1.
Counties of the People's Republic of China
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There are 1,464 counties in Mainland China out of a total of 2,862 county-level divisions. Xian have existed since the Warring States period, and were established nationwide during the Qin Dynasty, the term xian is usually translated as districts or prefectures when put in the context of Chinese history. This article, however, will try to keep the terminology consistent with the modern translation, xian have existed since the Warring States period and were set up nationwide by the Qin Dynasty. The number of counties in China proper gradually increased from dynasty to dynasty, as Qin Shi Huang reorganized the counties after his unification, there were about 1,000. Under the Eastern Han Dynasty, the number of counties increased to above 1,000, about 1400 existed when the Sui dynasty abolished the commandery level, which was the level just above counties, and demoted some commanderies to counties. The current number of counties mostly resembled that of the years of Qing Dynasty. Changes of location and names of counties in Chinese history have been a field of research in Chinese historical geography. Government below the county level was often undertaken through informal non-bureaucratic means, the head of a county was the magistrate, who oversaw both the day-to-day operations of the county as well as civil and criminal cases. Autonomous counties are a class of counties in Mainland China reserved for non-Han Chinese ethnic minorities. Autonomous counties are all over China, and are given, by law. There are 117 autonomous counties in Mainland China, as the Communist Party of China is central to directing government policy in Mainland China, every level of administrative division has a local CPC Committee. A countys is called the CPC County Committee and the called the Secretary. Policies are carried out via the Peoples government of the county, the governor is often also one of the deputy secretaries in the CPC Committee. County List of counties in the Peoples Republic of China List of county-level divisions of China History of the divisions of China
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
Autonomous regions of China
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An autonomous region is a first-level administrative subdivision of China. Like Chinese provinces, a region has its own local government. An autonomous region is a minority entity which has a population of a particular minority ethnic group. The Inner Mongolia autonomous region was established in 1947, Xinjiang was made autonomous in 1955, Guangxi and Ningxia in 1958, and Tibet in 1965. The designation of Guangxi and Ningxia as Zhuang and Hui autonomous areas, respectively, was protested by the local Han Chinese. Although Mongols made up less than a percentage of Inner Mongolia. Note, In the Third Largest Ethnic Group column is the group given in brackets, after the names of the autonomous regions. Administrative divisions of China Provinces of China Special administrative regions of China Autonomous prefectures of China
4.
Guangxi
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Guangxi, officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is a Chinese autonomous region in South Central China, bordering Vietnam. Formerly a province, Guangxi became a region in 1958. Guangxis location, in mountainous terrain in the far south of China, has placed it on the frontier of Chinese civilization throughout much of Chinas history, the current name Guang means expanse and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in 226 AD. It was given provincial level status during the Yuan dynasty, but even into the 20th century it was considered an open, the abbreviation of the region is 桂, which comes from the name of the city of Guilin, the provincial capital during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Originally inhabited by a mixture of groups known to the Chinese as the Baiyue. In 214 BC, the Han Chinese general Zhao Tuo claimed most of southern China for Qin Shi Huang before the emperors death, the ensuing civil war permitted Zhao to establish a separate kingdom at Panyu known as Nanyue Southern Yue. The name Guangxi can be traced to the Expansive or Wide province of the Eastern Wu, Guilin formed one of its commanderies. Under the Tang dynasty, the Zhuang moved to support Piluoges Yi-ruled kingdom of Nanzhao in Yunnan, Guangxi was then divided into an area of Zhuang ascendancy west of Nanning and an area of Han ascendancy east of Nanning. After the collapse of the Southern Zhao, Liu Yan established the Southern Han in Xingwangfu, although this state gained minimal control over Guangxi, it was plagued by instability and annexed by the Song dynasty in 971. The name Guangxi itself can be traced to the Song, who administered the area as the Guangnanxi Circuit, harassed by both Song and the Jiaozhi in modern Vietnam, the Zhuang leader Nong Zhigao led a revolt in 1052 for which he is still remembered by the Zhuang people. His independent kingdom was short-lived, however, and the tattooed Song general Di Qing returned Guangxi to China, the Yuan dynasty established control over Yunnan during its conquest of the Dali Kingdom in 1253 and eliminated the Southern Song following the Battle of Yamen in 1279. Rather than ruling Lingnan as a territory or military district. The area nonetheless continued to be unruly, leading the Ming dynasty to employ the different local groups against one another, at the Battle of Big Rattan Gorge between the Zhuang and the Yao in 1465,20,000 deaths were reported. The Qing dynasty left the region alone until the imposition of rule in 1726. A Yao revolt in 1831 was followed by the Taiping Rebellion in 1850, the execution of St. Auguste Chapdelaine by local officials in Guangxi provoked the Second Opium War in 1858 and the legalization of foreign interference in the interior. Although Louis Brière de lIsle was unable to invade its depot at Longzhou, largely ineffective within Vietnam, it was still able to repulse the French from China itself at the Battle of Zhennan Pass on 23 March 1885. Following the Wuchang Uprising, Guangxi seceded from the Qing Empire on 6 November 1911, the Qing governor, Shen Bingdan, initially remained in place, but was subsequently removed by a mutiny commanded by General Lu Rongting. General Lus Old Guangxi clique overran Hunan and Guangdong as well, Zhuang loyalty made his Self-Government Army cohesive but reluctant to move far beyond its own provinces
5.
Prefecture-level city
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Prefectural level cities form the second level of the administrative structure. Administrative chiefs of prefectural level cities generally have the rank as a division chief of a national ministry. Since the 1980s, most former prefectures have been renamed into prefectural level cities, a prefectural level city is a city and prefecture that have been merged into one unified jurisdiction. The larger prefectural level cities span over 100 kilometres, prefectural level cities nearly always contain multiple counties, county level cities, and other such sub-divisions. To distinguish a prefectural level city from its urban area. The first prefectural level cities were created on 5 November 1983, over the following two decades, prefectural level cities have come to replace the vast majority of Chinese prefectures, the process is still ongoing. Most provinces are composed entirely or nearly entirely of prefectural level cities, shijiazhuang and Zhengzhou are the largest prefectural level cities with populations approaching or exceeding some sub-provincial cities. A sub-prefecture-level city is a city with powers approaching those of prefectural level cities. There are total of three classification of prefecture-level city, Regular prefectural level city which consist of counties, county level cities, consolidated district-governed prefectural level city which only consist of districts as it subdivisions. Thus, Bloomington, Indiana is indicated on the map by a point, which is distinct from, and enclosed by, in China, however, large cities such as City of Xianning may, in reality, contain both urban and rural elements. Moreover, they may enclose counties or other cities, on a less detailed map, City of Xianning would be indicated by a point, more or less corresponding to the coordinates of its city government. Other populous areas may also be exhibited as points, such as County of Tongshan, with no indication that County of Tongshan is, in fact, enclosed by City of Xianning. On a more detailed map, City of Xianning would be drawn as an area, similar to a county of the United States and this convention may lead to difficulty in the identification of places mentioned in older sources. For example, Guo Moruo writes that he was born in Town of Shawan, within Prefecture of Leshan, and attended primary school in Town of Jiading. A modern map is unlikely to show either town, Shawan, because it is too small, and Jiading, because it is the seat of City of Leshan, and is therefore indicated on the map by a point labelled Leshan. A more detailed map would show Shawan as a district within City of Leshan, statistics of China such as population and industrial activity are generally reported along prefectural city lines. Thus, the relatively unknown City of Huangshi has 2.5 million residents, more than most European capitals, but upon closer inspection, furthermore, Huangshi contains several other cities, such as City of Daye. If a person wished to calculate the population of the area of Huangshi, and had a map of Huangshi, and a table of its population by district
6.
Guilin
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Guilin, formerly romanized as Kweilin, is a prefecture-level city in the northeast of Chinas Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It is situated on the west bank of the Li River and its name means Forest of Sweet Osmanthus, owing to the large number of fragrant sweet osmanthus trees located in the city. The city has long been renowned for its scenery of karst topography and is one of Chinas most popular tourist destinations, in 314 BC, a small settlement was established along the banks of the Li River. During the Qin Dynastys campaigns against the state of Nanyue, the first administration was set up in the area around Guilin. In 111 BC, during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Shi An County was established, in AD507, the town was renamed Guizhou. Guilin prospered in the Tang and Song dynasties but remained a county, the city was also a nexus between the central government and the southwest border, and it was where regular armies were placed to guard that border. Canals were built through the city so that supplies could be directly transported from the food-productive Yangtze plain to the farthest southwestern point of the empire. In 1921, Guilin became one of the headquarters of the Northern Expeditionary Army led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, in 1940, the city acquired its present name. Guilin administers seventeen county-level divisions, including six districts, nine counties and it has a total area of 27,809 square kilometres. The topography of the area is marked by karst formations, the Li River flows through the city. Winter begins dry but becomes progressively wetter and cloudier, spring is generally overcast and often rainy, while summer continues to be rainy though is the sunniest time of year. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from 7.9 °C in January to 28.0 °C in July, and the annual mean is 18.84 °C. The annual rainfall is just above 1,900 mm, and is delivered in bulk from April to June, with monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 14% in March to 53% in September, the city receives 1,487 hours of bright sunshine annually. Population,4,747,963 Urban population,975,638 Ethnic groups, Zhuang, Yao, Hui, Miao, Han and Dong The GDP per capita was ¥19435 in 2009, ranked no.125 among 659 Chinese cities. However, since the 1950s Guilin has electronics, engineering and agricultural equipment, medicine, rubber, and buses, food processing, including the processing of local agricultural produce, remains the most important industry. More recent and modern industry feature high technology and the tertiary industry characterized by tourism trading, the airport is Guilin Liangjiang International Airport. Arriving to North Station, high-speed trains between Guilin and Changsha and Beijing came into operation in December 2013, in December 2014, high-speed operations began connecting Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Guiyang, and Shanghai. It will bring much convenience for people come to Guilin and it takes only about 2 or 3 hours from Guangzhou to Guilin,7 hours from Shanghai to Guilin and 11 hours from Beijing to Guilin
7.
