. Suspecting his time was running out, he summoned his son home to complete the historical work he had begun. Sima Tan wanted to follow the Annals of Spring and Autumn - the first chronicle in the history of Chinese literature, fueled by his fathers inspiration, Sima Qian started to compile Shiji, which became known in English as the Records of the Grand Historian, in 109 BC. Three years after the death of his father, Sima Qian assumed his fathers position as Court Astrologer. In 105 BC, Sima was among the chosen to reform the calendar. As a senior official, Sima was also in the position to offer counsel to the emperor on general affairs of state. In 99 BC, Sima Qian became embroiled in the Li Ling affair, Emperor Wu attributed the defeat to Li Ling, with all government officials subsequently condemning him for it
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Records of the Grand Historian
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The work covers the world as it was then known to the Chinese and a 2500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the authors own time. The Records has been called a text in Chinese civilization. After Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, not least because by providing definitive biographies, the Records set the model for the 24 subsequent dynastic histories of China. The work that became Records of the Grand Historian was begun by Sima Tan, after his death in 110 BC, it was continued and completed by his son and successor Sima Qian, who is generally credited as the works author. Sima Qian is known to have completed the Records before his death in c.86 BC, with one copy residing in the capital of Changan. Details regarding the Records early reception and circulation are not well known, beginning in the Northern and Southern dynasties and the Tang dynasty, a number of scholars wrote and edited commentaries to the Records. Most 1st millennium editions of the Records include the commentaries of Pei Yin, Sima Zhen, the primary modern edition of the Records is the Zhonghua Book Company edition of 1959, and is based on an edition prepared by the Chinese historian Gu Jiegang in the early 1930s. There are two known surviving fragments of Records manuscripts from before the Tang dynasty, both of which are preserved in the Ishiyama-dera temple in Ōtsu, Japan, a number of woodblock printed editions of the Records survive, the earliest of which date to the Song dynasty. In all, the Records is about 526,000 Chinese characters long, making it four times longer than Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, Sima Qian conceived and composed his work in self-contained units, with a good deal of repetition between them. His manuscript was written on bamboo slips with about 24 to 36 characters each, even after the manuscript was allowed to circulate or be copied, the work would have circulated as bundles of bamboo slips or small groups. Endymion Wilkinson calculates that there were probably between 466 and 700 bundles, whose total weight would have been 88–132 pounds, which would have been difficult to access, later copies on silk would have been much lighter, but also expensive and rare. Until the work was transferred to many centuries later, circulation would have been difficult and piecemeal. Sima Qian organized the chapters of Records of the Grand Historian into five categories, the first five cover either periods, such as the Five Emperors, or individual dynasties, such as the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. The last seven cover individual rulers, starting with the First Emperor of Qin, Tables Chapters 13 to 22 are the Tables, which are one genealogical table and nine other chronological tables. Each table except the last one begins with an introduction to the period it covers, Hereditary Houses The Hereditary Houses is the second largest of the five Records sections, and comprises chapters 31 to 60. Within this section, the chapters are very different in nature than the later chapters. Many of the chapters are chronicle-like accounts of the leading states of the Zhou dynasty, such as the states of Qin and Lu. The later chapters, which cover the Han dynasty, contain biographies, Ranked Biographies The Ranked Biographies is the largest of the five Records sections, covering chapters 61 to 130, and accounts for 42% of the entire work
21.
