1.
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
2.
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
3.
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
4.
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
5.
Uyghur language
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Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language family, like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and is a left-branching language with subject–object–verb word order. More distinctly Uyghur processes include, especially in dialects, vowel reduction. In addition to influence of other Turkic languages, Uyghur has historically been influenced strongly by Persian and Arabic, the modified Arabic-derived writing system is the most common and the only standard in China, although other writing systems are used for auxiliary and historical purposes. Unlike most Arabic-derived scripts, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet has mandatory marking of all due to modifications to the original Perso-Arabic script made in the 20th century. Two Latin and one Cyrillic alphabet are used, though to a much lesser extent. The Arabic and Latin alphabets both have 32 characters, the Middle Turkic languages are the direct ancestor of the Karluk languages, including Uyghur and the Uzbek language. Kagan Arik wrote that Modern Uyghur is not descended from Old Uyghur, rather, according to Gerard Clauson, Western Yugur is considered to be the true descendant of Old Uyghur, and is also called Neo-Uyghur. Modern Uyghur is not a descendant of Old Uyghur, but is descended from the Xākānī language described by Mahmud al-Kashgari in Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk, the Western Yugur language, although in geographic proximity, is more closely related to the Siberian Turkic languages in Siberia. Robert Dankoff wrote that the Turkic language spoken in Kashgar and used in Kara Khanid works was Karluk, robert Barkley Shaw wrote, In the Turkish of Káshghar and Yarkand. This would seem in many case to be a misnomer as applied to the language of Kashghar. Other Kara-Khanid writers wrote works in the Turki Karluk Khaqani language, yusuf Khass Hajib wrote the Kutadgu Bilig. Ahmad bin Mahmud Yukenaki wrote the Hibat al-ḥaqāyiq, after Chaghatai fell into extinction, the standard versions of Uyghur and Uzbek were developed from dialects in the Chagatai-speaking region, showing abundant Chaghatai influence. Uyghur language today shows considerable Persian influence as a result from Chagatai, Modern Uyghur religious literature includes the Taẕkirah, biographies of Islamic religious figures and saints. The Taẕkirah is a genre of literature written about Sufi Muslim saints in Altishahr, the shrines of Sufi Saints are revered in Altishahr as one of Islams essential components and the tazkirah literature reinforced the sacredness of the shrines. Anyone who does not believe in the stories of the saints is guaranteed hellfire by the tazkirahs and it is written, And those who doubt Their Holinesses the Imams will leave this world without faith, and on Judgement Day their faces will be black. In the Tazkirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams, Shaw translated extracts from the Tazkiratul-Bughra on the Muslim Turki war against the infidel Khotan. The Turki-language Tadhkirah i Khwajagan was written by M. Sadiq Kashghari, historical works like the Tārīkh-i amniyya and Tārīkh-i ḥamīdi were written by Musa Sayrami
6.
Uyghur Latin alphabet
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The Uyghur Latin alphabet is an auxiliary alphabet for the Uyghur language based on the Latin script. Uyghur is primarily written in an Arabic alphabet and sometimes in a Cyrillic alphabet, in January 2008, the ULY project was amended and identified by Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional Working Committee of Minorities Language and Writing. The letters in the ULY are, in order, The creators of ULY strongly emphasized that “the proposed alphabet should not replace nor should its introduction represent a new reform of the writing system and it is to be used solely in computer-related fields as an ancillary writing system”. The importance of having one-to-one correspondence between both Latin and Arabic is noteworthy, the different orthographies are compared in the following table. Below follows an example of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Uyghur, Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi Uyghur alphabets An Introduction to LSU
7.
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
8.
Kumtag Desert
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The Kumtag Desert, is an arid landform in northwestern China, which was proclaimed as a national park in the year 2002. The oval Tarim Basin with its central Taklamakan Desert is bounded on the north, west, on the east side the Kumtag is an unbroken plain about 100 miles from north to south that runs from the Taklamakan to Gansu and Mongolia. Many modern maps do not show a Kumtag in this sense which implies that the usage may be out of date, the Kumtag Desert is a section of the Taklamakan Desert which lies east-southeast of the Desert of Lop. It is on the side of the Kara-koshun and reaches north-eastwards as far as the vicinity of the town of Sa-chow. It is bordered by Dunhuang in the east, Tian Shan in the north and its southern rim is marked by a labyrinth of hills, dotted in groups and irregular clusters, worn down as it were to mere fragments of their former skeletal structure. Between these and the Altyn-Tagh, intervenes a broad latitudinal valley, beside these scrubby desert plants of the usual character maintain a precarious existence. Water reaching them in some instances at intervals of years only and this part of the desert has a general slope northwest towards the relative depression of the Kara-koshun. Administratively, the desert is located in the Ruoqiang County of Xinjiang and Aksai Kazakh Autonomous County and Dunhuang City of Gansu, a map published by the National Geographic Society shows a much smaller Kumtag. This is a rectangle with a northwest corner south of Lop Nor, an edge along the Altyn-Tagh. Near the northeast corner is the Jade Gate which is taken as the eastern end of the Great Wall. From space it appears as a belt of sand dunes. This is probably the 2500 square kilometer area mentioned below, the Kumtag Desert is expanding and threatening to engulf previously productive lands with its arid wasteland character. Several years prior the estimated size of the desert was 2500 square kilometres, but with recent expansion, the Kumtag Desert is continuing a process of expansion that is the result of centuries of overgrazing of this region that is beyond its carrying capacity. According to the AFP news report of November,2007, Towering sand dunes loom over the ancient Chinese city of Dunhuang. To mitigate the desertification, the town of Dunhuang has placed severe limitations on immigration, the prevailing winds in this region would appear to blow from the west and northwest during the summer, winter and autumn. Though in spring, when they certainly are more violent, they no doubt come from the northeast, both sets of phenomena lie parallel to one another, from this we may infer that the winds which prevail in the two deserts are the same. At the point where I crossed it the depression was 6 to 7 miles, wide, there was a concern that the megadunes characteristic of this area may shift, burying the railway. However, geological research indicated that the megadunes are mostly formed by solid subsoil, rather than just sand
9.
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
10.
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
11.
Townships of the People's Republic of China
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Townships, formally township-level divisions, are the basic level of political divisions in China. They are similar to municipalities and communes in other countries and in turn may contain village committees and villages, in 1995 there were 29,502 townships and 17,532 towns in China. Much like other levels of government in mainland China, the governance is divided between the Communist Party Township Secretary, and the county magistrate. The township party secretary, along with the party committee. The magistrate is in charge of administering the affairs of government. A township official is the lowest-level ranked official in the civil service hierarchy, in practice, however, a town is larger, often more populous, and less remote than a township. de http, //chinadataonline. org/cgepublic/cityclient16/
12.
Ruoqiang County
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Ruoqiang County is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China under the administration of the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture. It covers an area of 198,318 square kilometres, making it the largest county-level division in the country, as of 2005, the county had a population of 31,877, of which 18,957 were of Han ethnicity, while Uyghurs numbered 11,761. The county seat is in Ruoqiang Town and this is the location which less-detailed maps will label as Ruoqiang. It lies at an altitude of 848 metres, the ancient settlement of Charklik was located in what is today Ruoqiang County. The Charkhlik Revolt took place here in 1935 when Uyghurs revolted against the Hui-dominated Tunganistan, the county was established in 1902 but it was written as 婼羌 until 1959, when the present written form of 若羌 was adopted. The Uyghur name of the county, Çakilik, is transliterated in Chinese as 卡克里克, Ruoqiang County ranges in latitude from 36°00 to 41°23 N and in longitude from 86°45 to 93°45 E. It borders Qiemo County to the west, Yuli County, Piqan County, and Kumul to the north, the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai to the east, the populated areas are located mostly along the northern foothills of the Altyn-Tagh mountain range. North of this strip of irrigated agricultural settlement is the Taklamakan Desert, south, the Altyn-Tagh and Kunlun Mountains. The well known Lop Lake, these days usually dry, is located in the part of the county - the section officially known as Luobu Po Town. The southern part of the county, and Lake Jingyu and these lakes are among the few noticeable bodies of water in this extremely arid area, the area around them is officially protected as the Altun Shan Nature Reserve. Ruoqiang has a desert climate with extreme seasonal variation in temperature. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from −7.4 °C in January to 27.5 °C, precipitation totals only 29 millimetres annually, and mostly falls in summer. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 63% in March to 82% in October, China National Highway 218 China National Highway 315 Makan Map A Tourism Guide to Charklik / Ruoqiang - Ancient Kingdom and Outpost Gateway
13.
Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture
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It is the largest prefecture-level division nationally, with an area of 462,700 km2, even larger than its neighbouring province of Gansu. According to the 2000 census, Bayingolin has 1,056,970 inhabitants, when Bayingolin was first established in 1954, it was an area with the Mongols comprising 35% of the prefectures population. However, in 1960, the Chinese government annexed to it a neighbouring Uyghur area, after which the prefecture occupied one-third of Xinjiangs, due to steady immigration, the Han Chinese population has also increased significantly. In 1947, there were reportedly only 1,682 Han Chinese in Xinjiangs Eighth District, population by ethnicity Bayingholin directly controls 1 county-level city,7 counties and 1 Hui autonomous county. Torghut Makan Map Government website of Bayingholin Government website of Bayingholin Government website of Bayingholin
14.
Tarim River
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The Tarim River, known in Sanskrit as the Śītā is the principal river of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the Peoples Republic of China. It gives its name to the great Tarim Basin between the Tian Shan and Kunlun Mountains systems of Central Asia and it is the longest inland river in China with an annual flow of 4 to 6 billion cubic metres or 158.5 cubic metres per second. Its basin is home to nearly 10 million Uyghur and other ethnic minorities, the Tarim river and most of its tributaries flow down from the Himalayas. The name Tarim is applied to the river formed by the union of the Aksu River, flowing from the north, and Yarkand River, coming from the southwest, near the Aral City in western Xinjiang. The third river, the Khotan River comes to the junction area from the south. Another river of western Xinjiang is the Kashgar River, which falls into the Yarkand River some 37 kilometres upstream from the Yarkands merger with the Aksu. By another definition, however, Tarim starts at the Kashgar/Yarkand merger, the Tarim flows in an eastward direction around the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The word tarim is used to designate the bank of a river flows into a lake or that is not able to be differentiated from the sands of a desert. This is a characteristic feature of many rivers that traverse the sands of the Taklamakan Desert. Another characteristic of the rivers of the Tarim Basin, including the Tarim River itself, is their migration, that is. The total length of the Yarkand-Tarim river system is 2,030 kilometres, although, as the Tarim frequently changes its channel and it is shallow, unsuitable for navigation, and because of its heavy silt load, forms a braided stream near its terminus. Prior to the completion of reservoirs and irrigation works in the mid-20th century, the rivers waters now drain intermittently into Taitema Lake, which is located about 160 kilometres southwest of Lop Nur. The area of the Tarim River Basin is about 557,000 square kilometres, a considerable part of the Tarims course is unformed, following no clearly defined riverbed. The water volume of the course of the river diminishes as a result of extensive evaporation and water-diversion schemes. The Tarims low-water period is from October through April, the spring and summer high waters begin in May and continue through September as the snows melt on the distant Tian Shan and Kunlun mountains. The Lower Tarim Basin is an arid plain composed of alluvium, the basin is the driest region of Eurasia. The predominant part of it is occupied by the Taklamakan Desert, in addition, there are several comparatively small sand massifs with areas of from 780 to 4,400 square kilometres. Sand dunes are the predominant relief, precipitation in the Tarim Basin is extremely scanty, and in some years it is nonexistent
15.
Shule River
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The Shule River flows generally westwards through the Tibetan Plateau and the desert regions of northwestern China. Historically, the river reached farther west to Lop Nur, an intermittent salt lake in the Taklimakan Desert, large irrigation diversions off the river and the gradual desertification of the region have reduced its flow significantly. It rises as several streams in a valley on the side of the Qilian Mountains or Nan Shan. In its upper 310 kilometres the river flows generally NNW through deep, glacier-carved valleys and precipitous gorges into Gansu Province and it comes out of the mountains in Guazhou County, and spreads onto a massive inland delta or alluvial fan. Now known as the Shule proper, the river turns due west into an agricultural valley, north of Dunhuang, the largest city in the rivers basin, it disappears into the desert, after flowing some 540 kilometres. The dry river channel stretches about 350 kilometres further WSW to the seasonal Lop Nur basin, the Shules drainage basin covers about 102,300 square kilometres of land, but the contributing portions total only 20,197 square kilometres. There are many valleys and basins that would drain into the river during extreme floods. The average precipitation in the watershed is 200 to 300 millimetres per year, in the high mountain areas it can be up to 800 millimetres, mostly in the form of snow. In the deserts to the annual precipitation is usually below 100 millimetres and in some years. Most of the Shules water arises from glaciers, there are 347 glaciers in the upstream catchment area of the river encompassing a total area of 29.45 square kilometres. The annual runoff is approximately 1,083,000,000 cubic metres, because of a general warming trend in the region, the glaciers feeding the river could eventually melt completely, causing it to dry up. The river valley is cultivated and its flow is regulated by two reservoirs, Changma and Shuangta. There are also more than three additional hydropower/diversion dams on the river, the entire flow of the Shule is diverted directly downstream of the mountains into a canal that runs north-northeast across the delta, supplying farms in the valley to the north. This water is returned to the river, but irrigation usage has caused the river to dry up well before its historic terminus. It is surmised that a few years ago, the region was cooler and wetter. List of rivers of China Ruo Shui Tarim River
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.
Endorheic basin
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Such a basin may also be referred to as a closed or terminal basin or as an internal drainage system. However, in a basin, rain that falls within it does not flow out but may only leave the drainage system by evaporation. The bottom of such a basin is occupied by a salt lake or salt pan. Endorheic regions, in contrast to regions which flow to the ocean in geologically defined patterns, are closed hydrologic systems. Their surface waters drain to inland terminal locations where the water evaporates or seeps into the ground, endorheic water bodies include some of the largest lakes in the world, such as the Aral Sea and the Caspian Sea, the worlds largest saline inland sea. Most endorheic basins are arid, although there are notable exceptions, such as the Valley of Mexico, the Lake Tahoe region. Endorheic basins can be massively and rapidly affected by change and excessive water removal. An exorheic lake naturally remains at a level, so water flow into the lake may be many times more than is needed to maintain its present size. In contrast, an endorheic basin does not have enough inflow that it overflows to the ocean, endorheic lakes are bodies of water that do not flow into the sea. Most of the water falling on Earth finds its way to the oceans through a network of rivers, lakes, however, there is a class of water bodies that are located in closed or endorheic watersheds where the topography prevents their drainage to the oceans. These endorheic watersheds are often called terminal lakes or sink lakes, endorheic lakes are usually in the interior of a landmass, far from an ocean in areas of relatively low rainfall. Their watersheds are often confined by natural geologic land formations such as a mountain range, the inland water flows into dry watersheds where the water evaporates, leaving a high concentration of minerals and other inflow erosion products. Over time this input of erosion products can cause the lake to become relatively saline. Endorheic regions can occur in any climate but are most commonly found in desert locations, the Black Sea was likely such a lake, having once been an independent hydrological system before the Mediterranean Sea broke through the terrain separating the two. Lake Bonneville was another such lake, overflowing its basin in the Bonneville flood, malheur/Harney Lake in Oregon is normally cut off from drainage to the ocean, but has an outflow channel to the Malheur River that is normally dry, but flows in years of peak precipitation. Examples of relatively humid regions in endorheic basins often exist at high elevation and these regions tend to be marshy and are subject to substantial flooding in wet years. The area containing Mexico City is one case, with annual precipitation of 850 mm. Endorheic regions tend to be far inland with their boundaries defined by mountains or other features that block their access to oceans
18.