Time in China
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The time in China follows a single standard time offset of UTC+08,00, despite China spanning five geographical time zones. The official national standard time is called Beijing Time domestically and China Standard Time internationally, daylight saving time has not been observed since 1991. The special administrative regions maintain their own authorities, with standards called Hong Kong Time. These have been equivalent to Beijing time since 1992, in addition, a second time standard is used in Xinjiang, two hours less than the Beijing Time, which is called Ürümqi Time or Xinjiang Time. In 1912, the Republic of China established five standard time zones, namely Kunlun, Sinkiang-Tibet, Kansu-Szechwan, Chungyuan, and Changpai. The unified time zone policy was adopted by the Communist Party of China or the Central People’s Government some time between 27 September 1949 and 6 October 1949, the date is unknown. However, recent research suggests that the policy was most likely adopted on 27 September 1949, daylight saving time was observed from 1986 to 1991. In 1997 and 1999, Hong Kong and Macau were transferred to China from the United Kingdom and Portugal, although the sovereignty of the SARs belongs to China, they retain their own policies regarding time zones for historical reasons. Due to their locations, both are within the UTC+08,00 time zone, which is the same as the national standard — Beijing time. Xinjiang Time, also known as Ürümqi Time, is set due to its location in the westernmost part of the country. The time offset is UTC+06,00, which is two hours behind Beijing, and is shared with neighbouring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Currently, timezone usage within Xinjiang is roughly split along the divide, with most ethnic Han following Beijing time. Some local authorities are now using both time standard side by side, the coexistence of two timezones within the same region causes some confusion among the local population, especially when inter-racial communication occur. Some ethnic Han in Xinjiang might not be aware of the existence of the UTC+6 Xinjiang Time because of language barrier, regardless, Beijing Time users in Xinjiang usually schedule their daily activities two hours later than those who live in eastern China. As such, stores and offices in Xinjiang are commonly opening from 10am to 7pm Beijing Time and this is known as the work/rest time in Xinjiang. Hong Kong maintains its own time authority after transfer of sovereignty in 1997, the Hong Kong Time is UTC+08,00 all year round, and daylight saving time has not been used since 1979. Greenwich Mean Time was adopted as the basis in 1904, before that, local time was determined by astronomical observations at Hong Kong Observatory using a 6-inch Lee Equatorial and a 3-inch Transit Circle. Macau maintains its own time authority after transfer of sovereignty in 1999, the Macau Standard Time is the time in Macau
8.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
9.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
10.
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
11.
Karst
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Karst topography is a landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves and it has also been documented for more weathering-resistant rocks, such as quartzite, given the right conditions. Subterranean drainage may limit surface water, with few to no rivers or lakes, the English word karst was borrowed from German Karst in the late 19th century. The German word came into use before the 19th century, according to the prevalent interpretation, the term is derived from the German name for the Karst region, a limestone plateau above the city of Trieste in the northern Adriatic. Scholars disagree, however, on whether the German word was borrowed from Slovene, the Slovene common noun kras was first attested in the 18th century, and the adjective form kraški in the 16th century. The Slovene words arose through metathesis from the reconstructed form *korsъ, ultimately, the word is of Mediterranean origin, believed to derive from some Romanized Illyrian base. It has been suggested that the word may derive from the Proto-Indo-European root karra- rock, the name may also be connected to the oronym Karsádios oros cited by Ptolemy, and perhaps also to Latin Carusardius. The development of karst occurs whenever acidic water starts to break down the surface of bedrock near its cracks, as the bedrock continues to degrade, its cracks tend to get bigger. As time goes on, these fractures will become wider, if this underground drainage system does form, it will speed up the development of karst formations there because more water will be able to flow through the region, giving it more erosive power. The carbonic acid that causes karstic features is formed as rain passes through the atmosphere picking up carbon dioxide, once the rain reaches the ground, it may pass through soil that can provide much more CO2 to form a weak carbonic acid solution, which dissolves calcium carbonate. The oxidation of sulfides leading to the formation of acid can also be one of the corrosion factors in karst formation. As oxygen -rich surface waters seep into deep anoxic karst systems, they bring oxygen, sulfuric acid then reacts with calcium carbonate, causing increased erosion within the limestone formation. This chain of reactions is, This reaction chain forms gypsum, the karstification of a landscape may result in a variety of large- or small-scale features both on the surface and beneath. On exposed surfaces, small features may include solution flutes, runnels, limestone pavement, medium-sized surface features may include sinkholes or cenotes, vertical shafts, foibe, disappearing streams, and reappearing springs. Large-scale features may include limestone pavements, poljes, and karst valleys, mature karst landscapes, where more bedrock has been removed than remains, may result in karst towers, or haystack/eggbox landscapes. Beneath the surface, complex underground systems and extensive caves. Some of the most dramatic of these formations can be seen in Thailands Phangnga Bay, calcium carbonate dissolved into water may precipitate out where the water discharges some of its dissolved carbon dioxide. Rivers which emerge from springs may produce tufa terraces, consisting of layers of calcite deposited over extended periods of time, in caves, a variety of features collectively called speleothems are formed by deposition of calcium carbonate and other dissolved minerals
12.
Li River
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The Li River is a river in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. It flows 83 kilometres from Guilin to Yangshuo, where the karst mountains, the Li River originates in the Maoer Mountains in Xingan County and flows in the general southern direction through Guilin, Yangshuo and Pingle. In Pingle the Li River merges with the Lipu River and the Gongcheng River and continues south as the Gui River, which falls into the Xi Jiang, the 437-kilometre course of the Li and Gui Rivers is flanked by green hills. Cormorant fishing is often associated with the Lijiang, tourist cruises in different boats are offered on the Li River throughout the year and are one of the major attractions of Guilin. Reed Flute Cave, a cave with a large number of stalactites, stalagmites, stalacto-stalagmites, rocky curtains. Seven-Star Park, the largest park in Guilin, mountain of Splendid Hues, a mountain consisting of many layers of variously colored rocks. Elephant-Trunk Hill, a hill looks like a giant elephant drinking water with its trunk. It is symbol of the city of Guilin, lingqu Canal, dug in 214 BC, is one of the three big water conservation projects of ancient China and the oldest existing canal in the world. Other attractions include, Duxiu Peak, Nanxi Park, the Taohua River, the Giant Banyan, the imagery of the Li River is featured on the fifth series of the 20 yuan note. Geography of China List of rivers in China Guilin Li River Facts Guilin Tours Geographic data related to Li River at OpenStreetMap
13.
Moon Hill
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Moon Hill is a hill with a natural arch through it a few kilometers outside Yangshuo in southern Chinas Guangxi autonomous region. It is so named for a wide, semicircular hole through the hill, all remains of what was once a limestone cave formed in the phreatic zone. Like most formations in the region, it is karst and it is also a popular tourist attraction. It takes roughly 20 minutes to climb to the arch, or considerably longer for those who mean to reach the hills summit, access is not free and visitors must pay an entrance fee to be allowed to climb the hill. Souvenirs and refreshment vendors often follow climbers up and down the path and it has also been used for abseils in several adventure races. Moon Hill offers some broad, panoramic views of the surrounding countryside, the Moon Hill is located to the south of Yangshuo across the Jingbao river along China National Highway 321. It has an elevation of 380 m, while the hill is 230 m in height and 410 m in length. The arch is about 50 meters in height, elephant Trunk Hill, in Guilin Torghatten, in Norway Media related to Moon Hill at Wikimedia Commons
14.