Emperor Wu of Han
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Emperor Wu of Han, born Liu Che, courtesy name Tong, was the seventh emperor of the Han dynasty of China, ruling from 141–87 BC. His reign lasted 54 years — a record not broken until the reign of the Kangxi Emperor more than 1,800 years later. His reign resulted in vast territorial expansion, development of a strong and centralized state resulting from his governmental re-organization and it was also during his reign that cultural contact with western Eurasia was greatly increased, directly or indirectly. Many new crops and other items were introduced to China during his reign, Emperor Wu successfully repelled the nomadic Xiongnu from systematically raiding northern China, and dispatched his envoy Zhang Qian in 139 BC to seek an alliance with the Yuezhi of Kangju. This resulted in further missions to Central Asia, michael Loewe called the reign of Emperor Wu the high point of Modernist policies, looking back to adapt ideas from the pre-Han period. His policies and most trusted advisers were Legalist, favoring adherents of Shang Yang and these reforms had an enduring effect throughout the existence of imperial China and an enormous influence on neighboring civilizations. Emperor Wu was also known for his employment of shaman advisers, the personal name of Emperor Wu was Liu Che. The use of Han in referring to emperor Wu is a reference to the Han dynasty of which he was a part. His family name is Liu, the family or clan of the Han dynasty shared the family name of Liu, the family name of Liu Bang. The character Di is a title, this is the Chinese word which in imperial history of China means emperor, the character Wu literally means martial or warlike, but is also related to the concept of a particular divinity in the historical Chinese religious pantheon existing at that time. Combined, Wu plus di makes the name Wudi, the posthumous name used for historical and for religious purposes. One of Han Wudis innovations was the practice of changing names every so many years. Thus, the practice for dating years during the reign of Wudi came to be the nth year of the, when they got close to Han borders, She assassinated the general and claimed to Emperor Wu that he had defeated Joseon in battle. Emperor Wu, unaware of his deception, made him the commander of the Commandery of Liaodong. King Ugeo, offended, made a raid on Liaodong and killed She, in response, Emperor Wu commissioned a two-pronged attack against Joseon. Initially, Joseon offered to become a vassal, but peace negotiations broke down by the Chinese forces refusal to let a Joseon force escort its crown prince to Changan to pay tribute to Emperor Wu, Han took over the Joseon lands in 108 BC and established four commanderies. Also in 109 BC, Emperor Wu sent a force against the Kingdom of Dian. When the King of Dian surrendered, it was incorporated into Han territory with the King of Dian being permitted to keep his traditional authority, Emperor Wu established five commanderies over Dian and the other nearby kingdoms
22.
Classic of Mountains and Seas
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The Classic of Mountains and Seas or Shan Hai Jing, formerly romanized as the Shan-hai Ching, is a Chinese classic text and a compilation of mythic geography and myth. Versions of the text have existed since the 4th century BC and it is largely a fabulous geographical and cultural account of pre-Qin China as well as a collection of Chinese mythology. The book is divided into eighteen sections, it describes over 550 mountains and 300 channels, the exact author of the book and the time it was written are still undetermined. It was originally thought that figures such as Yu the Great or Boyi wrote the book. The first known editor of the Classic was Liu Xiang from the Western Han, later, Guo Pu, a scholar from the Western Jin, further annotated the work. The book is not a narrative, as the plot involves detailed descriptions of locations in the directions of the Mountains, Regions Beyond Seas, Regions Within Seas. The descriptions are usually of medicines, animals, and geological features, many descriptions are very mundane, and an equal number are fanciful or strange. Each chapter follows roughly the formula, and the whole book is repetitious in this way. It contains many short myths, and most rarely exceed a paragraph, a famous ancient Chinese myth from this book is that of Yu the Great, who spent years trying to control the deluge. The account of him is in the last chapter, chapter 18 and this account is a much more fanciful account than the depiction of him in the Classic of History. Earlier Chinese scholars referred to it as a bestiary, but apparently assumed it was accurate, in fact the information in the book is mythological. It is not known why it was written or how it came to be viewed as a geography book. The Classic of Mountains and Rivers has 18 chapters, chapter 4 has 12 subsections,2 and 4 have four, and chapters 1 and 3 have three. All 18 chapters can be classified into 4 categories, Classic of the Mountains, Classic of the Seas, Classic of the Great Wilderness, and Classic of Regions Within the Seas. It recorded more than 100 diplomatically related realms,550 mountains and 300 rivers, along with the geographic, the Classic of Mountains and Seas also recorded up to 277 different animals. The ancient Chinese treated the Classic as a record of geography, the Classic was classified under the category of geography in both Book of Sui and Comprehensive Examination of Literature of Duanlin Ma. It was also an important reference material of Chinese historians through the history of China. The Classic of Mountains and Seas is also the source and origin of the ancient Chinese mythology, some of them are popular and well known in Asian culture, such as Kua Fu, Nüwa, Houyi and Yellow Emperor
23.