Salt marsh
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It is dominated by dense stands of salt-tolerant plants such as herbs, grasses, or low shrubs. These plants are terrestrial in origin and are essential to the stability of the marsh in trapping and binding sediments. Salt marshes play a role in the aquatic food web. They also support terrestrial animals and provide coastal protection, salt marshes occur on low-energy shorelines in temperate and high-latitudes which can be stable or emerging, or submerging if the sedimentation rate exceeds the subsidence rate. Commonly these shorelines consist of mud or sand flats which are nourished with sediment from inflowing rivers and these typically include sheltered environments such as embankments, estuaries and the leeward side of barrier islands and spits. In the tropics and sub-tropics they are replaced by mangroves, an area that differs from a marsh in that instead of herbaceous plants. Most salt marshes have a low topography with low elevations but a vast wide area, salt marshes are located among different landforms based on their physical and geomorphological settings. Such marsh landforms include deltaic marshes, estuarine, back-barrier, open coast, embayments, deltaic marshes are associated with large rivers where many occur in Southern Europe such as the Camargue, France in the Rhone delta or the Ebro delta in Spain. They are also extensive within the rivers of the Mississippi Delta in the United States, in New Zealand, most salt marshes occur at the head of estuaries in areas where there is little wave action and high sedimentation. Such marshes are located in Awhitu Regional Park in Auckland, the Manawatu Estuary, back-barrier marshes are sensitive to the reshaping of barriers in the landward side of which they have been formed. They are common along much of the eastern coast of the United States, large, shallow coastal embayments can hold salt marshes with examples including Morecambe Bay and Portsmouth in Britain and the Bay of Fundy in North America. They have a big impact on the biodiversity of the area, salt marsh ecology involves complex food webs which include primary producers, primary consumers, and secondary consumers. The low physical energy and high grasses provide a refuge for animals, many marine fish use salt marshes as nursery grounds for their young before they move to open waters. Saltmarshes across 99 countries were mapped by Mcowen et al, a total of 5,495,089 hectares of mapped saltmarsh across 43 countries and territories are represented in a Geographic Information Systems polygon shapefile. This estimate is at the low end of previous estimates. Mats of filamentous blue-green algae can fix silt and clay sized sediment particles to their sticky sheaths on contact which can increase the erosion resistance of the sediments. This assists the process of sediment accretion to allow colonising species to grow, as a result, competitive species that prefer higher elevations relative to sea level can inhabit the area and often a succession of plant communities develops. Coastal salt marshes can be distinguished from terrestrial habitats by the tidal flow that occurs
19.
Potash
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Potash /ˈpɒtæʃ/ is any of various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form. The name derives from pot ash, which refers to plant ashes soaked in water in a pot, the word potassium is derived from potash. Potash is produced worldwide at amounts exceeding 30 million tonnes per year, various types of fertilizer-potash thus constitute the single largest global industrial use of the element potassium. Potassium was first derived by electrolysis of caustic potash, in 1807, Potash refers to potassium compounds and potassium-bearing materials, the most common being potassium chloride. The term potash comes from the Middle Dutch word potaschen, approximately 10% by weight of common wood ash can be recovered as pot ash. Later, potash became the term applied to naturally occurring potassium salts. Potash ores are rich in potassium chloride and sodium chloride and are typically obtained by conventional shaft mining with the extracted ore ground into a powder. Other methods include dissolution mining and evaporation methods from brines, in the evaporation method hot water is injected into the potash which is dissolved and then pumped to the surface where it is concentrated by solar induced evaporation. Amine reagents are added to either the mined or evaporated solutions. The amine coats the KCl but not NaCl, air bubbles cling to the amine + KCl and float it to the surface while the NaCl and clay sink to the bottom. The surface is skimmed for the amine + KCl which is dried and packaged for use as a K rich fertilizer—KCl dissolves readily in water and is available quickly for plant nutrition. Potash deposits can be all over the world. At present deposits are being mined in Canada, Russia, China, Belarus, Israel, Germany, Chile, the United States, Jordan, Spain, Potash has been used in bleaching textiles, making glass, and making soap, since about AD500. Potash was principally obtained by leaching the ashes of land and sea plants, beginning in the 14th century potash was mined in Ethiopia. One of the worlds largest deposits,140 to 150 million tons, is located in the Tigrays Dallol area, Potash was one of the most important industrial chemicals in Canada. It was refined from the ashes of broadleaved trees and produced primarily in the areas of Europe, Russia. The first U. S. patent of any kind was issued in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus, Pearl ash was a purer quality made by the ignition of cream of tartar. Potash pits were used in England to produce potash that was used in making soap for the preparation of wool for yarn production
20.
Tocharians
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The Tocharians or Tokharians were Indo-European peoples who inhabited the medieval oasis city-states on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin in ancient times. Their Tocharian languages, a branch of the Indo-European family, are known from manuscripts from the 6th to 8th centuries AD and these people were called Tocharian by late-19th century scholars who identified them with the Tókharoi described by ancient Greek sources as inhabiting Bactria. Although this identification is now considered mistaken, the name has become customary. Agricultural communities first appeared in the oases of the northern Tarim around 2000 BC, some scholars have linked them with the Afanasevo culture of eastern Siberia. By the 1st century BC, these settlements had developed into city-states, overshadowed by nomadic peoples to the north and these cities, the largest of which was Kucha, served as waystations along the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan desert. From the 9th century, the people of the oases intermixed with the Uyghurs of the Kingdom of Qocho, around the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists recovered from oases in the Tarim Basin a number of manuscripts written in two closely related but previously unknown Indo-European languages. This term was derived from Indo-Iranian, the source of the term Tokharistan usually referring to 1st millennium Bactria. The Tókharoi are often identified by scholars with the Yuezhi of Chinese historical accounts. Nevertheless, Tocharian remains the term for the languages of the Tarim Basin manuscripts. Adams, the Tocharians may have called themselves ākñi, meaning borderers, marchers, the Tocharian languages are known from around 7600 documents dating from about 400 to 1200 AD, found at 30 sites in the northeast Tarim area. The manuscripts are written in two distinct, but closely related, Indo-European languages, conventionally known as Tocharian A and B, Tocharian A was found in the northeastern oases of Karasahr and Turpan. Some 500 manuscripts have been studied in detail, mostly coming from Buddhist monasteries, many authors take this to imply that Tocharian A had become a purely literary and liturgical language by the time of the manuscripts, but it may be that the surviving documents are unrepresentative. Tocharian B was found at all the Tocharian A sites and also in several sites further west and it appears to have still been in use in daily life at that time. Over 3200 manuscripts have been studied in detail, the languages had significant differences in phonology, morphology and vocabulary, making them mutually unintelligible. Tocharian A shows innovations in the vowels and nominal inflection, whereas Tocharian B has changes in the consonants, many of the differences in vocabulary between the languages concern Buddhist concepts, which may suggest that they were associated with different Buddhist traditions. The differences indicate that they diverged from a common ancestor between 500 and 1000 years before the earliest documents, that is, some time in the 1st millennium BC. Common Indo-European vocabulary retained in Tocharian includes words for herding, cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, horses, textiles, farming, wheat, gold, silver and wheeled vehicles. Thomas Burrow suggested that they come from a variety of Tocharian, dubbed Tocharian C or Kroränian, burrows theory is widely accepted, but the evidence is meagre and inconclusive, and some scholars favour alternative explanations
21.
Archaeology
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Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. In North America, archaeology is considered a sub-field of anthropology, archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology as a field is distinct from the discipline of palaeontology, Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world, Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time. The discipline involves surveying, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past, in broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Nonetheless, today, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, the science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts. Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, in Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Antiquarians, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, one of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other monuments in southern England. He was also ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings and he attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture, costume, and shield-shapes. Excavations were also carried out in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and even human shapes, however, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard, the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were overlooked. The father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington and he undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798, funded by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, one of the major achievements of 19th century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy. The idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton, the application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites
22.
Tarim mummies
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The Tarim mummies are a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 1800 BCE to the first centuries BCE. Victor H. Mairs team concluded that the mummies are Caucasoid, since then, numerous other mummies have been found and analysed, many of them now displayed in the museums of Xinjiang. Most of these mummies were found on the end of the Tarim Basin. Also found at Subeshi was a man with traces of an operation on his abdomen. Many of the mummies have been found in good condition, owing to the dryness of the desert. The mummies share many typical Caucasian body features, and many of them have their hair physically intact, ranging in color from blond to red to deep brown, and generally long, curly and braided. Their costumes, and especially textiles, may indicate an origin with Indo-European neolithic clothing techniques or a common low-level textile technology. Chärchän man wore a red tunic and tartan leggings. Textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who examined the tartan-style cloth, in 2007 the Chinese government allowed a National Geographic Society team headed by Spencer Wells to examine the mummies DNA. Wells was able to extract undegraded DNA from the internal tissues, between 2009-2015, the remains of 92 individuals found at the Xiaohe Tomb complex were analyzed for Y-DNA and mtDNA markers. Genetic analyses of the mummies showed that the Xiaohe people were an admixture from populations originating from both the West and the East, the maternal lineages of the Xiaohe people originated from both East Asia and West Eurasia, whereas the paternal lineages all originated from West Eurasia. Mitochondrial DNA analysis showed that maternal lineages carried by the people at Xiaohe included mtDNA haplogroups H, K, U5, U7, U2e, T and R*, also found were haplogroups common in modern populations from East Asia, B5, D and G2a. Haplogroups now common in Central Asian or Siberian populations included, C4, haplogroups later regarded as typically South Asian includedM5 and M*. The geographic location of this admixing is unknown, although south Siberia is likely, in trying to trace the origins of these populations, Victor Mairs team suggested that they may have arrived in the region by way of the Pamir Mountains about 5,000 years ago. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it now seems that they may be accurate, Chinese historian Ji Xianlin says China supported and admired research by foreign experts into the mummies. However, within China a small group of separatists have taken advantage of this opportunity to stir up trouble and are acting like buffoons. Some of them have even styled themselves the descendants of these ancient white people with the aim of dividing the motherland, but these perverse acts will not succeed. Barber addresses these claims by noting that The Loulan Beauty is scarcely closer to Turkic in her anthropological type than she is to Han Chinese
23.