Backpacking (urban)
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Backpacking is a form of low-cost, independent travel. Backpacking may include wilderness adventures, local travel and travel to nearby countries while working from the country in which they are based, the definition of a backpacker has evolved as travellers from different cultures and regions participate. A2007 paper said backpackers constituted a group with respect to the diversity of rationales. They also displayed a commitment to a non-institutionalised form of travel. Backpacking as a lifestyle and as a business has grown considerably in the 2000s as a result of low-cost airlines, seventeenth-century Italian adventurer Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri has been suggested as one of the worlds first backpackers. Some backpackers follow the trail today. Technological developments and improvements have contributed to changes in backpacking, traditionally, backpackers did not travel with expensive electronic equipment like laptop computers, digital cameras and PDAs because of concerns about theft, damage and additional luggage weight. However, the desire to stay connected, coupled with breakthroughs in lightweight electronics, has given rise to a trend that has been termed flashpacking, of importance to some backpackers is a sense of authenticity. Backpacking is perceived as being more than a holiday, but a means of education, backpackers want to experience the real destination rather than the packaged version often associated with mass tourism, which has led to the assertion that backpackers are anti-tourist. For many young people in Northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Israel, in Canada, it is quite common for gap-year students to visit Europe. Backpackers are less commonly from China, India, the United States, Japan and South Korea, particularly taking into account their large populations. But it is gradually becoming more popular among affluent people from those countries. Backpacking trips were undertaken either in a gap year between high school and university, or between the latter and the commencement of work. However the average age of backpackers has gradually increased over time, Backpacking has been criticised, with some criticism dating back to travellers behaviour along the Hippie Trail. For example, the host countries and other travellers may disagree with the actions of backpackers, however, the perception of backpackers seems to have improved as backpacking has become more mainstream. Resources provide information about topics as the language, culture, food and history, provide listings of accommodation and places to eat. Digital format guidebooks are becoming popular, especially since the advent of smart phones and lightweight netbooks. Adventure travel Grand Tour Hostelling International Walking tour Travel pack Backpacking at DMOZ
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Cliff
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In geography and geology, a cliff is a vertical, or nearly vertical, rock exposure. Cliffs are formed as erosion landforms by the processes of weathering, Cliffs are common on coasts, in mountainous areas, escarpments and along rivers. Cliffs are usually formed by rock that is resistant to weathering, sedimentary rocks most likely to form cliffs include sandstone, limestone, chalk, and dolomite. Igneous rocks such as granite and basalt also often form cliffs, an escarpment is a type of cliff, formed by the movement of a geologic fault or a landslide. Most cliffs have some form of slope at their base. In arid areas or under high cliffs, they are generally exposed jumbles of fallen rock, in areas of higher moisture, a soil slope may obscure the talus. Many cliffs also feature tributary waterfalls or rock shelters, sometimes a cliff peters out at the end of a ridge, with tea tables or other types of rock columns remaining. Coastal erosion may lead to the formation of sea cliffs along a receding coastline, the Ordnance Survey distinguishes between cliffs and outcrops. Cliff is a Romance loanword that has its origins in the Latin forms clivus / clevus. Given that a cliff need not be vertical, there can be ambiguity about whether a given slope is a cliff or not. For example, given a vertical rock wall above a very steep slope. Listings of cliffs are thus inherently uncertain, some of the largest cliffs on Earth are found underwater. For example, an 8,000 m drop over a 4,250 m span can be found at a ridge sitting inside the Kermadec Trench. One candidate for highest cliff in the world is Nanga Parbats Rupal Face, according to other sources, the highest cliff in the world, about 1,340 m high, is the east face of Great Trango in the Karakoram mountains of northern Pakistan. The location of the worlds highest sea cliffs depends also on the definition of cliff that is used, guinness World Records states it is Kalaupapa, Hawaii, at 1,010 m high. Another contender is the face of Mitre Peak, which drops 1,683 m to Milford Sound. These are subject to a less stringent definition, as the slope of these cliffs at Kaulapapa is about 1.7, corresponding to an angle of 60 degrees. A more vertical drop into the sea can be found at Maujit Qaqarssuasia which is situated in the Torssukátak fjord area at the tip of South Greenland
16.
Yulong River
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The Yulong River is a small tributary of the larger Li River in Southeastern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region that runs through the major city of Guilin to Yangshuo. The Yulong is a river of around 5 meters maximum depth. As it is not located near any industrial areas, it is enough for swimming, though some brownish surface foam is visible in eddys. Unlike the busy Li River, it has no motorized boat traffic and this has become a popular tourist activity, with passengers beginning their journey at the Yulong Bridge, a 400-year-old stone bridge. The Yulong is prone to flooding, which is one of the reasons why there are not more places to stay close by. Local people have built breakwaters every kilometer or so to allow their animals to cross the river, though many have fallen into disrepair. During the dry season, it is possible for people to walk across some of these weirs, the Yulong River Valley is very fertile, and its low-lying terrain is excellent for rice fields. In recent years, farmers have planted more cash crops such as pomelos, tangerines and mandarin oranges, the valley is still agricultural, with few services or businesses outside of the small villages. The valley is accessible from the main Yangshuo highway through the village of Yi Ma, north at the Yulong Bridge, the river is approximately 7 kilometres south of Yangshuo town proper
17.
Sister city
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In recent times, town twinning has increasingly been used to form strategic international business links between member cities. In the United Kingdom, the twin towns is most commonly used. In mainland Europe, the most commonly used terms are twin towns, partnership towns, partner towns, the European Commission uses the term twinned towns and refers to the process as town twinning. Spain uses the term ciudades hermanadas that means sister cities, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic use Partnerstadt / Miasto Partnerskie / Partnerské město, which translate as Partner Town or City. France uses Ville Jumelée, and Italy has Gemellaggio and Comune gemellato, in the Netherlands, the term is Stedenband. In Greece, the word αδελφοποίηση has been adopted, in Iceland, the terms vinabæir and vinaborgir are used. In the former Soviet Bloc, twin towns and twin cities are used, the Americas, South Asia, and Australasia use the term sister cities or twin cities. In China, the term is 友好城市, sometimes, other government bodies enter into a twinning relationship, such as the agreement between the provinces of Hainan in China and Jeju-do in South Korea. The Douzelage is a twinning association with one town from each of the member states of the European Union. In recent years, the term city diplomacy has gained increased usage and acceptance, particularly as a strand of paradiplomacy and public diplomacy. It is formally used in the workings of the United Cities and Local Governments, the importance of cities developing their own foreign economic policies on trade, foreign investment, tourism and attracting foreign talent has also been highlighted by the World Economic Forum. The earliest known town twinning in Europe was between Paderborn, Germany, and Le Mans, France, in 836, starting in 1905, Keighley in West Yorkshire, England, had a twinning arrangement with French communities Suresnes and Puteaux. The first recorded modern twinning agreement was between Keighley and Poix-du-Nord in Nord, France, in 1920 following the end of the First World War and this was initially referred to as an adoption of the French town, formal twinning charters were not exchanged until 1986. The practice was continued after the Second World War as a way to promote mutual understanding, for example, Coventry twinned with Stalingrad and later with Dresden as an act of peace and reconciliation, all three cities having been heavily bombed during the war. Similarly, in 1947, Bristol Corporation sent five leading citizens on a mission to Hanover. Reading in 1947 was the first British town to form links with an enemy city – Düsseldorf. Since 9 April 1956 Rome and Paris have been exclusively and reciprocally twinned with other, following the motto, Only Paris is worthy of Rome. Within Europe, town twinning is supported by the European Union, the support scheme was established in 1989
18.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
19.
Morehead, Kentucky
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Morehead is a home rule-class city located along US60 and Interstate 64 in Rowan County, Kentucky, in the United States. It is the seat of its county, the population was 6,845 at the time of the 2010 U. S. census. It was the point of the Rowan County War and is the home of Morehead State University. The first settlers came to Rowan County from Virginia following the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783, in 1854, Morehead became the third community to be settled in the county. Colonel John Hargis founded the city after purchasing land in the area, the city was named after James T Morehead, a politician who served as governor of Kentucky from 1834 to 1836. Rowan County came into existence in May 1856, seceding from parts of Morgan County and it was divided into four districts with Morehead being declared the county seat. The formation of Rowan County was a ploy to prevent Flemingsburg from moving its seat to Poplar Plains. Although it was smaller and less developed than the town of Farmers. It was officially incorporated in 1869, in the 1880s, Morehead became the central stage for a notorious conflict known as the Rowan County War or the Martin–Tolliver–Logan Feud. During a number of skirmishes for the few years, at least 20 people were killed. Beginning with a barroom brawl, several gunfights took place in Morehead. Eventually, a group led by Craig Tolliver seized political control of the town and installed allies in the county sheriffs, several members of the opposing faction were arrested on trumped-up charges, and some were killed when the faction in power falsely claimed they had resisted arrest. The conflict gained national attention and on two occasions the governor sent troops to maintain order with little effect. Eventually a posse of as many as 100 individuals were organized and armed by Daniel Boone Logan with the consent of Gov. J. Proctor Knott. In a dramatic two-hour gun battle through the center of Morehead, several Tollivers were killed, two men were later acquitted for the murder of Craig Tolliver. Morehead State University was established as an result of the feud. After the state came to settle the feud, the Disciples of Christ established a church. The industry improved in the early 20th century and it was considered an important shipping center in the region, and the city of Chesapeake, Ohio even carried out developments on the road system of Morehead
20.