Pamir Mountains
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The Pamir Mountains, or the Pamirs, are a mountain range in Central Asia at the junction of the Himalayas with the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, Hindu Kush and Hindu Raj ranges. They are among the world’s highest mountains, the precise extent of the Pamir Mountains is debatable. They lie mostly in Gorno-Badakhshan province of Tajikistan, to the north they join the Tian Shan mountains along the Alay Valley of Kyrgyzstan. To the south border the Hindu Kush mountains along Afghanistans Wakhan Corridor. Since Victorian times, they have known as the Roof of the World. The name Pamir is used commonly in Modern Chinese and loaned as simplified Chinese, 帕米尔, traditional Chinese, 帕米爾, pinyin. The three highest mountains in the Pamirs core are Ismoil Somoni Peak,7,495 m, Ibn Sina Peak,7,134 m, in the Eastern Pamirs, Chinas Kongur Tagh is the highest at 7,649 m. There are many glaciers in the Pamir Mountains, including the 77 km long Fedchenko Glacier, the longest in the former USSR, covered in snow throughout the year, the Pamirs have long and bitterly cold winters, and short, cool summers. Annual precipitation is about 130 mm, which supports grasslands but few trees, the East-Pamir, in the centre of which the massifs of Mustagh Ata and Kongur Tagh are situated, shows from the W-margin of the Tarim Basin an East-West extension of c.200 km. Its North-South extension from King Ata Tagh up to the North-West Kunlun foothills amounts to c.170 km. From this glacier area an outlet glacier has flowed down to the north-east through the Gez valley up to c.1850 m asl and this outlet glacier received inflow from the Kaiayayilak glacier from the Kongur-north-flank. From the north-adjacent Kara Bak Tor -massif the Oytag valley glacier in the same exposition flowed also down up to c.1850 m asl. At glacial times the glacier snowline as altitude limit between glacier nourishing area and ablation zone, was lowered about 820 to 1250 altitude metres against today. Under the condition of comparable proportions of precipitation there results from this a depression of temperature of at least 5 to 7.5 °C. Coal is mined in the west, though sheep herding in upper meadowlands are the source of income for the region. This section is based on the book by R. Middleton, about 138 BC Zhang Qian reached the Fergana Valley northwest of the Pamirs. Ptolemy vaguely describes a route through the area. From about 600 AD, Buddhist pilgrims travelled on both sides of the Pamirs to reach India from China, in 747 a Tang army was on the Wakhan River
24.
Tajikistan
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Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a mountainous, landlocked country in Central Asia with an estimated 8 million people in 2013, and an area of 143,100 km2. It is bordered by Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the south, the Republic of Uzbekistan to the west, the Kyrgyz Republic to the north, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan lies to the south, separated by the narrow Wakhan Corridor. Traditional homelands of Tajik people included present-day Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, a civil war was fought almost immediately after independence, lasting from 1992 to 1997. Since the end of the war, newly established political stability, Tajikistan is a presidential republic consisting of four provinces. Most of Tajikistans 8 million people belong to the Tajik ethnic group, many Tajiks also speak Russian as their second language. Mountains cover more than 90% of the country and it has a transition economy that is highly dependent on remittances, aluminium and cotton production. Tajikistan means the Land of the Tajiks, the suffix -stan is Persian for place of or country and Tajik is, most likely, the name of a pre-Islamic tribe. Tajikistan appeared as Tadjikistan or Tadzhikistan in English prior to 1991 and this is due to a transliteration from the Russian, Таджикистан. In Russian, there is no single letter j to represent the phoneme /ʤ/ and дж, Tadzhikistan is the most common alternate spelling and is widely used in English literature derived from Russian sources. Tadjikistan is the spelling in French and can occasionally be found in English language texts, the way of writing Tajikistan in the Perso-Arabic script is. The earliest recorded history of the dates back to about 500 BCE when much, if not all. After the regions conquest by Alexander the Great it became part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, northern Tajikistan was part of Sogdia, a collection of city-states which was overrun by Scythians and Yuezhi nomadic tribes around 150 BCE. The Silk Road passed through the region and following the expedition of Chinese explorer Zhang Qian during the reign of Wudi commercial relations between Han China and Sogdiana flourished. Sogdians played a role in facilitating trade and also worked in other capacities, as farmers, carpetweavers, glassmakers. Later the Hephthalite Empire, a collection of tribes, moved into the region. Central Asia continued in its role as a crossroads, linking China, the steppes to the north. It was temporarily under the control of the Tibetan empire and Chinese from 650–680, the Samanid Empire,819 to 999, restored Persian control of the region and enlarged the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara which became the cultural centres of Iran and the region was known as Khorasan. The Kara-Khanid Khanate conquered Transoxania and ruled between 999–1211, during Genghis Khans invasion of Khwarezmia in the early 13th century the Mongol Empire took control over nearly all of Central Asia
25.
Takla Makan
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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
26.
Karakash River
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The Karakash or Black Jade River, also spelled Karakax, is a river in the Xinjiang autonomous region of the Peoples Republic of China that originates in the disputed Aksai Chin region. The river begins above 19,000 feet about 7 miles northeast of Galwan Kangri peak in the Aksai Chin region of the historical Jammu and Kashmir region. It flows north to Sumnal, then turns sharply eastwards until just beyond Palong Karpo, when it turns sharply northwestwards and it flows past the towns of Sumgal, Fotash, Gulbashem, until it reaches Xaidulla. The Karakash River is famous for its white and greenish jade carried as river boulders and pebbles toward Khotan and this river jade originates from eroded mountain deposits of which the most famous one is near Gulbashen, in southwestern Xinjiang. The Karakash Valley was also a road for the north-south trade between Yarkand and Leh over the Karakoram Pass in Leh District of Jammu and Kashmir. Keriya River List of rivers in China List of rivers in Asia Indian subcontinent Hindu-tagh Geography of Ladakh
27.