Loulan Kingdom
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The term Loulan is the Chinese transcription of the native name Krorän and is used to refer to the city near Lop Nur as well as the kingdom. The kingdom included at various times such as Niya, Charklik, Miran. It was intermittently under Chinese control from the early Han dynasty onward until its abandonment centuries later, the ruins of Loulan are near the now-desiccated Lop Nur in the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang, and they are now completely surrounded by desert. A number of mummies, now known as the Tarim mummies, have found in Loulan. One female mummy has been dated to c.1800 BCE, in 126 BCE, the Chinese envoy Zhang Qian described Loulan as a fortified city near Lop Nur. In the Book of Han, the interactions of Loulan with the Han court were described in some detail. In the 2nd century BCE, Emperor Wu of Han was interested in extending contact with Dayuan after receiving reports of the country from Zhang Qian, however, according to Chinese sources, Han envoys to Fergana were harassed by Loulan and Gushi. In 108 BCE, Loulan was attacked by a Han force led by Zhao Ponu and its king captured, the Xiongnu, on hearing of these events, also attacked Loulan. The king of Loulan therefore elected to one of his sons as a hostage to the Xiongnu. The king of Loulan was then taken to the Han court, the Book of Han records, The Emperor commanded Wen to lead the troops by a suitable route, to arrest the king of Lou-lan and to bring him to the palace at the capital city. The Han emperor was satisfied with the statement and released the king, in 92 BCE, the king of Loulan died, and his countrymen requested that the kings son be returned to Loulan. However, the Han court had castrated his son for infringement of Han laws and so it refused the request, another king was installed in Loulan, and again a son was sent as hostage when demanded by the Han court. After the death of king, the Xiongnu returned the hostage son sent to them, named Chang Gui or An Gui. The Han, on hearing this, demanded that the new king present himself to the Han court and this, on his wifes advice, the king refused, on account of the fact that neither of the hostage sons sent to the Han court had been returned. In 77 BCE, the Chinese envoy Fu Jiezi was sent to kill the Loulan king after several Han envoys were intercepted and killed, the kings younger brother Weituqi was then installed as the king of Loulan by the Han court, and the kingdom was renamed Shanshan. After the Han dynasty had gained control of Loulan, the kingdom of Shanshan became a Chinese puppet state. The newly installed king, fearing retribution from the sons of the assassinated king, Chinese army officers were sent to colonise the area and an office of commandant was established at Yixun. A number of settlements in the Tarim Basin such as Qiemo and Niya were described in the Book of Han as independent states, while the name of the kingdom was changed to Shanshan by the Chinese, the Loulan region continued to be known as Kroran by the locals
24.
Silk Road
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While the term is of modern coinage, the Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative trade in silk carried out along its length, beginning during the Han dynasty. The Han dynasty expanded Central Asian sections of the routes around 114 BCE, largely through missions and explorations of the Chinese imperial envoy. The Chinese took great interest in the safety of their trade products, though silk was certainly the major trade item exported from China, many other goods were traded, as well as religions, syncretic philosophies, and various technologies. Diseases, most notably plague, also spread along the Silk Routes, in addition to economic trade, the Silk Road was a route for cultural trade among the civilizations along its network. The main traders during antiquity included the Chinese, Arabs, Turkmens, Indians, Persians, Somalis, Greeks, Syrians, Romans, Georgians, Armenians, Bactrians, in June 2014, UNESCO designated the Changan-Tianshan corridor of the Silk Road as a World Heritage Site. The Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative Eurasian silk and horse trade, the German terms Seidenstraße and Seidenstraßen were coined by Ferdinand von Richthofen, who made seven expeditions to China from 1868 to 1872. The term Silk Route is also used, although the term was coined in the 19th century, it did not gain widespread acceptance in academia or popularity among the public until the 20th century. The first book entitled The Silk Road was by Swedish geographer Sven Hedin in 1938, the fall of the Soviet Union and Iron Curtain in 1989 led to a surge of public and academic interest in Silk Road sites and studies in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Use of the term Silk Road is not without its detractors and he notes that traditional authors discussing East-West trade such as Marco Polo and Edward Gibbon never labelled any route as a silk one in particular. From the 2nd millennium BCE, nephrite jade was being traded from mines in the region of Yarkand, some remnants of what was probably Chinese silk dating from 1070 BCE have been found in Ancient Egypt. The Great Oasis cities of Central Asia played a role in the effective functioning of the Silk Road trade. This style is reflected in the rectangular belt plaques made of gold and bronze, with other versions in jade. The tomb of a Scythian prince near Stuttgart, Germany, dated to the 6th century BCE, was excavated and found to have not only Greek bronzes but also Chinese silks. Scythians accompanied the Assyrian Esarhaddon on his invasion of Egypt, soghdian Scythian merchants played a vital role in later periods in the development of the Silk Road. By the time of Herodotus, the Royal Road of the Persian Empire ran some 2,857 km from the city of Susa on the Karun to the port of Smyrna on the Aegean Sea. It was maintained and protected by the Achaemenid Empire and had postal stations, by having fresh horses and riders ready at each relay, royal couriers could carry messages the entire distance in nine days, while normal travellers took about three months. The next major step in the development of the Silk Road was the expansion of the Greek empire of Alexander the Great into Central Asia and this later became a major staging point on the northern Silk Route. They continued to expand eastward, especially during the reign of Euthydemus, there are indications that he may have led expeditions as far as Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan, leading to the first known contacts between [China and the West around 200 BCE
25.
Shanshan
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Shanshan was a kingdom located at the north-eastern end of the Taklamakan Desert near the great, but now mostly dry, salt lake known as Lop Nur. The kingdom of Shanshan included the walled town of Kroran near the northwest corner of Lop Nur. The site of Kroran covered about 10.8 hectares with a Buddhist pagoda about 10 metres high, numerous houses and it also include Charklik which is located near the modern town of Ruoqiang to the south-west of Lop Nur. It also includes the kingdoms of Cherchen, as well as Niya further to the south-west and it has been suggested that the name Cherchen may have been derived from Shanshan. In 126 BCE, the Chinese envoy, Zhang Qian described Loulan as a city near Lop Nur. The Xiongnu repeatedly contested the Han Chinese for control of the region well into the 2nd century CE. In 77 BCE, the Chinese envoy Fu Jiezi was sent to kill the Loulan king, named Chang Gui or An Gui, after several Han envoys were kidnapped and killed. He arrived on the pretext of carrying gold and valuables to the states and intending to give a presentation to the king. The kings younger brother Wei-tu-qi was then installed as the king of Loulan by the Han ruler, the newly installed king requested the presence of Han forces in Yixun, due to his fear of retribution from the sons of the assassinated king in Loulan. Chinese army officers were sent to colonise the area. In 25 CE it was recorded that Shanshan was in league with the Xiongnu, in 73 AD, the Han army officer Ban Chao went to Shanshan with a small group of followers, which was also receiving a delegation from the Xiongnu. Ban Chao killed the Xiongnu envoys and presented their heads to the King, Loulan was later recorded as a dependent kingdom of Shanshan in the 3rd century Weilüe. An inscription in the Kharoṣṭhī script was found at Endere, originally written around in the middle of the 3rd century CE, the inscription describes the king of Shanshan as a follower of Mahāyāna Buddhism — one who has set forth in the Great Vehicle. The king who this refers to was probably Aṃgoka, who was the most powerful king of Shanshan, according to Richard Salomon, there is every reason to believe that Mahāyāna Buddhism was prominent in Shanshan at this time and enjoyed royal patronage. More evidence of adoption of Mahāyāna Buddhism in Shanshan is seen in a letter inscribed in wood which dates to several decades later. The letter describes the Great Cozbo Ṣamasena as one who is, beloved of men and gods, honoured by men and gods, blessed with a good name, a military colony of 1,000 men was established at Loulan in 260 CE by the Chinese General So Man. The site was abandoned in 330 CE due to lack of water when the Tarim River, which supported the settlement, changed course, the fort of Yingpan to the northwest remained under Chinese control until the Tang Dynasty. Chinese rule continued into the Western Jin Dynasty and intermittently in later centuries and it was recorded that in 283 the son of the king was sent as a hostage to the Chinese court during the reign of Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty
26.