Kentucky
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Kentucky, officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state located in the east south-central region of the United States. Kentucky is one of four U. S. states constituted as a commonwealth, originally a part of Virginia, in 1792 Kentucky became the 15th state to join the Union. Kentucky is the 37th most extensive and the 26th most populous of the 50 United States, Kentucky is known as the Bluegrass State, a nickname based on the bluegrass found in many of its pastures due to the fertile soil. One of the regions in Kentucky is the Bluegrass Region in central Kentucky. In 1776, the counties of Virginia beyond the Appalachian Mountains became known as Kentucky County, the precise etymology of the name is uncertain, but likely based on an Iroquoian name meaning the meadow or the prairie. Kentucky is situated in the Upland South, a significant portion of eastern Kentucky is part of Appalachia. Kentucky borders seven states, from the Midwest and the Southeast, West Virginia lies to the east, Virginia to the southeast, Tennessee to the south, Missouri to the west, Illinois and Indiana to the northwest, and Ohio to the north and northeast. Only Missouri and Tennessee, both of which border eight states, touch more, Kentuckys northern border is formed by the Ohio River and its western border by the Mississippi River. The official state borders are based on the courses of the rivers as they existed when Kentucky became a state in 1792, for instance, northbound travelers on U. S.41 from Henderson, after crossing the Ohio River, will be in Kentucky for about two miles. Ellis Park, a racetrack, is located in this small piece of Kentucky. Waterworks Road is part of the land border between Indiana and Kentucky. Kentucky has a part known as Kentucky Bend, at the far west corner of the state. It exists as an exclave surrounded completely by Missouri and Tennessee, Road access to this small part of Kentucky on the Mississippi River requires a trip through Tennessee. The epicenter of the powerful 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes was near this area, much of the outer Bluegrass is in the Eden Shale Hills area, made up of short, steep, and very narrow hills. The Jackson Purchase and western Pennyrile are home to several bald cypress/tupelo swamps, located within the southeastern interior portion of North America, Kentucky has a climate that can best be described as a humid subtropical climate. Temperatures in Kentucky usually range from daytime summer highs of 87 °F to the low of 23 °F. The average precipitation is 46 inches a year, Kentucky experiences four distinct seasons, with substantial variations in the severity of summer and winter. The highest recorded temperature was 114 °F at Greensburg on July 28,1930 while the lowest recorded temperature was −37 °F at Shelbyville on January 19,1994, due to its location, Kentucky has a moderate humid subtropical climate, with abundant rainfall
21.
Rapid City, South Dakota
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Rapid City is the second-largest city in South Dakota and the county seat of Pennington County. Named after Rapid Creek, on which the city is established, the population was 67,956 as of the 2010 Census. Known as the Gateway to the Black Hills and the City of Presidents, Ellsworth Air Force Base is located on the outskirts of the city. Camp Rapid, a part of the South Dakota Army National Guard, is located in the part of the city. The historic Old West town of Deadwood is nearby, in the neighboring Black Hills are the popular tourist attractions of Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, Custer State Park, and Wind Cave National Park. The public discovery of gold in 1874 by the Black Hills Expedition brought an influx of settlers into the Black Hills region of South Dakota. Rapid City was founded, and originally known as Hay Camp, in 1876 by a group of disappointed miners, who promoted their new city as the Gateway to the Black Hills. John Richard Brennan and Samuel Scott, with a group of men, laid out the site of the present Rapid City in February 1876. A square mile was measured off and the six blocks in the center were designated as a business section, committees were appointed to bring in prospective merchants and their families to locate in the new settlement. The city soon began selling supplies to miners and pioneers and its location on the edge of the Plains and Hills and its large river valley made it the natural hub of railroads arriving in the late 1880s from both the south and east. By 1900, Rapid City had survived a boom and bust and was establishing itself as an important regional center for the upper midwest. The work was halted due to leading to the US entry into World War II. The city benefited greatly from the opening of Rapid City Army Air Base, later Ellsworth Air Force Base, as a result, the population of the area nearly doubled between 1940 and 1948, from almost 14,000 to nearly 27,000 people. Military families and civilian personnel soon took every available living space in town, Rapid City businesses profited from the military payroll. During the Cold War, missile installations proliferated in the area, in the early 60s the construction of three Titan missile launch sites containing a total of nine Titan I missiles in the general vicinity of Rapid City took place. A construction boom continued into the 1950s, growth slowed in the 1960s, but the worst natural disaster in South Dakota history, the Black Hills Flood, led to another building boom a decade later. On June 9,1972, heavy rains caused flooding of the Rapid Creek. More than 250 people lost their lives and more than $100 million in property was destroyed, new homes and businesses were constructed to replace those that had been destroyed
22.
South Dakota
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South Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, South Dakota is the 17th most expansive, but the 5th least populous and the 5th least densely populated of the 50 United States. Once the southern portion of the Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2,1889, Pierre is the state capital and Sioux Falls, with a population of about 171,000, is South Dakotas largest city. South Dakota is bordered by the states of North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, the state is bisected by the Missouri River, dividing South Dakota into two geographically and socially distinct halves, known to residents as East River and West River. Eastern South Dakota is home to most of the states population, West of the Missouri, ranching is the predominant agricultural activity, and the economy is more dependent on tourism and defense spending. Most of the Native American reservations are located in West River, the Black Hills, a group of low pine-covered mountains sacred to the Sioux, are located in the southwest part of the state. Mount Rushmore, a major tourist destination, is located there, South Dakota experiences a temperate continental climate, with four distinct seasons and precipitation ranging from moderate in the east to semi-arid in the west. The ecology of the state features species typical of a North American grassland biome, humans have inhabited the area for several millennia, with the Sioux becoming dominant by the early 19th century. In the late 19th century, European-American settlement intensified after a rush in the Black Hills. Encroaching miners and settlers triggered a number of Indian wars, ending with the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, historically dominated by an agricultural economy and a rural lifestyle, South Dakota has recently sought to diversify its economy in areas to attract and retain residents. South Dakotas history and rural character still strongly influence the culture of the state, South Dakota is situated in the north-central United States, and is considered a part of the Midwest by the U. S. Census Bureau, it is also part of the Great Plains region. The culture, economy, and geography of western South Dakota have more in common with the West than the Midwest, South Dakota has a total area of 77,116 square miles, making the state the 17th largest in the Union. Black Elk Peak, formerly named Harney Peak, with an elevation of 7,242 ft, is the states highest point, while the shoreline of Big Stone Lake is the lowest, with an elevation of 966 ft. South Dakota is bordered to the north by North Dakota, to the south by Nebraska, to the east by Iowa and Minnesota, the geographical center of the U. S. is 17 miles west of Castle Rock in Butte County. The North American continental pole of inaccessibility is located between Allen and Kyle,1,024 mi from the nearest coastline, the Missouri River is the largest and longest river in the state. Other major South Dakota rivers include the Cheyenne, James, Big Sioux, Eastern South Dakota has many natural lakes, mostly created by periods of glaciation. Additionally, dams on the Missouri River create four large reservoirs, Lake Oahe, Lake Sharpe, Lake Francis Case, South Dakota can generally be divided into three regions, eastern South Dakota, western South Dakota, and the Black Hills. The Missouri River serves as a boundary in terms of geographic, social, at times the Black Hills are combined with the rest of western South Dakota, and people often refer to the resulting two regions divided by the Missouri River as West River and East River
23.
Slovenia
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Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a nation state in southern Central Europe, located at the crossroads of main European cultural and trade routes. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and it covers 20,273 square kilometers and has a population of 2.06 million. It is a republic and a member of the United Nations, European Union. The capital and largest city is Ljubljana, additionally, the Dinaric Alps and the Pannonian Plain meet on the territory of Slovenia. The country, marked by a significant biological diversity, is one of the most water-rich in Europe, with a river network, a rich aquifer system. Over half of the territory is covered by forest, the human settlement of Slovenia is dispersed and uneven. Slovenia has historically been the crossroads of South Slavic, Germanic, Romance, although the population is not homogeneous, the majority is Slovene. South Slavic language Slovene is the language throughout the country. Slovenia is a largely secularized country, but its culture and identity have been influenced by Catholicism as well as Lutheranism. The economy of Slovenia is small, open, and export-oriented and has strongly influenced by international conditions. It has been hurt by the Eurozone crisis, started in the late 2000s. The main economic field is services, followed by industry and construction, Historically, the current territory of Slovenia was part of many different state formations, including the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, followed by the Habsburg Monarchy. In October 1918, the Slovenes exercised self-determination for the first time by co-founding the State of Slovenes, Croats, in December 1918, they merged with the Kingdom of Serbia into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. During World War II, Slovenia was occupied and annexed by Germany, Italy, and Hungary, with a tiny area transferred to the Independent State of Croatia, in June 1991, after the introduction of multi-party representative democracy, Slovenia split from Yugoslavia and became an independent country. Present-day Slovenia has been inhabited since prehistoric times, and there is evidence of habitation from around 250,000 years ago. A pierced cave bear bone, dating from 43100 ±700 BP, in the 1920s and 1930s, artifacts belonging to the Cro-Magnon such as pierced bones, bone points, and needle were found by archaeologist Srečko Brodar in Potok Cave. It shows that wooden wheels appeared almost simultaneously in Mesopotamia and Europe, in the transition period between the Bronze age to the Iron age, the Urnfield culture flourished. Archaeological remains dating from the Hallstatt period have been found, particularly in southeastern Slovenia, among them a number of situlas in Novo Mesto, in the Iron Age, present-day Slovenia was inhabited by Illyrian and Celtic tribes until the 1st century BC
24.