White Jade River
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The White Jade River, also known by the native names Baiyu or Yurungkash, is a river in the southern Xinjiang region of China. The head waters of the rise in the Kunlun Mountains. The river flows east for some 200 km and then north for another 200 km before passing Khotan, the river drains an area of 14,575 km2 and has a discharge of 72.3 cubic metres per second. The river gets its name from the white jade that is found in its alluvial deposits. The jade can also however be found in areas of the river
28.
Hotan
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Hotan, also transliterated from Chinese as Hetian, is a major oasis town in southwestern Xinjiang, an autonomous region in western China. The city proper of Hotan broke off from the larger Hotan County to become an area in its own right in August 1984. It is the seat of Hotan Prefecture, with a population of 322,300, Hotan is situated in the Tarim Basin some 1,500 kilometres southwest of the regional capital, Ürümqi. It lies just north of the Kunlun Mountains, which are crossed by the Sanju, Hindutash, the town, located southeast of Yarkant County and populated almost exclusively by Uyghurs, is a minor agricultural center. The White Jade River still provides water and irrigation for the town and it provided a convenient meeting place where not only goods, but technologies, philosophies, and religions were transmitted from one culture to another. Tocharians lived in this region over 2000 years ago, several of the Tarim mummies were found in the region. At Sampul, east of the city of Hotan, there is a series of cemeteries scattered over an area about 1 kilometre wide and 23 km long. The excavated sites range from about 300 BCE to 100 CE, the tapestry had been cut up and fashioned into trousers worn by one of the deceased. An Anthropological study of 56 individuals showed a primarily Caucasoid population, DNA testing on the mummies found in the Tarim basin showed that they were an admixture of Western Europeans and East Asian. There is an abundance of information on Hotan readily available for study. The ancient Kingdom of Khotan was one of the earliest Buddhist states in the world and its capital was located to the west of the modern city of Hotan. The inhabitants of the Kingdom of Khotan, like those of early Kashgar and Yarkant, spoke Saka, khotans indigenous dynasty governed a fervently Buddhist city-state boasting some 400 temples in the late 9th/early 10th century—four times the number recorded by Xuanzang around 630. The kingdom was independent but was intermittently under Chinese control during the Han, after the Tang dynasty, Khotan formed an alliance with the rulers of Dunhuang. Through the 10th century, Khotanese royal portraits were painted in association with an number of deities in the caves. In the 10th century, Khotan began a struggle with the Kara-Khanid Khanate, some Khotanese Buddhist works were unearthed. The rulers of Khotan were aware of the menace they faced since they arranged for the Mogao grottoes to paint a number of divine figures along with themselves. Yūsuf Qadr Khān was a brother or cousin of the Muslim ruler of Kashgar and Balasagun, Khotan lost its independence, later it fell to the Kara-Khitan Khanate, after which it was ruled by the Mongols. When Marco Polo visited Khotan in the 13th century, he noted that the people were all Muslim and he wrote that, Khotan was a province eight days’ journey in extent, which is subject to the Great Khan
29.
Oasis
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In geography, an oasis is an isolated area of vegetation in a desert, typically surrounding a spring or similar water source, such as a pond or small lake. Oases also provide habitat for animals and even if the area is big enough. The location of oases has been of importance for trade and transportation routes in desert areas, caravans must travel via oases so that supplies of water. Thus, political or military control of an oasis has in many cases meant control of trade on a particular route. For example, the oases of Awjila, Ghadames, and Kufra, oases are formed from underground rivers or aquifers such as an artesian aquifer, where water can reach the surface naturally by pressure or by man-made wells. Occasional brief thunderstorms provide subterranean water to sustain natural oases, such as the Tuat, substrata of impermeable rock and stone can trap water and retain it in pockets, or on long faulting subsurface ridges or volcanic dikes water can collect and percolate to the surface. Any incidence of water is used by migrating birds, which also pass seeds with their droppings which will grow at the waters edge forming an oasis. It can also be used to plant crops, the word oasis came into English via Latin, oasis from Ancient Greek, ὄασις óasis, which in turn is a direct borrowing from Demotic Egyptian. The word for oasis in the later attested Coptic language is wahe or ouahe which means a dwelling place, people who live in an oasis must manage land and water use carefully, fields must be irrigated to grow plants like apricots, dates, figs, and olives. The most important plant in an oasis is the date palm and these palm trees provide shade for smaller trees like peach trees, which form the middle layer. By growing plants in different layers, the farmers make best use of the soil, many vegetables are also grown and some cereals, such as barley, millet, and wheat, are grown where there is more moisture. Great Man-Made River – the worlds largest irrigation project, developed in Libya to connect cities with fossil water. Guelta Mirage Oasification Qanat Wadi Water supply référence, Jardins au désert |Battesti, Jardins au désert, Evolution des pratiques et savoirs oasiens, Jérid tunisien, Paris, Éditions IRD, coll. À travers champs,2005,440 p. ISBN 2-7099-1564-2 Open Archives, book in free access / in French The dictionary definition of oasis at Wiktionary
30.