Marco Polo
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He learned the mercantile trade from his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time, the three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, returning after 24 years to find Venice at war with Genoa, Marco was imprisoned and dictated his stories to a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a merchant, married. He died in 1324 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Venice, Marco Polo was not the first European to reach China, but he was the first to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. This book inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travellers, there is a substantial literature based on Polos writings, he also influenced European cartography, leading to the introduction of the Fra Mauro map. Marco Polo was born in 1254 in Venice Republic and his exact date and place of birth are archivally unknown. Some historians mentioned that he was born on September 15 but that date is not endorsed by mainstream scholarship, Marco Polos birthplace is generally considered Venice, but also varies between Constantinople, and the island of Korčula. There is dispute as to whether the Polo family is of Venetian origin, the first recorded Polo is Venetian Domenico Polo who was mentioned in 971 regarding the prohibition of trade with the Arabs. Later other Polos were also mentioned in the service of the realm, whether they were related with the family of Marco Polo is uncertain, but this could indicate that his ancestors travelled between Venice and Dalmatia. Some of the first indications of where his family originated and were resident come from Venetian documents and manuscripts. Some scholars argued that this account could go along with the note from Il Milione that his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, the non-Venetian i. e. Sanuto also mentioned a captain from Korčula, Antonio di Polo. Moule cited two early 17th century Venetian manuscripts questi ueneno de dalmatia, Polo questi uene de Dalmatia, scholars etymologically argued that his family name derives from Latin Paulus, the name of a certain bird species, or like Albert tSerstevens considered - from Eastern origin. However, the habitat of the shorebird is non-existent on Korčula, the surname Polo seems related with other widespread Dalmatian surnames. The lack of evidence makes the Korčula theory as a specific birthplace strongly disputed, in 1168, his great-uncle, Marco Polo, borrowed money and commanded a ship in Constantinople. His grandfather, Andrea Polo of the parish of San Felice, had three sons, Maffeo, yet another Marco, and the travellers father Niccolò and this genealogy, described by Ramusio, is not universally accepted as there is no additional evidence to support it. His father, Niccolò Polo, a merchant, traded with the Near East, becoming wealthy, Niccolò and his brother Maffeo set off on a trading voyage before Marcos birth. In 1260, Niccolò and Maffeo, while residing in Constantinople, then the capital of the Latin Empire, foresaw a political change, they liquidated their assets into jewels and moved away. According to The Travels of Marco Polo, they passed through much of Asia, and met with Kublai Khan and their decision to leave Constantinople proved timely
27.
Lop Desert
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It is an almost perfectly flat expanse with no topographic relief. Lake Bosten in the northwest lies at an altitude of 1,030 m to 1,040 m and these formed, at one time or another, the terminal lakes of the Tarim-Konque-Qarqan river system. In the past Lop Nur was a marsh in the eastern part of Xinjiang. Now the region is a broad, unbroken expanse of clay intermingled with sand, the clay, mostly of a yellow or yellow-grey color, is hard and thickly sprinkled with fine gravel. The formations themselves are separated by parallel gullies or wind furrows,6 to 20 feet deep, there is no drifting sand or sand dunes, except in the south towards the outlying foothills of the Altyn-Tagh. The climate of Lop Desert is extremely arid, a study in 1984 gives an annual precipitation of generally less than 20 mm. In the depression centre below 800 m in elevation, aridity can be expected to be more extreme. Relative humidity of the atmosphere frequently dropped to zero, with air temperature as high as 50 °C, in 2008 the annual evaporation was reported as 2,901 mm. Historically they were periods when the area was more favorable to farming, studies showed that the area experienced seven major climate changes since the end of the Pleistocene. There are numerous indications that suggest the presence of a lake in this region. In Hanshu, where it was called Puchang Hai, the lake was suggested to be a great size and it was also called Yan Ze in Shiji, which means salt marsh, indicating that the lake was salty. However, the building of dams by Chinese garrisons in the century have blocked the water from the rivers feeding in to Lop Nor. The dried-up Lop Nur basin is covered with a salt crust from 30 cm to 1 m thick, natural vegetation is sparse in the region and poor in the number of species. A scientific expedition to the Lop Nor region in 1979-1982 collected only 36 species of plants, the expedition also collected only 127 species of animals. Archaeologist Sven Hedin who travelled in the region in the late nineteenth as well as the century was able to travel by boat up the rivers to the lake. However, many animals, such as tiger, wolf. Nevertheless, it is still the one of the last refuges of Wild Bactrian camel in the world and these wild camel may be found in the reed oases on the north edge of the desert. The Lop Nur Wild Camel National Nature Reserve was created in 2001 to preserve Bactrian camels, the whole of this region is swept bare of sand by the terrific sand storms of the spring months and the particles of wind-blown sand act like a sand blast
28.
Ferdinand von Richthofen
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Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, better known in English as Baron von Richthofen, was a German traveller, geographer, and scientist. He is noted for coining the terms Seidenstraße and Seidenstraßen = Silk Road or Silk Route in 1877 and he also standardized the practices of chorography and chorology. He was an uncle of the World War I flying ace Manfred von Richthofen and he was born in Carlsruhe, Prussian Silesia, and was educated in Breslau and Berlin. He traveled or studied in the Alps of Tyrol and the Carpathians in Transylvania, in 1860, he joined the Eulenburg Expedition, a Prussian expedition which visited Ceylon, Japan, Taiwan, Celebes, Java, the Philippines, Siam, Burma between 1860 and 1862. No important work resulted from these travels, for much of Richthofens records, China was at the time inaccessible owing to the Taiping rebellion, but Richthofen was impressed with the desirability of exploring it. From 1862 to 1868, he worked as a geologist in the United States and he then followed up his interest in China by several more trips there, and also to Japan, Burma, and Java. In China he located the lake bed of Lopnur. He published his geographical, geological, economic, and ethnological findings in three volumes with an atlas, which, however, did not cover the field or complete the authors plan. This work appeared at Berlin in 1877-85 under the title of China, in this standard work, the author deals not only with geology but with every subject necessary to a general geographical treatise. Notably he paid attention to the economic resources of the country he traversed. He also wrote a series of letters to the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, and first drew attention to the importance of the coalfields of Shantung. He was appointed professor of geology at the University of Bonn beginning in 1875 and he became professor of geography at the University of Leipzig in 1883, and professor of geography at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin in 1886. He occupied the position until his death. His lectures attracted numerous students who became eminent in geographical work, and in order to keep in touch with them he established his weekly geographical “colloquium. ”Among his most famous students was Sven Hedin. He served as president of the German Geographical Society for many years and he is noted for coining the terms Seidenstraße and Seidenstraßen = Silk Road or Silk Route in 1877. He also standardized the practices of chorography and chorology and he died in 1905 in Berlin. The 12940 ft. Mount Richthofen in Rocky Mountain National Park is also named after him, the feminine forms are Freifrau and Freiin. Rines, George Edwin, ed. Richthofen, Ferdinand, Baron von, attribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Richthofen, Ferdinand, Baron von
29.