Bled
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Bled is a town on Lake Bled in the Upper Carniolan region of northwestern Slovenia. It is the seat of the Municipality of Bled. It is most notable as a popular tourist destination in the Upper Carniola region and in Slovenia as whole, the town was first attested in written sources as Ueldes in 1004. The etymology of the name is unknown and it is believed to be of pre-Slavic origin, the German name of the town, Veldes, was either borrowed from Old Slovene *Beldъ before AD800 or is derived from the same pre-Slavic source as the Slovene name. Bled is located on the foot of the Karawanks mountain range near the border with Austria. South of Lake Bled are the densely forested Pokljuka and Jelovica plateaus, here the Sava Bohinjka and the parallel Bohinj Railway lead up to the Bohinj basin, Lake Bohinj, and the Triglav massif. A number of separate the localities of Bled around the lake, the former villages of Grad, Mlino, Rečica, Zagorice. The lake is 2.12 kilometres long and 0.5 to 1 kilometre wide, in summer, the surface water reaches 25 °C and retains a temperature up to 18 °C until autumn. As such, it is suitable for swimming, in colder winters it freezes and is used for ice skating. There is a spring near the lake, next to the Bled Fault. Its water is used in pools in two hotels. A settlement area since Mesolithic times, the locality probably arose about 600 during the Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps. After the Slavic principality of Carantania was conquered by Frankish forces in 788, in 1011, Henry II signed another deed of donation that added the castle and an area of land the size of thirty king’s farms. That area, between the Sava Bohinjka and the Sava Dolinka, became known as the Lordship of Veldes and these donations marked a turning point in the history of Bled and, for the following 800 years, the area remained under the sovereignty of the prince-bishops of Brixen. The bishops very seldom visited their remote possession 300 km away, under one of the 16th-century lessees, Bled Castle became a Protestant stronghold for a time. When the leasehold era came to an end, the prince-bishops began to appoint governors to manage their distant lordship, until the middle of the 18th century, those administrators were exclusively aristocratic, but later they included non-nobles. In 1803, Brixen’s rule came to an end when the prince-bishopric was secularized in the course of the German Mediatization, Bled then came under Austrian sovereignty but in 1808, along with Carniola, it was included in the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces. It returned under Austrian sovereignty in 1813, and in 1838 the Austrian Emperor returned Bled to the bishops of Brixen as a private estate
25.
Upper Carniola
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Upper Carniola is a traditional region of Slovenia, the northern mountainous part of the larger Carniola region. The centre of the region is Kranj, while other urban centers include Jesenice, Tržič, Škofja Loka, Kamnik and it has around 300,000 inhabitants or 14% of the population of Slovenia. Its origins as a political entity can be traced back to the 17th century. This division was described by the scholar Johann Weikhard von Valvasor in his 1689 work The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola. The districts were known in German as Kreise, nevertheless, the regional identity remained strong also thereafter. The Carniolan regional identity soon faded away, but the identification with its sub-units remained strong. To the north, Upper Carniola is delimited by the Austrian state of Carinthia, the historic Lower Styria region to the east, and the Slovenian Littoral to the west. An 1809 atlas shows the border with Lower Carniola to the southeast generally following the line of the Sava, Ljubljanica, Iščica, the landscape is characterised by the mountains of the Southern Limestone Alps, predominantly by the Julian Alps and the Karawanks range at its northern rim. Historically, Ljubljana was part of Upper Carniola, since the 19th century, Kranj, not Ljubljana, has been considered the unofficial capital of Upper Carniola. The modern notion of Upper Carniola does not fully correspond to the historical borders, for example, the Municipality of Jezersko used to be part of the Duchy of Carinthia, in 1918, it was occupied by Slovene volunteers and annexed to Yugoslavia by the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain. Now it is generally considered an integral part of Upper Carniola. The borders of Upper Carniola are only vaguely similar those of Slovenias Upper Carniola Statistical Region, traditionally, most of the people of Upper Carniola have spoken the Upper Carniolan dialect, which is one of the geographically most extended and linguistically most compact Slovene dialects. It covers most of the province, except for some areas in south-western and north-western Upper Carniola. It belongs to the Upper Carniolan dialect group, which includes the Selca dialect, spoken in the mountainous Upper Carniolan villages of Železniki, Selca, Dražgoše. Nevertheless, other dialects are spoken in Upper Carniola, as well, in the village of Rateče, people speak the Gail Valley dialect, which belongs to the Carinthian dialect group. In the area around Kranjska Gora and Gozd Martuljek, a transitional dialect between the Carinthian and Upper Carniolan dialect group is spoken, this is known as the Kranjska Gora subdialect, in the mountainous areas of eastern Upper Carniola, dialects from the Rovte dialect group are spoken. Beginning in the 18th century, the Upper Carniolan dialect became the basis on which standard Slovene was developed, the poet and journalist Valentin Vodnik, who was born in Šiška, now a suburb of Ljubljana, also wrote in the Upper Carniolan dialect. The first two Slovene language newspapers, Lublanske novice and Kmetijske in rokodelske novice were also published in the Upper Carniolan regional variety of Slovene, the poetic language of France Prešeren, the Slovenian national poet, also has many specific Upper Carniolan features
26.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
27.
Annecy-le-Vieux
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Annecy-le-Vieux is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in southeastern France. It is the fourth-largest town in Haute-Savoie in terms of population and it is essentially a residential suburb of Annecy, being less than 3 km from its centre, and is sometimes known at the 16th arrondissement of Annecy. The mayor, Bernard Accoyer, is serving his second term, a doctor by profession, he is also the député of the district and has been president of the UMP group in the Assemblée nationale since 2002. The commune is 50% urbanised with 33 hectares of public forest, the commune is located on the foothills of Mount Veyrier, on a moraine at the junction of two old large glaciers. The Fier forms most of the northern border. The shores of Lake Annecy have been occupied since at least 4000 BCE, a Gallic tribe, the Allobroges, occupied the area in pre-Roman times, the Allobroges were conquered by the Roman legions in 62 BCE. The area was colonised by Rome, which founded the town of Boutae in 50 BCE. The town was at a crossroads of three Roman roads across the Alps, and grew rapidly to a population of several thousand. Roman villas are found in the surrounding countryside, Annecy was attacked by invaders in the post-Roman period, but regained its importance from CE1107. Its population had grown to 470 inhabitants by 1756, grape vines for producing wine have been cultivated on the surrounding hills since the Middle Ages. Various artists lived in the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Eugene Sue, Adolphe de Custine, John Ruskin, two principal industrial activities arose in the mid-19th century, the Cléchet flour mill and the Paccard Bell Foundry. One of largest bells in the world, La Savoyarde which hangs at the Sacré Cœur in Paris, was cast in Annecy-le-Vieux in 1891. It weighs 18,835 kg, stands 3.06 m tall, has a circumference of 9.60 m, is 22 cm thick at the base, at the end of the 19th century, attacks of mildew and phylloxera almost completely destroyed the grape vines. Wine cultivation was replaced by dairy production, Annecy includes a university site, attached to the Université de Savoie, with more than 4,000 students in 2003. The university offers programs in technology, commercial arts and trades, engineering, attractions include the beach Annecy-le-Vieux, boating on Lake Annecy, walking in the hills, including Mount Rampon, Mount Veyrier and Mount Rampignon. Annual events include the Ancilevienne, a 46 km race for teams of runners and cyclists around Lake Annecy, dori, Burkina Faso Communes of the Haute-Savoie department INSEE Town hall cinam. com Image tourism-annecy. net annecytourisme. com
28.