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
31.
Altyn-Tagh
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The western third is in Xinjiang while the eastern part forms the border between Qinghai to the south and Xinjiang and Gansu to the north. Altun Shan is also the name of a 5,830 metres mountain near the end of the range. Altyn Tag means Gold Mountain in Turkic, and Shan is Chinese for mountain, a series of mountain ranges run along the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. In the west are the Kunlun Mountains, about halfway across the south side of the Tarim Basin, the Altyn-Tagh Range diverges northeast while the Kunluns continue directly east, forming a relatively narrow V. Inside the V are a number of endorheic basins, the eastern end of the Altyn-Shan is near the Dangjin Pass on the Dunhuang-Golmud road in far western Gansu. East of the Altyn-Tagh the border range rises to the Qilian Mountains, the range separates the Tarim Basin, to the north, and Lake Ayakkum, to the south. The range can be divided into three portions, the southwest portion borders the Kunlun Mountains, is very rugged, with peaks reaching more than 6,100 metres and many perennial snow fields. The central portion is lower in elevation, around 4,000 metres, the eastern portion is higher in elevation, about 5,000 metres and consists of a group of smaller ranges oriented in a south-east to north-west trend. Along the northern side of the mountains ran the main Silk road trade route from China proper to the Tarim Basin, the Altyn-Tagh and Qilians were sometimes called the Nan Shan because they were south of the main route. Near the east end of the Altyn-Shan, the Gansu or Hexi Corridor ends, one branch follows the Altyn-Tagh along the south side of the Tarim Basin while the other follows the north side. There are a dearth of rivers and streams in these mountains, the western portion has some small streams that either head north into the desert or south into Lake Ayakkum. The remainder of the range is lacking in rivers, inside the V shaped area between the Altyn-Tagh and the main Kunlun range a number of endorheic basins are located. Within southeastern Xinjiang, the main of these basins is the Kumkol Basin The two main lakes in this basin are the saline Lake Aqqikkol and Lake Ayakum. These lakes are two of the few bodies of water in this extremely arid area, the area around them is officially protected as the Altun Shan Nature Reserve. The five highest peaks are Sulamutag Feng, Yusupu Aleketag Shan, Altun Shan, China National Highway 315 crosses the Altyn-Tagh on its way between Qinghai and Xinjiang. As of the late 2013, preliminary planning is conducted for the Kurla-Golmud Railway, the Columbia Gazetteer of the World. New York, NY, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-11040-5. de Ferranti, Jonathan, Jurgalski, Eberhard, Maizlish, Aaron. Archived from the original on 23 August 2010, hoiberg, Dale H. ed. A-erh-chin Mountains
32.
Min Mountains
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Min Mountains or Minshan are a mountain range in central China. It runs in the general direction through northern Sichuan and southernmost borderlands of Gansu. The highest elevation is Mount Xuebaoding,5588 m and the second highest is Mt Little Xuebaoding, the Min mountain range is a southern prolongation of the Kunlun Mountains that separates the basins of two major rivers of Sichuan, the Min River and the Jialing River. Both rivers flow in the southern direction, and are tributaries of the Yangtze. The Min Mountains are part of a mountainous region, Amne Machin, The range located to the far west, known to the ancient Chinese as Mount Jishi. Qionglai Mountains, The central part of the range to the west of the Min River Motian Mountains, The easternmost prolongation, according to the Records of the Grand Historian, the Xia Dynasty managed this mountain range as early as 2000 BC. The Lazikou Pass, a site of importance during the Long March, passes through the Min Mountains. The characteristic ecosystem of the Min Mountains and the Qionglai Mountains has been described by the World Wildlife Fund as the Qionglai-Minshan conifer forests
33.