Nikolay Przhevalsky
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Nikolay Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky was a Russian geographer and a renowned explorer of Central and East Asia. Although he never reached his goal, the holy city of Lhasa in Tibet, he traveled through regions then unknown to the West, such as northern Tibet, Amdo. He contributed significantly to European knowledge of Central Asia and was the first known European to describe the only extant species of wild horse, Przhevalsky was born in Smolensk into a noble polonized Belarusian family, and studied there and at the military academy in St. Petersburg. In 1864, he became a teacher at the military school in Warsaw. In 1867, Przhevalsky successfully petitioned the Russian Geographical Society to be dispatched to Irkutsk and his intention was to explore the basin of the Ussuri River, a major tributary of the Amur on the Russian-Chinese frontier. This was his first expedition of importance and it lasted two years, after which Przhevalsky published a diary of the expedition under the title, Travels in the Ussuri Region, 1867-69. In the following years he made four journeys to Central Asia, 1870–1873 from Kyakhta he crossed the Gobi Desert to Beijing then explored the upper Yangtze, and in 1872 crossed into Tibet. He surveyed over 7,000 sq mi, collected and brought back with him 5000 plants,1000 birds and 3000 insect species, as well as 70 reptiles, during his expedition, the Dungan Revolt was raging in China. The Russian newspaper Golos Prikazchika called the one of the most daring of our time. 1876–1877 traveling through East Turkestan through the Tian Shan, he visited what he believed to be Qinghai Lake, which had reportedly not been visited by any European since Marco Polo. The expedition consisted of ten men, twenty-four camels, four horses, three tonnes of baggage and a budget of 25,000 rubles, but the expedition was beset by disease, 1879–1880 via Hami and through the Qaidam Basin to Qinghai Lake. The expedition then returned to Qinghai Lake and moved westwards to Hotan, among other things, he reported on the wild population of Bactrian camels as well as the Przewalskis horse and Przewalskis gazelle, named after him. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him their Founders Gold Medal in 1879 for his work, Przhevalsky died of typhus not long before the beginning of his fifth journey, at Karakol on the shore of Issyk Kul in present-day Kyrgyzstan. He contracted typhoid from the Chu River, which was acknowledged as being infected with the disease, the Tsar immediately changed the name of the town to Przhevalsk. There are monuments to him, and a museum about his life and work, there, less than a year after his premature death, Mikhail Pevtsov succeeded Przhevalsky at the head of his expedition into the depths of Central Asia. Przhevalskys work was continued by his young disciple Pyotr Kozlov. There is another named after Przhevalsky, he had lived in a small village called Sloboda, Smolensk Oblast, Russia from 1881-7. The village was renamed after him in 1964 and is now called Przhevalskoye, there is a memorial complex there that includes the old and new houses of Nikolay Przhevalsky, his bust, pond, garden, birch alleys, and khatka
30.
Sven Hedin
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Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer, and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites, in his book Från pol till pol, Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Constantinople, Caucasus, Tehran, Mesopotamia, lands of the Kyrgyz people, India, China, Asiatic Russia, the posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life’s work. At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer, upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede to be raised to the nobility and was considered one of Sweden’s most important personalities. As a member of two academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct, Hedins expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists, although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the spaces in contemporary maps. President Theodore Roosevelt 1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg 1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek 1935,1939,1940 by Adolf Hitler, Hedin was and remained a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking, concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the construction of the battleship Sverige. In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German monarchy and he instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms,300 camels, however, the financing remained Hedins private responsibility. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success, the archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library and this destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation
31.
Aurel Stein
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Sir Marc Aurel Stein, KCIE, FRAS, FBA was a Hungarian-British archaeologist, primarily known for his explorations and archaeological discoveries in Central Asia. He was also a professor at Indian universities, Stein was also an ethnographer, geographer, linguist and surveyor. His collection of books and manuscripts taken from Dunhuang caves is important for the study of the history of Central Asia and he wrote several volumes on his expeditions and discoveries which include Ancient Khotan, Serindia and Innermost Asia. Stein was born to Nathan Stein and Anna Hirschler, a Jewish couple residing in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At home the family spoke German and Hungarian, the language of Hungarian nationalist revival in the 19th century, and Stein was proud of this heritage for the rest of his life. He attended Catholic and Lutheran gymnasiums in Budapest, where he mastered Greek, Latin, French and he graduated in Sanskrit and Persian and received his Ph. D. from Tübingen in 1883. In 1884 he went to England to study languages and archaeology. He became a British citizen in 1904 and made his famous expeditions with British sponsorship, in 1887, Stein went to India, where he joined the Punjab University as Registrar. Later, between 1888 and 1899, he was the Principal of Oriental College, Lahore, Stein was influenced by Sven Hedins 1898 work Through Asia. Realizing the importance of Central Asian history and archaeology he sent a proposal to the government to explore, map, in May 1900 he received the approval to lead an expedition to Chinese Turkestan which was strategically located in High Asia where the Russians and Germans were already taking interest. Stein made four expeditions to Central Asia—in 1900–1901, 1906–1908. He brought to light the hidden treasure of a civilization which by then was practically lost to the world. One of his significant finds during his first journey during 1900–1901 was the Taklamakan Desert oasis of Dandan Oilik where he was able to uncover a number of relics, during his third expedition in 1913–1916, he excavated at Khara-Khoto. When Stein visited Khotan he was able to render in Persian a portion of the Shahnama after he came across a local reading the Shahnama in Turki, during 1901 Stein was responsible for exposing forgeries of Islam Akhun. Steins greatest discovery was made at the Mogao Caves also known as Caves of the Thousand Buddhas and it was there that he discovered a printed copy of the Diamond Sutra, the worlds oldest printed text, dating to AD868, along with 40,000 other scrolls. He acquired 24 cases of manuscripts and 4 cases of paintings and he was knighted for his efforts, but Chinese nationalists dubbed him a burglar and staged protests against him. His discovery inspired other French, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese treasure hunters and explorers who also took their toll on the collection, during his expedition of 1906–1908 while surveying in the Kunlun Mountains of western China, Stein suffered frostbite and lost several toes on his right foot. Stein was a bachelor, but was always accompanied by a dog named Dash
32.
Johan Gustaf Renat
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Johan Gustaf Renat was a Swedish soldier and cartographer. He is mainly known for his role in bringing detailed maps of Central Asia to Europe after several years in captivity, Renat was the son of Dutch Jewish immigrants to Sweden, who took Swedish nationality in 1681, the year before his birth. During the Great Northern War against Russia, he served in the army of Charles XII as a warrant officer in the artillery and he was taken prisoner after the Battle of Poltava in 1709. In 1711 Renat was sent to Tobolsk where many Swedish officers were kept as prisoners of war and he entered Russian service on the condition of not fighting against Sweden. Renat helped produce maps of Siberia for the Russian government, in 1716 Renat and other Swedish prisoners-of-war took part in Ivan Buchholzs expedition to explore the gold deposits around Lake Yamysh on the Irtysh River. The expedition was ambushed by a Dzungar force, and Renat spent the following seventeen years in Dzungar captivity, in Dzungaria, Renat helped the khans Tsewang Rabtan and Galdan Tseren to organize their campaigns against Qing rule in Central Asia. Among other things, he organized a regiment and helped the Dzungars to cast cannons. Renat also met a Swedish woman who was also a Dzungar captive and this was Brigitta Scherzenfeldt, who hailed from Scania. Twice widowed, she had married a German prisoner who had taken Russian service and their convoy was seized by Dzungar raiders in 1716, who killed her husband. In 1733, Renat and his wife were allowed to leave and they returned the following year to Stockholm, accompanied with four Dzungar female servants, who were baptized when they arrived in Sweden. Renats family bought a house in Gamla stan where they settled down, in 1739, Renat was promoted to the rank of captain in the Swedish army. Renat brought two detailed maps of Central Asia back to Sweden, but these maps were left in relative obscurity for many years. In 1878, copies of the maps were discovered by the Swedish author August Strindberg and he sponsored their republication in Russia in 1881. A decade later the originals were discovered in the library of Uppsala University, Strindberg remained interested in the maps for many years. Philip Johan von Strahlenberg Baddeley, John F. Russia, Mongolia, 1-2, London, Macmillan and Company,1919. Reprinted New York, Burt Franklin, 196-, China Marches West, The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,2005, carte de la Dzoungarie, dressée par le suédois Renat pendant sa captivité chez les kalmouks de 1716-1733. St. Petersburg, Societé Impériale Russe de Géographie,1881, Russian Maps at the Royal Library
33.