Haute Savoie
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Haute-Savoie is a department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France, bordering both Switzerland and Italy. To the north is Lake Geneva and Switzerland, to the south and southeast are the Mont Blanc, the French entrance to the Mont Blanc Tunnel to Italy is in Haute-Savoie. It is noted for winter sports, the first Winter Olympic Games were held at Chamonix in 1924, before 1860, the territory occupied by modern Haute-Savoie and the adjoining department of Savoie had been part of the Kingdom of Sardinia since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Annexation of the region by France was formalized in the Treaty of Turin on March 24,1860, from November 1942 to September 1943, Haute-Savoie was subjected to military occupation by Fascist Italy. The Maquis des Glières operated from Haute-Savoie, Haute-Savoie comprises four arrondissements, divided into 294 communes and 17 cantons. Haute-Savoie has the largest range of elevations of all the departments in France, the lowest point is 250 metres in the Rhône River Valley, some of the worlds best-known ski resorts are in Haute-Savoie. Its mountainous terrain makes mountain passes important to trade and economic life, some of the most important are the Col de la Forclaz and the Mont Blanc Tunnel, linking Chamonix to Courmayeur in the Aosta Valley. As of 1996,178,624 hectares of Haute-Savoie is forested, compared to 34.4 percent for the Rhone-Alpes region and 27.1 percent for France as a whole. Of the forested area 141,063 hectares is managed for timber and other forest products, national nature reserves are designated by the French government as areas where an outstanding natural heritage is present in both rare and typical areas in terms of species and geology. Management is charged to local organizations, with direction and evaluation focusing on protection for future generations. Lake Annecy is an attraction, along with the town of Évian-les-Bains, perhaps the best-known town on the French shore of Lake Geneva. Haute-Savoie is entirely within the watershed of the Rhone, there were 4,450 farmers in 1999,4,800 farmers and over 1,700 full-time farm employees at the end of 2006. In 1999, crop production was valued at €71.5 million, dairy production is a large part of the Haute-Savoie economy, earning €117.2 million in 2006 and representing 74 percent of the net animal-product worth. The average expenditure per capita in 2006 was €21,706, with the 2004–2007 rise of the euro, Swiss customer traffic decreased five or six percent. At the end of 2006, traditional small businesses represented 84 percent of businesses and 40 percent of retail space,4,301 companies were established in 2004 in Haute-Savoie, nearly 80 percent in the service sector, with a high percentage offering service to individuals. This accounted for 21.6 percent of new businesses, the most active sectors were real estate, construction, business services and the food industry. In 1999, Haute-Savoie had 2,779 industrial companies producing 13.60 percent of all business income. T, firms engaged in screw-cutting are major employers in the department. While the automotive industry is the client, firms also service the electronics, household-appliance
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Nanning
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Nanning is the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China. It is known as the Green City because of its abundance of tropical foliage. As of 2014 it had a population of 6,913,800 with 4,037,000 in its urban area, Nanning, an ancient city with a long history and rich culture, was part of Baiyue ethic groups in the ancient time. In the first year of Daxing period of Eastern Jin Dynasty, Jinxing County, established here as one of the county towns, ushered a history of 1700 years of Nanning organizational system. During the Zhenguan period of Tang dynasty, it was renamed Yong state and established Yong government seat, which is why it has been called Yong for short. In the first year of Taiding period of Yuan Dynasty, Road Yong State was renamed Road Nanning, referring to a southern border of our country. Nanning was once the territory of the Baiyue people and became the capital of Jinxing Prefecture which was separated from Yulin Prefecture of the Eastern Jin dynasty. In the Yuan dynasty in 1324, it was renamed Nanning Lu of Yongzhou Lu meaning May peace maintain in the southern frontier, historically, Nanning was famous for trade, and had permanent business offices from other areas in China since the Song dynasty. In the Ming dynasty Nanning developed into the commodity distributing center of the Zuo River, Nanning serves as host for the annual China-ASEAN EXPO which began in 2005 and was the venue for the 2006 World Robotics Olympiad. Nanning has jurisdiction over 7 districts,5 counties, and 6 development zones, the second tallest building in Nanning is the World Trade Commerce City at 218 meters. The city currently has seven buildings taller than 100 m, built or under construction, Nanning has many parks with tropical lush green landscape, it is one of the greenest cities in China, and its known as Green City. Nannings downtown skyline is rapidly changing and the city is becoming an important hub in China, recently, the government has begun a citywide beautification plan which aimed to further clean up the city and improve its image. This involved curtailing the number of food vendors operating without proper licenses. The program has achieved success, long-term efforts are still needed to deliver lasting results. Nannings GDP in 2015 was 341 billion RMB, the GDP per capita was $7,844. Foreign exports in 2007 were 10 billion USD, foreign fixed asset investment was 34.3 billion RMB. Nanning has six development zones and industrial parks, three of which accounted for 6 billion RMB of Nannings GDP, more than 8 percent of Nannings total. Mineral resources include gold, iron, manganese, aluminum, quartz, silver, indium, coal, marble, one third of Chinas different types of mineral resources are found in Nanning
30.
Gulf of Tonkin
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The Gulf of Tonkin is a body of water located off the coast of northern Vietnam and southern China. It is an arm of the South China Sea. The Gulf is defined in the west by the coastline of Vietnam, in the north by Chinas Guangxi province. The bays Vietnamese and Chinese names – Vịnh Bắc Bộ and Běibù Wān, the name Tonkin, written 東京 in Hán-Nôm characters and Đông Kinh in the Vietnamese alphabet, means eastern capital, and is the former toponym for Hanoi, the present capital of Vietnam. It should not to be confused with Tokyo, which is also written 東京, during Vietnams French colonial era, Tonkin was used to refer to the north of the country. On 2 August 1964, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson claimed that North Vietnamese forces had twice attacked American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Known today as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, this event spawned the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 7 August 1964 and it furthermore foreshadowed the major escalation of the Vietnam War in South Vietnam, which began with the landing of US regular combat troops at Da Nang in 1965. Geography of China Geography of Vietnam Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club Xinhua – China to hold forum to boost Beibu Bay economic zone
31.
Guangxi University
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Guangxi University is a provincial university located in Nanning, Guangxi, China. It is also abbreviated as. The university is one of the Project 211 universities in Peoples Republic of China, Guangxi University was established in October 1928. Its first president was the celebrated scientist and educator Ma Junwu, in 1936, Guangxi University was molded into a comprehensive university with disciplines in the liberal arts, sciences, engineering, agriculture and medicine. In 1939, Guangxi University developed into a university and by 1949 it expanded into one with 5 colleges and 22 departments. In 1952, Mao Zedong inscribed the name for the university and his calligraphy is still in use today. In 1952, College of Agriculture became independent as Guangxi Agricultural College, in 1997 the former Guangxi University and the former Guangxi Agricultural University merged and formed the new Guangxi University.07 square kilometres with a building area of 745,000 square meters. The university has 2 million volumes,200 professors and 670 associate professors, the present enrollment consists of 24,205 students including 181 doctoral candidates,4,145 masters degrees candidates,19,879 undergraduates, and 20,361 students in vocational training programs
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Lingnan culture
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Lingnan culture refers to the culture of Guangdong and the nearby provinces in southeastern China, consists of Cantonese culture, and Teochew culture, Hakka culture. It is the subject of research at institutions such as the Center for Lingnan Culture and it is typically contrasted with that of Chinas northern plains. Lingnan architecture is concentrated at Xiguan, built at the end of the Qing Dynasty, Baomo Garden is located at Zini Village near Shawan town of Panyu and is a fine example of classical Lingnan architecture. Chen Clan Temple is another representative of Lingnan architecture, the Temple was built in the sixteenth year of Guangxu Emperor of the Qing Dynasty and served as an academy for Chen families in 72 counties of the Guangdong Province. It comprises all sorts of folk architectural and decorative arts, and is famous for its Three Carvings, Three sculptures, therefore, it is called the best of all the clan temples in neighbourhood. Today, some building elements of Lingnan architecture are adapted in constructions of commercial districts in Guangzhou, in streets like Beijinglu Commercial Street, Zhongshan Wulu Road and Hui Fulu Road, old-fashioned shops of Lingnan architecture are found in heaps. Attached to the second storey from the pavement, numerous pillars were built in front of the stores, similar building styles are still common in some torn-down areas both in Hong Kong and Taipei. Architecture of Singapore Chinese culture Chinese architecture Culture of Hong Kong Lingnan Lingnan University Shophouse
33.