Drainage divide
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A drainage divide, water divide, divide, ridgeline, watershed, water parting, is the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins. In hilly country, the divide lies along topographical ridges, and may be in the form of a range of hills or mountains. In flat country—especially where the ground is marshy—the divide may be harder to discern, a valley floor divide is a low drainage divide that runs across a valley, sometimes created by deposition or stream capture. Settlements are often built on valley-floor divides in the Alps, examples are Eben im Pongau, Kirchberg in Tirol and Waidring. Extremely low divides with heights of less than two metres are found on the North German Plain within the Urstromtäler, for example, between Havel and Finow in the Eberswalde Urstromtal. In marsh deltas such as the Okavango, the largest drainage area on earth, or in large areas, such as the Finnish Lakeland. Another case is bifurcation, where the watershed is effectively in the river bed, in pre-industrial times, water divides were crossed at portages. Later, canals connected adjoining drainage basins, a key problem in such canals is ensuring a sufficient water supply, category, Drainage basins List of watershed topics European watershed Scottish watershed River source
34.
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
35.
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
36.
Yellow River
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The Yellow River or Huang He is the second-longest river in Asia, following the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest river system in the world at the estimated length of 5,464 km. Originating in the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai province of western China, it flows through nine provinces, the Yellow River basin has an east–west extent of about 1,900 kilometers and a north–south extent of about 1,100 km. Its total basin area is about 742,443 square kilometers and its basin was the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilization, and it was the most prosperous region in early Chinese history. Early Chinese literature including the Yu Gong or Tribute of Yu dating to the Warring States period refers to the Yellow River as simply 河, the first appearance of the name 黃河 is in the Book of Han written during the Eastern Han dynasty about the Western Han dynasty. The adjective yellow describes the color of the muddy water in the lower course of the river. One of its older Mongolian names was the Black River, because the river runs clear before it enters the Loess Plateau, in Mongolia itself, it is simply called the Šar Mörön. In Qinghai, the rivers Tibetan name is River of the Peacock above sea level they are the two largest plateau freshwater lakes nationwide, flowing east at the eastern edge of the Amne Machin Mountains, the Yellow River enters Maqu County in Gansu. Here, the river skirts through the peat bog known as the Zoigê Wetlands. Flowing now along the edge of Amne Machin, the river reenters Qinghai. The valley section stretches from Longyang Gorge in Qinghai to Qingtong Gorge in Gansu, steep cliffs line both sides of the river. The water bed is narrow and the drop is large, so the flow in this section is extremely turbulent. There are 20 gorges in this section, the most famous of these being the Longyang, Jishi, Liujia, Bapan, the flow conditions in this section makes it the best location for hydroelectric plants. The Yellow River exits Qinghai for the second and final time in these gorges, downstream from the Yanguo Gorge, the provincial capital of Lanzhou is built upon the Yellow Rivers banks. The Yellow River flows northeasterly out of Gansu and into Ningxia before the Qingtong Gorge, after emerging from the Qingtong Gorge, the river comes into a section of vast alluvial plains, the Yinchuan Plain and Hetao Plain. In this section, the regions along the river are mostly deserts and grasslands, the Hetao Plain has a length of 900 km and width of 30 to 50 km. It is historically the most important irrigation plain along the Yellow River, the Ordos Loop formed by an enormous twist of the Yellow River, beginning at Zhongning County in Ningxia and ending with a drastic eastward turn at its confluence with the Wei at Tongguan in Shaanxi. However, the division for the middle reaches of the river run from Hekou in Togtoh County, Inner Mongolia, to Zhengzhou. The middle reaches are 1,206 km long, with an area of 344,000 square kilometers,45. 7% of the total, with a total elevation drop of 890 m
37.
Yutian County, Xinjiang
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Yutian County or Keriya County is a county within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and is under the administration of the Hotan Prefecture. It contains an area of 39,023 km², according to the 2002 census, it has a population of 220,000. Its government is located at Keriya Town, the county derives its name from the Kingdom of Khotan, although the official name was written as 于阗 at the time. This was latter changed to 玉田 following the adoption of Simplified Chinese, Yutian County is dubbed the Home of Jade Yutian County was formed in 1882, its administrative center was Karakash, and Keriya was only a post station. In 1885, the center of the county was moved to Keriya. The ancient name of Keriya was Ganmi, the names Yutian and Ganmi were used by the Chinese envoy Zhang Qian in his 125 BCE report on his embassys travels. Yutian County consists of 2 villages and 13 parishes
38.
