1.
The Yellow Sea (film)
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The Yellow Sea is a 2010 Korean thriller film directed by Na Hong-jin. In northeastern Chinese city of Yanji in Yanbian Prefecture, Gu-nam, when not working, he is often found at gambling halls. Gu-nam is now in serious debt and his wife left to work in South Korea and promised to send money back. He has yet to hear from her and is tormented by nightmares of her having an extra-marital affair, to make matters worse, Gu-nam is fired from his job and debt collectors take most of his severance pay. Local gangster, Myun Jung-hak, offers him a deal, if Gu-nam goes to South Korea to kill a businessman, Gu-nam accepts and leaves for South Korea by train and a rickety fishing boat, with US$500 for expenses. When Gu-nam arrives in South Korea, he carefully scopes out his target for days, when the time arrives for Gu-nam to take out his target, a string of unexpected events occurs, leaving him desperately looking for a way out. Meanwhile, the police, the South Korean mob, as well as the ethnic Korean Chinese mafia all frantically search for Gu-nam, the film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, as well as the 2011 Filmfest München. The Australian and UK films rights were sold to Bounty Films, the UK release of the film was on October 21,2011. The film opened on December 22,2010 in South Korea and was top of the box office, selling 1.05 million tickets in its first five days of release, the film sold a total of 2,142,742 tickets nationwide. Official website The Yellow Sea at the Korean Movie Database The Yellow Sea at the Internet Movie Database The Yellow Sea at AllMovie The Yellow Sea at Rotten Tomatoes
2.
SG Automotive
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SG Automotive Group Co Ltd is a Chinese vehicle and component manufacturer headquartered in Dandong, Liaoning province. The company makes buses, light trucks, semi-trailer trucks, SUVs, Auto parts made by SG are used by other Chinese car makers including Brilliance Auto, Chery, and JAC Motors. Light trucks and buses are sold under the Huanghai brand name, some SUVs sold under this brand may utilize Mitsubishi engines as of 2011. The company makes fleet sales, and some products are purchased by the Chinese State, SG was founded in Liaoning in 1984 with RMB70,000 as a manufacturer of axles for off-road vehicles. In August 2012, SG agreed to acquire a 56. 19% stake in a Dandong-based special vehicle company from a Liaoning-based group company for RMB80.9 million, SG has component manufacturing facilities in Wuhu, Anhui, and Shenyang, Liaoning. Some products, including the Plutus and the Steed, are assembled by Effa Motors in Uruguay, some of its production has been sold in Malaysia, where the Plutus pick-up was on sale as of late 2012
3.
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
4.
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
5.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
6.
Hanyu 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
7.
Wu Chinese
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Wu is a group of linguistically similar and historically related varieties of Chinese primarily spoken in the whole city of Shanghai, Zhejiang province, southern Jiangsu province and bordering areas. Major Wu varieties include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Ningbo, Wuxi, Wenzhou/Oujiang, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Wu speakers, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Lu Xun and Cai Yuanpei, occupied positions of great importance in modern Chinese culture and politics. Wu can also be found being used in Shaoxing opera, which is only in national popularity to Peking opera, as well as in the performances of the popular entertainer. Wu is also spoken in a number of diaspora communities, with significant centers of immigration originating from Shanghai, Qingtian. Suzhou has traditionally been the center of Wu and was likely the first place the distinct variety of Sinitic known as Wu developed. Suzhou dialect is considered to be the most linguistically representative of the family. Due to the influence of Shanghainese, Wu as a whole is incorrectly labelled in English as simply, Shanghainese, among speakers of other Sinitic languages, Wu is often subjectively judged to be soft, light, and flowing. There is an idiom in Mandarin that specifically describes these qualities of Wu speech, Ngu nung nioe ngiu, Wu varieties have the largest vowel quality inventories in the world. The Jinhui dialect spoken in Shanghais Fengxian District has 20 vowel qualities, Wu Chinese, along with Min, is also of great significance to historical linguists due to their retention of many ancient features. These two languages have proven pivotal in determining the history of the Chinese languages. More pressing concerns of the present are those of language preservation, however, many analysts believe that a stable state of diglossia will endure for at least several generations if not indefinitely. Saying one speaks Wu is akin to saying one speaks a Romance language and it is not a particularly defined entity like Standard Mandarin or Hochdeutsch. They do this by affixing 話 Wo to their locations endonym, for example, 溫州話 Wēnzhōuhuà is used for Wenzhounese. Affixing 閒話 xiánhuà is also common and more typical of the Taihu division, Wu, the formal name and standard reference in dialectology literature. Northern Wu, Wu typically spoken in the north of Zhejiang and it by default includes the Xuanzhou division in Anhui as well, however this division is often neglected in Northern Wu discussions. Southern Wu, Wu spoken in southern Zhejiang and periphery, comprising the Oujiang, Wuzhou, Western Wu, A term gaining in usage as a synonym for the Xuanzhou division and modeled after the previous two terms since the Xuanzhou division is less representative of Northern Wu. Shanghainese, is also a common name, used because Shanghai is the most well-known city in the Wu-speaking region. The term Shanghainese is never used by linguists to refer to anything
8.