Cantonese people
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The Cantonese people are Han Chinese people originating from or residing in the provinces of Guangdong and eastern Guangxi, in mainland China. The term Cantonese people is often synonymous with the Punti people and they are also referred to as Hoa in Vietnam, Kongfu in Malaysia and Konghu in Indonesia. The Cantonese people were responsible for establishing the Cantonese languages usage in Hong Kong during the early migration to the colonial era. There are currently around 9 million Cantonese speakers overseas, Taishanese people may also be considered as Cantonese, but speak Taishanese, a different variant of Yue Chinese. There have been a number of influential Cantonese figures throughout history, such as Yuan Chonghuan, Bruce Lee, Ching Shih, Lee Shau-kee, Ho Ching, until the 19th century, Cantonese history was largely the history of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. What is now Guangdong, and later Guangxi, was first brought under Qin influence by a general named Zhao Tuo, the Nanyue kingdom went on to become the strongest Baiyue state in China, with many neighboring kingdoms declaring their allegiance to Nanyue rule. The greatly expanded Nanyue kingdom included the territories of modern-day Guangdong, Guangxi and Northern Vietnam, the native peoples of Liangguang remained under Baiyue control until the Han dynasty in 111 BC, following the Han–Nanyue War. However, it was not until subsequent dynasties such as the Jin Dynasty, Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty that major waves of Han Chinese began to migrate into Guangdong and Guangxi. Waves of migration and subsequent intermarriage meant that existing populations of both provinces were displaced, but some groups like the Zhuangs still remained. The Cantonese often call themselves people of Tang, during the 4th-12th centuries, Han Chinese people from North Chinas Yellow River valley migrated and settled in the South of China. There have been migrations of Han people into Southeastern and Southern China throughout history. The origin of the Cantonese people is said to be Northern Chinese peoples that migrated to Guangdong. During Wang Mangs reign in the Han dynasty, there were influxes of Han Chinese migrants into Guangdong and Guangxi, western coast of Hainan, Annam and eastern Yunnan. During the early 1800s, conflict occurred between Cantonese and Portuguese pirates in the form of the Ningpo massacre after the defeat of Portuguese pirates. The First and Second Opium Wars led to the loss of Chinas control over Hong Kong and Kowloon, Macau also became a Portuguese settlement. Between 1855 and 1867, the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars caused further discord in Guangdong, the third plague pandemic of 1855 broke out in Yunnan and spread to Guangxi then Guangdong, killing thousands and spreading via water traffic to nearby Hong Kong. The turmoil of the 19th century, followed by the upheaval of the early 20th century. Up until the half of the 20th century, the majority of overseas Chinese emigrated from two provinces of China, Guangdong and Fujian
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Zhuang customs and culture
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The Zhuang have a rich variety of customs and culture. Sam Nyied Sam the 3rd day of the 3rd month of the Chinese lunar calendar is one of the festivals of the Zhuang celebrated by singing, dancing, games. At this time young men and women sing antiphonal songs to each other. Festival of the sacrifice of the 7th lunar month the Duanwu medicine festival Buffalo King Festival - celebrated in Niutouzhai Village, Wenshan County. The Zhuang have long worshipped the water buffalo, Zhuang folk stories often take the form of songs. There are various tales, myths, legends, and historical poems. For over one thousand years they have used Sawndip to write a variety of literature, including folk songs, operas, poems, scriptures, letters, contracts. There are many stories one a thousand years old, one, a fairy tale which has attracted much attention on recent years is The orphan girl and the rich girl an early version of the story Cinderella found in Zhuang opera scripts. The Zhuang have their own scriptures written in poetical form such as the Baeu Rodo about the creation of the world, as well as idengenous stories many stories form other peoples such as the Han Chinese have become part of the Zhuang literary tradition. Whilst the original Chinese opera of The Legend of Wenlong it has preserved in Zhuang texts. Bronze drum dance straw man dance water buffalo dance paper horse dance hand towel dance sun dance Traditional Zhuang folk handicrafts includes the following, the Mo have their own sutra and professional priests known as Bu Mo who traditionally use chicken bones for divination. In Mo, the creator is known as Bu Luotuo and the universe is tripartite, there are also a number of Buddhists, Taoists, and Christians among the Zhuang. According to a 1980s survey, 42% of Zhuang people are monolingual in Zhuang, while 55% are bilingual in Zhuang, Zhuang folk medicine has a history of over one thousand years. SIL International and the Nationalities Publishing House of Yunnan
35.
Zhuang people
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The Zhuang people are an ethnic group who mostly live in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China. Some also live in the Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou and Hunan provinces and they form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the Peoples Republic of China. With the Buyi, Tay–Nùng, and other northern Tai speakers and their population, estimated at 18 million people, makes them the largest minority in China. The Chinese character used for the Zhuang people has changed several times and their autonym, Cuengh in Standard Zhuang, was originally written with the graphic pejorative Zhuàng 獞. Chinese characters typically combine a semantic element or radical and a phonetic element, john DeFrancis calls Zhuàng 獞, with the dog radical 犭 and a tóng 童 phonetic, an ethnic slur and describes how the Peoples Republic of China removed it. In 1949, after the Chinese civil war, the logograph 獞 was officially replaced with Zhuàng 僮, later, during the standardization of simplified Chinese characters, Zhuàng 僮 was changed to a completely different character Zhuàng 壮. The Zhuang languages are a group of mutually unintelligible languages of the Tai family, heavily influenced by nearby varieties of Chinese, the Standard Zhuang language is based on a northern dialect, but few people learn it. Therefore, Zhuang people from different dialect areas use Chinese to communicate each other. According to a 1980s survey, 42% of Zhuang people were monolingual in Zhuang, while 55% were bilingual in Zhuang, Zhuang has been written using logograms based on Chinese characters for over 1,000 years. Standard Zhuang, the official script, was introduced in 1957. However, the traditional character-based script is commonly used in less formal domains. The Zhuang have their own scriptures written in poetic form such as the Baeu Rodo, most Zhuang follow a traditional animist faith known as Shigongism or Moism, which include elements of ancestor worship. The Mo have their own sutra and professional priests known as bu mo who traditionally use chicken bones for divination. In Moism, the creator is known as Bu Luotuo and the universe is tripartite, there are also a number of Buddhists, Taoists, and Christians among the Zhuang. For over one thousand years the Zhuang have used Sawndip to write a variety of literature, including folk songs, operas, poems, scriptures, letters, contracts. Zhuang cuisine includes many salty and sour dishes such as pickled cabbage, pickled vegetables and pork, a common Zhuang drink is oil tea, tea leaves fried in oil with rice grains brewed and drunk with peanuts or a rice cake. While Chinese scholarship continues to place the Zhuang–Dong languages among the Sino-Tibetan family and they have been linked with the Austronesian languages, which dispersed from Taiwan after a migration from the mainland. However, the Austro-Tai hypothesis uniting these families is now supported by few scholars, genetic evidence points out Zhuang possesses a very high frequency of Haplogroup O2 with most of them being subclade O2a making it the most dominant marker, one that they share with Austro-Asiatic
36.
Varieties of Chinese
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Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local language varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. The differences are similar to those within the Romance languages, with particularly strong in the more rugged southeast. These varieties, often called dialects, have been classified into seven to ten groups, the largest being Mandarin, Wu, Min, Chinese varieties differ most in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, all have phonemic tones, with northern varieties tending to have fewer distinctions than southern ones. Many have tone sandhi, with the most complex patterns in the area from Zhejiang to eastern Guangdong. Standard Chinese takes its phonology from the Beijing dialect, with vocabulary from the Mandarin group and it is the sole official language of both China and Taiwan, one of the four official languages of Singapore, and one of the six official languages of the United Nations. At the end of the 2nd millennium BC, a form of Chinese was spoken in an area around the lower Wei River. From there it expanded eastwards across the North China Plain to Shandong and then south into the valley of the Yangtze River, as the language spread, it replaced formerly dominant languages in those areas, and regional differences grew. Simultaneously, especially in periods of unity, there was a tendency to promote a central standard to facilitate communication between people from different regions. The first evidence of variation is found in texts from the Spring. At that time, the Zhou royal domain, though no longer politically powerful, the Fangyan is devoted to differences in vocabulary between regions. Commentaries from the Eastern Han period contain much discussion of local variations in pronunciation, the Qieyun rhyme book noted wide variation in pronunciation between regions, and set out to define a standard pronunciation for reading the classics. This standard, known as Middle Chinese, is believed to be a based on the reading traditions of northern and southern capitals. The North China Plain provided few barriers to migration, leading to relative linguistic homogeneity over an area in northern China. In contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China have spawned the other six major groups of Chinese languages, with great internal diversity, until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people spoke only their local language. As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the using a common language based on Mandarin varieties. Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, in the early years of the Republic of China, Literary Chinese was replaced as the written standard by written vernacular Chinese, which was based on northern dialects. In the 1930s a standard language was adopted, with its pronunciation based on the Beijing dialect
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Yue Chinese
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Yue or Yueh is one of the primary branches of Chinese spoken in southern China, particularly the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, collectively known as Liangguang. The name Cantonese is often used for the branch, but linguists prefer to reserve that name for the variety of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau. Taishanese, from the area of Jiangmen located southwest of Guangzhou, was the language of most of the 19th-century emigrants from Guangdong to Southeast Asia. Most later migrants have been speakers of Cantonese, Yue varieties are not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Chinese. The prototypical use of the name Cantonese in English is for the Yue variety of Guangzhou, in Chinese, people of Hong Kong and Macau, as well as Cantonese immigrants abroad, usually call their language Gwóngdùng wá speech of Guangdong. The people of Guangdong and Guangxi do not use that term and they also use baahk wá on its own to refer to the Guangzhou dialect. It is also used in Guangxi to refer to Yue varieties, as for example in an expression like 南寧白話, the area of China south of the Nanling Mountains, known as the Lingnan, was originally home to peoples known to the Chinese as the Hundred Yue. Large-scale Han Chinese migration to the area began after the Qin conquest of the region in 214 BC, successive waves followed at times of upheaval in North China, such as the falls of the Han, Tang and Song dynasties. The most popular route was via the Xiang River, which the Qin had connected to the Li River by the Lingqu Canal, a secondary route followed the Gan River and then the Bei Jiang into eastern Guangdong. Yue-speakers were later joined by Hakka-speakers following the North River route, after the fall of Qin, the Lingnan area was part of the independent state of Nanyue for about a century, before being incorporated in the Han empire. After the Tang dynasty collapsed, much of the Yue area became part of the Southern Han, one of the states of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. The waves of Chinese migration assimilated huge numbers of aborigines, with the result that todays Yue-speaking population is descended from both groups. The colloquial layers of Yue varieties contain elements influenced by the Tai languages formerly spoken widely in the area and still spoken by people such as the Zhuang. The port city of Guangzhou lies in the middle of Pearl River Delta, with access to the interior via the West River, North River and East River and it has been the economic centre of the Lingnan region since Qin times, when it was an important shipbuilding centre. By 660, it was the largest port in China, part of a network stretching as far as Arabia. During the Southern Song, it became the cultural centre of the region. Like many other Chinese varieties it developed a distinct literary layer associated with the tradition of reading the classics. The Guangzhou dialect was used in the popular Yuèōu, Mùyú and Nányīn folksong genres, there was also a small amount of vernacular literature, written with Chinese characters extended with a number of non-traditional characters for Cantonese words
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Southwestern Mandarin
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Some forms of Southwest Mandarin are not entirely mutually intelligible with Standard Mandarin Chinese or other forms of Mandarin. Varieties of Southwestern Mandarin are spoken by roughly 200 million people, if removed from the larger Mandarin Chinese group, it would have the 8th-most native speakers in the world, behind Mandarin itself, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic and Bengali. Modern Southwestern Mandarin was formed by the waves of immigrants brought to the regions during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, because of this comparatively recent move, these dialects show more similarity to modern Standard Mandarin than to other varieties of Chinese like Cantonese or Hokkien. The Chengdu-Chongqing and Hubei dialects are believed to reflect aspects of the Mandarin lingua franca spoken during the Ming Dynasty, however, some scholars believe its origins may be more similar to Lower Yangtze Mandarin. Southwestern Mandarin is the language in the Kokang district in Northern Myanmar. Southwestern Mandarin is also one of two languages of the Wa State, an unrecognised autonomous state within Myanmar, alongside Wa language. Because Wa has no form, Chinese is the official working language of the Wa State government. Some of its speakers live in Thailand and it is also spoken in parts of Northern Vietnam. Ethnic minorities in Vietnams Lao Cai Province used to speak Southwestern Mandarin to each other when their languages were not mutually intelligible, Southwestern Mandarin is also used between different ethnic minorities in Yunnan. Most Southwestern Mandarin dialects have, like Standard Mandarin, only retained four of the eight tones of Middle Chinese. However, the tone has completely merged with the light-level tone in most Southwestern dialects. Southwestern Mandarin dialects do not possess the retroflex consonants of Standard Mandarin, most have lost the distinction between the nasal consonant /n/ and the lateral consonant /l/ and the nasal finals /-n/ and /-ŋ/. For example, the sounds la and na are generally indistinguishable, as well as the sounds fen, some varieties also lack a distinction between the labiodental sound /f/ and the glottal /h/
39.