Kongur Tagh
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Kongur Tagh or Kongkoerh is at 7,649 m the highest mountain wholly within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Kongur Tagh is within a range called the Kongur Shan Kongur Tagh is located just north of Muztagh Ata, some sources use Kongur Shan mistakenly to refer to the peak itself. Due to its remoteness and being hidden by nearby peaks, Kongur was not discovered by Europeans until 1900, however, the building of the Karakoram Highway from Pakistan to China, which runs past nearby Tashkurgan and Karakul Lake, has now made it more accessible. Administratively, the Kongur Range is within Akto County, the first attempt to climb Kongur Tagh was made in 1956 but the party aborted the attempt when it realized it was beyond their abilities. The first ascent of Kongur Tagh was completed in 1981 by a British expedition consisting of Chris Bonington, Al Rouse, Peter Boardman and this is taken from the Guide to Mountaineering in China. Some Chinese authorities give it 7,719 m, but evidence against this higher elevation is given here. Kongur Tagh has a significant subpeak known as Kongur Tiube, 38°36′57″N 75°11′44″E, elevation =7,530 m. Ranked 47th It is moderately independent and it was first climbed in 1956. The Kongur Massif in Southern Sinkiang, the Geographical Journal, Vol.149, No
39.
Muztagh Ata
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Muztagh Ata, or Muztagata, is the second highest of the mountains which form the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. It is sometimes regarded as being part of the Kunlun Shan, not far to the north and east of this group are the lowlands of the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan Desert. The Karakoram Highway passes very close to both peaks as well as Karakul Lake, from which the mountain is conveniently viewed, the closest city is to the mountain is Tashkurgan, the westernmost town in China and very close to the border with Pakistan. According to Michael Witzel, the mentions the mountain Mūjavant. A Muža tribe is found in the Avesta in an eastern area that has vedic-like names. The name seems to survive as the impressive 7, 549-meter-high Muzh Tagh Ata Mountain in the Kirghiz, the Swedish explorer and geographer Sven Hedin made the first recorded attempt to climb Muztagh Ata, in 1894. Additional attempts were made in 1900,1904 and 1947, the last by the team of Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman who came close to the summit but were turned back due to cold. The first ascent of the peak was in 1956 by a party of Chinese. Beletskiy, via the west ridge, which is now the standard route, since the first ascent, many ascents of Muztagh Ata have been made. In 1980, a party led by Ned Gillette made a ski ascent/descent of the standard route, an ascent of the much harder south-east ridge was made in 2000, and a secondary route at the west side of the mountain was first climbed in the summer of 2005. Swedens Anneli Wester camped on the summit in 2011 after climbing the mountain solo, jill Neate, High Asia, An Illustrated History of the 7000 Metre Peaks, ISBN 0-89886-238-8. Himalayan Index Muztagh Ata on summitpost. org Muztagh ata Information muztagh ata informations Muztagh Ata in Kyrgyzstan
40.
Mount Imeon
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The term was used by Hellenistic-era scholars as Imaus Mount, even though non-Greek in etymology, and predating Alexander the Great. An alternative Northern Silk Road went from Kashgar to upper Alay Valley, Mount Imeon was famous for its lapis lazuli deposits in western Badakhshan, indicated on Shirakatsi’s map. The mines at Sar-e-Sang have been producing lapis lazuli for millennia now, supplying the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and Rome, and still yielding the world’s finest lapis. The Venetian adventurer Marco Polo visited the mines in 1271 during his famous journey to China, Imeon Range on Smith Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Mount Imeon. Roof of the World Bakalov, Georgi, little known facts of the history of ancient Bulgarians. 138 pp. ISBN 954-9942-29-5 Dobrev, Petar,158 pp. ISBN 954-604-121-1 Shirakatsi, Anania. Russian version, Армянская География VII века по Р. Х, tекст и перевод с присовокуплением карт и объяснительных примечаний издал К. П. Санктпетербург, Типография Императорской Академии Наук,1877, bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, US Department of State,2010
41.