Dzungar people
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The name Dzungar people, also written as Zunghar, referred to the several Oirat tribes who formed and maintained the Dzungar Khanate in the 17th and 18th centuries. Historically they were one of major tribes of the Four Oirat confederation and they were also known as the Eleuths or Ööled, from the Qing dynasty euphemism for the hated word Dzungar, and also called Kalmyks. In 2010,15,520 people claimed Ööled ancestry in Mongolia, an unknown number also live in China, Russia, and Kazakhstan. This confederation rose to power in what known as Dzungaria between the Altai Mountains and the Ili River Valley. Initially, the confederation consisted of the Oöled, Dorbet and Khoit tribes, later on, elements of the Khoshut and Torghut tribes were forcibly incorporated into the Dzungar military, thus completing the re-unification of the West Mongolian tribes. According to oral history, the Oöled and Dörbed tribes are the tribes to the Naiman. The Oöled shared the clan name Choros with the Dörvöd, zuun gar and Baruun gar formed the Oirats military and administrative organization. The Dzungar Olots and Choros became the ruling clans in the 17th century, in 1697, two relatives of Galdan Boshugtu Khan, Danjila and Rabdan, surrendered to the Qing Kangxi Emperor. Their people were organized into two Oolod banners and resettled in modern Bayankhongor Province, Mongolia. In 1731, five hundred households fled back to Dzungar territory while the remaining Oolods were deported to Hulun Buir, after 1761 some of them were resettled in Arkhangai Province. After a series of military conflicts that started in the 1680s. Clarke argued that the Qing campaign in 1757–58 amounted to the destruction of not only the Dzungar state. Amursana rejected the Qing arrangement and rebelled since he wanted to be leader of a united Dzungar nation, Qing scholar Wei Yuan estimated the total population of Dzungars before the fall at 600,000 people, or 200,000 households. Oirat officer Saaral betrayed and battled against the Oirats, during this war Kazakhs attacked dispersed Oirats and Altays. Historian Peter Perdue attributed the decimation of the Dzungars to an policy of extermination launched by Qianlong. Mark Levene, a historian whose recent research focus on genocide, has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence. The Dzungar genocide was completed by a combination of a smallpox epidemic, anti-Dzungar Uyghur rebels from the Turfan and Hami oases had submitted to Qing rule as vassals and requested Qing help for overthrowing Dzungar rule. Uyghur leaders like Emin Khoja were granted titles within the Qing nobility, and it was not until generations later that Dzungaria rebounded from the destruction and near liquidation of the Dzungars after the mass slayings of nearly a million Dzungars
34.
Shiji
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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
35.
Book of Han
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The Book of Han or History of the Former Han is a history of China finished in 111, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. It is also called the Book of Former Han, the work was composed by Ban Gu, a court official, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao, continuing the work of their father, Ban Biao. They modeled their work on the Records of the Grand Historian, a universal history and it is the best source, sometimes the only one, for many topics in this period. A second work, the Book of the Later Han covers the Eastern Han period from 25 to 220, and was composed in the fifth century by Fan Ye. This history developed from a continuation of Sima Qians Records of the Grand Historian, initiated by Ban Gus father, Ban Biao and this work is usually referred to as Later Traditions, which clearly indicates that the elder Bans work was meant to be a continuation. After Ban Biaos death, his eldest son Ban Gu was dissatisfied with what his father had completed and this distinguished it from Sima Qians history, which had begun with Chinas earliest legendary rulers. In this way, Ban Gu initiated the Jizhuanti format for dynastic histories that was to remain the model for the official histories until modern times. For the periods where they overlapped, Ban Gu adopted nearly verbatim much of Sima Qians material and he also incorporated at least some of what his father had written, though it is difficult to know how much. The completed work ran to a total of 100 fascicles 卷, and included essays on law, science, geography, Ban Gus younger sister Ban Zhao finished writing the book in 111,19 years after Ban Gu had died in prison. An outstanding scholar in her own right, she is thought to have written volumes 13–20 and 26, the Annals section and the three chapters covering the reign of Wang Mang were translated into English by Homer H. Dubs. Other chapters have been rendered into English by A. F. P, sargent, Nancy Lee Swann, and Burton Watson. Ban Gus history set the standard for the writings of later Chinese dynasties and it is regarded as one of the Four Histories 四史 of the Twenty-Four Histories canon, together with the Records of the Grand Historian, Records of the Three Kingdoms and History of the Later Han. Emperors biographies in strict annal form, which offer an overview of the most important occurrences. Each treatise describes an area of effort of the state, the biographies confine themselves to the description of events that clearly show the exemplary character of the person. Two or more people are treated in one article, as they belong to the same class of people. The last articles describe the relations between China and the various peoples beyond the frontiers and it is later recorded that in 57, the southern Wa kingdom of Na sent an emissary named Taifu to pay tribute to Emperor Guangwu and received a golden seal. The seal itself was discovered in northern Kyūshū in the 18th century, according to the Book of Wei, the most powerful kingdom on the archipelago in the third century was called Yamatai and was ruled by the legendary Queen Himiko. Dorneich, Chris M. Chinese sources on the History of the Niusi-Wusi-Asi-Rishi-Arsi-Arshi-Ruzhi, shiji 110/Hanshu 94A, The Xiongnu, Synopsis of Chinese original Text and several Western Translations with Extant Annotations
36.
Li (unit)
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The li, also known as the Chinese mile, is a traditional Chinese unit of distance. The li has varied considerably over time but was usually about a third as long as the English mile and this is then divided into 1,500 chi or Chinese feet. The character 里 combines the characters for field and earth, since it was considered to be about the length of a single village. As late as the 1940s, a li did not represent a fixed measure, there is also another li that indicates a unit of length 1/1000 of a chi, but it is used much less commonly. This li is used in the Peoples Republic of China as the equivalent of the prefix in metric units. This traditional unit, in terms of usage and distance proportion. The basic Chinese traditional unit of distance was the chi, as its value changed over time, so did the lis. In addition, the number of chi per li was sometimes altered, to add further complexity, under the Qin Dynasty, the li was set at 360 paces but the number of chi per bu was subsequently changed from 6 to 5, shortening the li by 1⁄6. Thus, the Qin li of about 576 meters became the Han li, the basic units of measurement fortunately remained stable over the Qin and Han periods. A bronze imperial standard measure, dated AD9, had been preserved at the Imperial Palace in Beijing and this has allowed very accurate conversions to modern measurements, which has provided a new and extremely useful additional tool in the identification of place names and routes. These measurements have confirmed in many ways including the discovery of a number of rulers found at archaeological sites. The Han li was calculated by Dubs to be 415.8 metres and all indications are that this is a precise, under the Tang Dynasty, the li was approximately 323 meters. In the late Manchu or Qing Dynasty, the number of chi was increased from 1,500 per li to 1,800 and this had a value of 2115 feet or 644.6 meters. In addition, the Qing added a longer unit called the tu and these changes were undone by the Republic of China of Chiang Kai-shek, who adopted the metric system in 1928. The Republic of China continues not to use the li at all, under Mao Zedong, the Peoples Republic of China reinstituted the traditional units as a measure of anti-imperialism and cultural pride before officially adopting the metric system in 1984. A place was made within this for the units, which were restandardized to metric values. A modern li is thus set at half a kilometer. However, unlike the jin which is frequently preferred in daily use over the kilogram
37.