Pinghua
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Pinghua is a group of related varieties of Chinese spoken mainly in parts of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, with some speakers in Yunnan province. Pinghua is a language in some areas of Guangxi, where it is spoken as a second language by speakers of Zhuang languages. Some speakers of Pinghua are officially classified as Zhuang, and many are genetically distinct from the Han majority of Chinese speakers, the northern subgroup of Pinghua is centered on Guilin and the southern subgroup around Nanning. Southern Pinghua has several features such as having four distinct checked tones. Language surveys in Guangxi during the 1950s recorded varieties of Chinese that had included in the Yue dialect group but were different from those in Guangdong. Pinghua was designated as a dialect group from Yue by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in the 1980s and since then has been treated as a separate dialect in textbooks. However, it is not at present noted in Ethnologue, since designation as a separate dialect group, Pinghua has been the focus of increased research. In the 1980s the number of speakers was listed as over 2 million, Pinghua is divided into two mutually unintelligible subgroups, The northern subgroup is spoken in northern Guangxi, around the city of Guilin, in close proximity with Southwest Mandarin dialects. The southern subgroup is spoken in southern Guangxi, around the city of Nanning and these varieties form a dialect continuum with Yue varieties spoken in that part of Guangxi. Yu Jin subdivides this group into three types, Yongjiang, spoken along the Yong River around Nanning, guandao, spoken to the east of Nanning in Laibin and the counties of Heng and Binyang, around the road to the Southwest Mandarin-speaking city of Liuzhou. Rongjiang, spoken along the Rong River to the north of Liuzhou, Nanning Pinghua has a voiceless lateral fricative for Middle Chinese /s/ or /z/, for example in the numbers /ɬam/ three and /ɬi/ four. This is unlike Standard Cantonese but like some other Yue varieties such as Taishanese, genetically, Pinghua speakers have more in common with non-Han ethnic minorities in southern China than with other Han groups. Studies on the Han Chinese dialects of Guangxi
40.
Zhuang languages
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The Zhuang languages are any of more than a dozen Tai languages spoken by the Zhuang people of southern China in the province of Guangxi and adjacent parts of Yunnan and Guangdong. The Zhuang languages do not form a linguistic unit, as northern and southern Zhuang languages are more closely related to other Tai languages than to each other. Standard Zhuang is based on the northern Zhuang dialect of Wuming, the Tai languages are believed to have been originally spoken in what is now southern China, with speakers of the Southwestern Tai languages having emigrated in the face of Chinese expansion. He also argues that the departure of the Thai from southern China must predate the 5th century AD, zhāng Jūnrús Zhuàngyǔ Fāngyán Yánjiù is the most detailed study of Zhuang dialectology published to date. It reports survey work carried out in the 1950s, and includes a 1465-word list covering 36 varieties of Zhuang, for the list of the 36 Zhuang variants below from Zhang, the name of the region is given first, followed by the specific village. The phylogenetic position of each variant follows that of Pittayaporn, the Zhuang language has been divided by Chinese linguists into northern and southern dialects, each of which has been divided into a number of vernacular varieties by Chinese linguists. Although Southern Zhuang varieties have aspirated stops, Northern Zhuang varieties lack them, there are over 60 distinct tonal systems with 5–11 tones depending on the variety. Castro and Hansen distinguished three mutually unintelligible varieties, Central Hongshuihe, Eastern Hongshuihe and Liuqian, min Zhuang is a recently discovered variety that has never been described previous to Johnson. Pyang Zhuang and Myang Zhuang are recently described Central Tai languages spoken in Debao County, Guangxi, the Zhuang languages have been written in the Old Zhuang script, Sawndip, for over a thousand years, and possibly Sawgoek previous to that. It is used for writing songs about every aspect of life, there has also been the occasional use of pictographic proto-writing, such as in the example at right. In addition, Standard Zhuang and Bouyei are written in Latin script, chongzuo Tai languages Languages of China Ningming Mingjiang language Northern Tai languages Yongnan languages Zhuang studies Zhuàng-Hàn cíhuì 壮汉词汇. Edmondson, Jerold A. and David B, solnit, ed. Comparative Kadai, The Tai Branch. Dallas, TX, Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of Texas at Arlington,1997, a sociolinguistic introduction to the Central Taic languages of Wenshan Prefecture, China. SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2010-027,114 p. http, //www. sil. org/silesr/abstract. asp. ref=2010-027, luo Liming, Qin Yaowu, Lu Zhenyu, Chen Fulong. Zhuang–Chinese–English Dictionary / Cuengh Gun Yingh Swzdenj, nationality Press,1882 pp. ISBN 7-105-07001-3. Tán Xiǎoháng 覃晓航, Xiàndài Zhuàngyǔ 现代壮语, Tán Guóshēng 覃国生, Zhuàngyǔ fāngyán gàilùn 壮语方言概论. The Nationalities Publishing House of Yunnan, wéi Qìngwěn 韦庆稳, Tán Guóshēng 覃国生, Zhuàngyǔ jiǎnzhì 壮语简志. Zhang Junru 张均如, et al. 壮语方言研究 / Zhuang yu fang yan yan jiu, chengdu, 四川民族出版社 / Sichuan min zu chu ban she,1999
41.
Mienic languages
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The Mienic or Yao languages are spoken by the Yao people of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Some of the Yao peoples speak Hmongic languages, these are called Bunu, a small population of Yao people in Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County in eastern Guangxi speak a Tai-Kadai language called Lakkia. Mienic is one of the branches of the Hmong–Mien language family. Data points studied in Mao are also listed for each dialect, there are about 10,000 speakers in Mengshan, Lipu, Pingle, and Zhaoping counties. The comparative vocabulary chart in Mao Zongwu consists of the following languages and this classification presents a bipartite division of the Mienic into a subgroup consisting of Iu Mien and Biao Min, and another subgroup consisting of Kim Mun and Dzao Min. Luoxiang is grouped with Kim Mun, while Changping is grouped with Dzao Min and its origin is obscure, but it may have started out as a Sinicized Mienic language. 瑤族勉语方言研究 / Yao zu Mian yu fang yan yan jiu, beijing, 民族出版社 / Min zu chu ban she. Duan Shanshu, Mei Yuzhu, Pan Meihua, một số vấn đề về dân tộc học Việt Nam. Hà Nội, Nhà xuất bản đại học quốc gia Hà Nội. http, //sealang. net/sala/archives/pdf8/aumann2004subgrouping. pdf
Morehead, Kentucky, United States (1994)
Bled, Upper Carniola, Slovenia (2009)
Annecy-le-Vieux, Haute Savoie, France (2011)