Cimmeria (continent)
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Cimmeria was an ancient continent, or, rather, a string of microcontinents or terranes, that rifted from Gondwana in the Southern Hemisphere and was accreted to Eurasia in the Northern Hemisphere. It consisted of parts of what is today Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, Shan–Thai, Cimmeria rifted off Gondwana from east to west, from Australia to the eastern Mediterranean. It stretched across several latitudes and spanned a range of climatic zones. A large, ancient Mediterranean Sea was first proposed by Austrian palaeontologist Melchior Neumayr in 1883, Austrian geologist Eduard Suess named this Mesozoic ocean the Tethys, a mythical ocean which separated a mythical continent – Gondwanaland, home of the tongue-shaped flora – from a boreal continent. German geophysicist Alfred Wegener, in contrast, developed a concept of a single, global continent – the supercontinent Pangea – which, in his view, a wedge-shaped, east-facing Tethys within Pangea was, nevertheless, proposed by Australian geologist Samuel Warren Carey in 1958. This ocean was later identified as a succession of oceans separated by north-migrating terranes or continental blocks, Stöcklin also noted that an early Mesozoic or late Paleozoic rift separated the Iranian Plate from the Arabian Plate, and that another southern suture must be the remains of the Neo-Tethys Ocean. The opening of this ocean, Stöcklin realized, must have transformed Iran into a microcontinent. Those observations made Stöcklin the first to identify a part of what would later be known as Cimmeria. Iran belonged to neither continent but was part of the realm of Tethys, in the 1980s Turkish geologist Celâl Şengör finally extended Stöcklins Iranian microcontinent further west to Turkey and further east to Tibet and the Far East. Şengör also reused the name introduced by Suess in 1901, the Kimmerisches Gebirge – the Crimean or Cimmerian Mountains. These two orogenic systems are associated with two major periods of ocean closure, the earlier, northern, and much larger Cimmerides, and the later, southern. Cimmeria was the long continental archipelago that separated the two oceans before the Paleo-Tethys closed, furthermore, a distinction is often made between two more recent Tethyan domains, the Alpine Tethys and the Neo-Tethys. The Alpine Tethys, the domain in this scheme, separated south-western Europe from north-western Africa and was connected to the Central Atlantic. It is now closed and its suture encompasses the Maghrebids as well as the Apennines. The Neo-Tethys, the domain, opened between Arabia and the Cimmerian terranes. The East Mediterranean Basin and the Gulf of Oman are considered relics of the Neo-Tethys which is thus still closing and these two domains were connected east of Sicily until the end of the Jurassic. Carboniferous to Permian ophiolites along suture zones in Tibet and north-eastern Iran indicate that the margin of Paleo-Tethys was located here. It was slab-pull forces in the Paleo-Tethys that detached Cimmeria from Gondwana, the mid-ocean ridge in the Paleo-Tethys subducted under Eurasia, as evidenced by Permian MORB in Iran
42.
Triassic
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The Triassic is a geologic period and system which spans 50.9 million years from the end of the Permian Period 252.17 million years ago, to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.3 Mya. The Triassic is the first period of the Mesozoic Era, both the start and end of the period are marked by major extinction events. Therapsids and archosaurs were the terrestrial vertebrates during this time. A specialized subgroup of archosaurs, called dinosaurs, first appeared in the Late Triassic, the vast supercontinent of Pangaea existed until the mid-Triassic, after which it began to gradually rift into two separate landmasses, Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. The global climate during the Triassic was mostly hot and dry, however, the climate shifted and became more humid as Pangaea began to drift apart. The end of the period was marked by yet another mass extinction, the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event. The Triassic is usually separated into Early, Middle, and Late Triassic Epochs, from the east, along the equator, the Tethys sea penetrated Pangaea, causing the Paleo-Tethys Ocean to be closed. Later in the mid-Triassic a similar sea penetrated along the equator from the west, the remaining shores were surrounded by the world-ocean known as Panthalassa. All the deep-ocean sediments laid down during the Triassic have disappeared through subduction of oceanic plates, thus, the supercontinent Pangaea was rifting during the Triassic—especially late in that period—but had not yet separated. In North America, for example, marine deposits are limited to a few exposures in the west, thus Triassic stratigraphy is mostly based on organisms that lived in lagoons and hypersaline environments, such as Estheria crustaceans. At the beginning of the Mesozoic Era, Africa was joined with Earths other continents in Pangaea, Africa shared the supercontinents relatively uniform fauna which was dominated by theropods, prosauropods and primitive ornithischians by the close of the Triassic period. Late Triassic fossils are found throughout Africa, but are common in the south than north. The time boundary separating the Permian and Triassic marks the advent of an event with global impact. At Paleorrota geopark, located in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in these formations, one of the earliest dinosaurs, Staurikosaurus, as well as the mammal ancestors Brasilitherium and Brasilodon have been discovered. The Triassic continental interior climate was hot and dry, so that typical deposits are red bed sandstones and evaporites. Pangaeas large size limited the effect of the global ocean, its continental climate was highly seasonal, with very hot summers. The strong contrast between the Pangea supercontinent and the global ocean triggered intense cross-equatorial monsoons, the best studied of such episodes of humid climate, and probably the most intense and widespread, was the Carnian Pluvial Event. On land, the vascular plants included the lycophytes, the dominant cycadophytes, ginkgophyta, ferns, horsetails
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