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
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Amne Machin
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Amne Machin or Anyi Machen is the highest peak of a mountain range of the same name in the province of Qinghai in west-central China. It is revered in Tibetan Buddhism as the home of the indigenous deity of Amdo. The entire Amne Machin range is an extension of the Kunlun Mountains. The Amne Machin range runs in the general northwest-to-southeast direction in eastern Qinghai, the existence of the ridge results in one of the great bends of the Yellow River. The river first flows for several hundreds of kilometers toward the east and southeast, in so doing it crosses the entire length of Golog Prefecture, and reaches the borders of Gansu and Sichuan. The Amne Machin Peak is located in Maqên County of Golog Prefecture and its elevation is estimated to 6,282 metres. It is ranked number 23 in height among the peaks of China. A part of the range around its highest peak has been declared a section of the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve, the mountain was known to the ancient Chinese as Mount Jishi. Pereira, who saw Amne Machin from about 70 miles away, thought its height must be at least 25,000 feet, however, the massif remained unclimbed until 1960. The Amne Machin mountains had been overflown by a few American pilots who overestimated the elevation to 30,000 feet, for a while, the mountains were considered as a possible place for a peak higher than Mount Everest. The dome in the north is the highest part, but it is not so imposing as the pyramid at the southern end. By 1980 Anyi Machen had been resurveyed at 6,282 metres, in 1960, a Chinese expedition climbed the mountain, but it was demonstrated in 1980 that this expedition climbed Amne Machin II,7 km SSE from the highest summit. In 1981, Amne Machin I was reached near-simultaneously by three groups, each of which had led to believe they were the first and only ones to obtain a permit from the Chinese government. A Japanese expedition approached the summit from the south and put Giichiro Watanabe, Yoshio Yamamoto and Katsumi Miyake on top on May 22,1981, and five other expedition members 3 days later. Within three weeks, the American climbers Galen Rowell, Harold Knutsen and Kim Schmitz made an Alpine-style ascent over the East ridge of the NE summit to reach the summit on June 9. They did not see any evidence of an earlier ascent, the very next day Siegfried Hupfauer, Hans Gaschbauer, Franz Lämmerhofer, Gerhard Schmatz and Peter Vogler of an Austro-German expedition reached the summit as well. They had followed the Japanese route and the 3000 feet of fixed rope they encountered en route convinced them that the Japanese had been the first to summit, peking to Lhasa The Geographical Journal, Vol.64, No. The elevation estimate is on p.104, lamaist Sites of the Amny Machen Region, in, Andreas Gruschke, The Cultural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces, Amdo - Volume 1
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Qing dynasty
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It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The Qing multi-cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the base for the modern Chinese state. The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, in the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing Banners, military-social units that included Jurchen, Han Chinese, and Mongol elements. Nurhaci formed the Jurchen clans into an entity, which he renamed as the Manchus. By 1636, his son Hong Taiji began driving Ming forces out of Liaodong and declared a new dynasty, in 1644, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the Ming capital, Beijing. The Ten Great Campaigns of the Qianlong Emperor from the 1750s to the 1790s extended Qing control into Central Asia, the early rulers maintained their Manchu ways, and while their title was Emperor, they used khan to the Mongols and they were patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. They governed using Confucian styles and institutions of government and retained the imperial examinations to recruit Han Chinese to work under or in parallel with Manchus. They also adapted the ideals of the system in dealing with neighboring territories. The Qianlong reign saw the apogee and initial decline in prosperity. The population rose to some 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, corruption set in, rebels tested government legitimacy, and ruling elites did not change their mindsets in the face of changes in the world system. Following the Opium War, European powers imposed unequal treaties, free trade, the Taiping Rebellion and the Dungan Revolt in Central Asia led to the deaths of some 20 million people, most of them due to famines caused by war. In spite of disasters, in the Tongzhi Restoration of the 1860s, Han Chinese elites rallied to the defense of the Confucian order. The initial gains in the Self-Strengthening Movement were destroyed in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, in which the Qing lost its influence over Korea, New Armies were organized, but the ambitious Hundred Days Reform of 1898 was turned back by Empress Dowager Cixi, a conservative leader. Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries competed with reformist monarchists such as Kang Youwei, after the deaths of Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in 1908, the hardline Manchu court alienated reformers and local elites alike. The Wuchang Uprising on October 11,1911, led to the Xinhai Revolution, General Yuan Shikai negotiated the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor, on February 12,1912. Nurhaci declared himself the Bright Khan of the Later Jin state in both of the 12–13th century Jurchen Jin dynasty and of his Aisin Gioro clan. His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty Great Qing in 1636, there are competing explanations on the meaning of Qīng. The character Qīng is composed of water and azure, both associated with the water element and this association would justify the Qing conquest as defeat of fire by water
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Populus
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Populus is a genus of 25–35 species of deciduous flowering plants in the family Salicaceae, native to most of the Northern Hemisphere. English names variously applied to different species include poplar /ˈpɒp. lər/, aspen, in the September 2006 issue of Science Magazine, the Joint Genome Institute announced that the western balsam poplar was the first tree whose full DNA code had been determined by DNA sequencing. The genus has a genetic diversity, and can grow from 15–50 m tall. The shoots are stout, with the terminal bud present, leaf size is very variable even on a single tree, typically with small leaves on side shoots, and very large leaves on strong-growing lead shoots. The leaves often turn bright gold to yellow before they fall during autumn, the flowers are mostly dioecious and appear in early spring before the leaves. They are borne in long, drooping, sessile or pedunculate catkins produced from buds formed in the axils of the leaves of the previous year. The flowers are each seated in a disk which is borne on the base of a scale which is itself attached to the rachis of the catkin. The scales are obovate, lobed, and fringed, membranous, hairy or smooth, the female flower also has no calyx or corolla, and comprises a single-celled ovary seated in a cup-shaped disk. The style is short, with two to four stigmata, variously lobed, and numerous ovules, pollination is by wind, with the female catkins lengthening considerably between pollination and maturity. Poplars of the section are often wetlands or riparian trees. The aspens are among the most important boreal broadleaf trees, Poplars and aspens are important food plants for the larvae of a large number of Lepidoptera species. Pleurotus populinus, the oyster mushroom, is found exclusively on dead wood of Populus trees in North America. The genus Populus has traditionally divided into six sections on the basis of leaf and flower characters. Recent genetic studies have supported this, confirming some previously suspected reticulate evolution due to past hybridisation and introgression events between the groups. Some species had differing relationships indicated by their nuclear DNA and chloroplast DNA sequences and they have the advantage of growing to a very large size at a rapid pace. Almost all poplars take root readily from cuttings or where broken branches lie on the ground, trees with fastigiate branching are particularly popular, and are widely grown across Europe and southwest Asia. Common poplar varieties are, G48 w22 The trees are grown from kalam or cuttings, harvested annually in January and February, most commonly used to make plywood, Yamuna Nagar in Haryana state has a large plywood industry reliant upon poplar. It is graded according to known as over, under
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Tamarix
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The genus Tamarix is composed of about 50–60 species of flowering plants in the family Tamaricaceae, native to drier areas of Eurasia and Africa. The generic name originated in Latin and may refer to the Tamaris River in Hispania Tarraconensis and they are evergreen or deciduous shrubs or trees growing to 1–18 m in height and forming dense thickets. The largest, Tamarix aphylla, is an tree that can grow to 18 m tall. They usually grow on soils, tolerating up to 15,000 ppm soluble salt. Tamarisks are characterized by slender branches and grey-green foliage, the bark of young branches is smooth and reddish brown. As the plants age, the bark becomes bluish-purple, ridged and furrowed, the leaves are scale-like, 1–2 mm long, and overlap each other along the stem. They are often encrusted with salt secretions, the pink to white flowers appear in dense masses on 5–10 cm long spikes at branch tips from March to September, though some species tend to flower during the winter. Tamarix can spread vegetatively, by adventitious roots or submerged stems, and sexually, by seeds. Each flower can produce thousands of seeds that are contained in a small capsule usually adorned with a tuft of hair that aids in wind dispersal. Seeds can also be dispersed by water, Seedlings require extended periods of soil saturation for establishment. Tamarisk trees are most often propagated by cuttings, Tamarix species are fire-adapted, and have long tap roots that allow them to intercept deep water tables and exploit natural water resources. The salt is washed away during heavy rains, Tamarix species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Coleophora asthenella which feeds exclusively on T. africana. The tamarisk is used as a shrub, a windbreak. The wood may be used for carpentry or firewood and it is a possible agroforestry species. Plans are being made for the tamarisk to play a role in programs in China. Salt cedars can be planted to mine salts, then be used in the production of fuel, the tamarisk was introduced to the United States as an ornamental shrub, a windbreak, and a shade tree in the early 19th century. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, tree-planting was used as a tool to fight soil erosion on the Great Plains, eight species are found in North America. The Athel tree is used for windbreaks on the edge of agricultural fields
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Bosten Lake
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Covering an area of about 1,000 km2, it is the largest lake in Xinjiang and one of the largest inland freshwater lakes in China. Bosten lake receives water inflow from a catchment area of 56,000 km2, the lakes Uyghur and Chinese names are sometimes rendered as Bosten Hu, Bagrax-hu, Bagrasch-köl, Baghrasch köl, Bagratsch-kul, Bositeng Lake or Bositeng Hu. An active fishery exists on the lake, during the years 1962 to 1965, other various carp species were introduced into the lake. In the 1970s, these species become major targets of the fishing activities, since 1978, the European perch has been the dominating species in the catches from Bosten Lake