Cantonese
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Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as one of their official languages and it is also spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and throughout the Western World. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares some vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon, sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar, in English, the term Cantonese is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton and this narrow sense may be specified as Canton language or Guangzhou language in English. However, Cantonese may also refer to the branch of Cantonese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang. In this article, Cantonese is used for Cantonese proper, historically, speakers called this variety Canton speech or Guangzhou speech, although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong province, people call it provincial capital speech or plain speech. In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, in mainland China, the term Guangdong speech is also increasingly being used among both native and non-native speakers. Due to its status as a prestige dialect among all the dialects of the Cantonese or Yue branch of Chinese varieties, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and it is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language along with Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The variant spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is known as Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China
9.
Jyutping
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Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme, the LSHK promotes the use of this romanisation system. The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms Jyut6jyu5, only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables. ^ ^ ^ Referring to the pronunciation of these words. There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese, however, as three of the nine are entering tones, which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping. Jyutping and the Yale Romanisation of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they differ in the following, The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, the initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale. The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale, the initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping whereas ch is used instead in Yale. In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel, in Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances. Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale, eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/ and these three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6, lem2, and gep6. To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h. Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they have differences, The vowel oe represents both /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping. The vowel y represents /y/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu and i are used in Jyutping, the initial dz represents /ts/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping. The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping. To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, however, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping
10.
Hangul
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The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul in South Korea and as Chosŏngŭl/Chosŏn Muntcha in North Korea is the alphabet that has been used to write the Korean language since the 15th century. It was created during the Joseon Dynasty in 1443 by King Sejong the Great, in South Korea, Hangul is used primarily to write the Korean language as using Hanja in typical Korean writing had fallen out of common usage during the late 1990s. In its classical and modern forms, the alphabet has 19 consonant and 21 vowel letters, however, instead of being written sequentially like the letters of the Latin alphabet, Hangul letters are grouped into blocks, such as 한 han, each of which transcribes a syllable. That is, although the syllable 한 han may look like a single character, each syllabic block consists of two to six letters, including at least one consonant and one vowel. These blocks are arranged horizontally from left to right or vertically from top to bottom. Each Korean word consists of one or more syllables, hence one or more blocks, of the 11,172 possible Hangul syllables, the most frequent 256 have a cumulative frequency of 88. 2%, with the top 512, it reaches 99. 9%. The modern name Hangul was coined by Ju Sigyeong in 1912, han meant great in archaic Korean, and geul is the native Korean word for script. Taken together, then, the meaning is great script, as the word han had also become one way of indicating Korea as a whole the name could also potentially be interpreted as Korean script. Korean 한글 is pronounced, and in English as /ˈhɑːn. ɡʊl/ or /ˈhɑːŋɡʊl/, when used as an English word, it is often rendered without the diacritics, hangul, and it is often capitalized as Hangul, as it appears in many English dictionaries. Hankul in the Yale romanization, a system recommended for technical linguistic studies, North Koreans call it Chosŏngŭl, after Chosŏn, the North Korean name for Korea. Because of objections to the names Hangeul, Chosŏngŭl, and urigeul by Koreans in China, until the early 20th century, Hangul was denigrated as vulgar by the literate elite, who preferred the traditional hanja writing system. They gave it such names as these, Achimgeul, in the original Hanja, it is rendered as 故智者不終朝而會，愚者可浹旬而學。 Gugmun Eonmun Amgeul. Am is a prefix that signifies a noun is feminine Ahaetgeul or Ahaegeul Hangul was promulgated by Sejong the Great, the Hall of Worthies, a group of scholars who worked with Sejong to develop and refine the new alphabet, is often credited for the work. The project was completed in late December 1443 or January 1444, the publication date of the Hunmin Jeong-eum, October 9, became Hangul Day in South Korea. Its North Korean equivalent, Chosongul Day, is on January 15, various speculations about the creation process were put to rest by the discovery in 1940 of the 1446 Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye. This document explains the design of the consonant letters according to articulatory phonetics, to assuage this problem, King Sejong created the unique alphabet known as Hangul to promote literacy among the common people. However, it entered popular culture as Sejong had intended, being used especially by women, the late 16th century, however, saw a revival of Hangul, with gasa literature and later sijo flourishing. In the 17th century, Hangul novels became a major genre, by this point spelling had become quite irregular
11.
Hanja
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Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. Borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation, hanja-mal or hanja-eo refers to words that can be written with hanja, and hanmun refers to Classical Chinese writing, although hanja is sometimes used loosely to encompass these other concepts. Because hanja never underwent major reform, they are almost entirely identical to traditional Chinese, only a small number of hanja characters are modified or unique to Korean. By contrast, many of the Chinese characters currently in use in Japan and Mainland China have been simplified, and contain fewer strokes than the corresponding hanja characters. Today, a working knowledge of Chinese characters is still important for anyone who wishes to study older texts. Learning a certain number of hanja is very helpful for understanding the etymology of Sino-Korean words, hanja are not used to write native Korean words, which are always rendered in hangul, and even words of Chinese origin—hanja-eo —are written with the hangul alphabet most of the time. A major motivation for the introduction of Chinese characters into Korea was the spread of Buddhism, the major Chinese text that introduced hanja to Koreans, however, was not a religious text but the Chinese text, Cheonjamun. One way of adapting hanja to write Korean in such systems was to represent native Korean grammatical particles, for example, Gugyeol uses the characters 爲尼 to transcribe the Korean word hăni, in modern Korean, that means does, and so. However, in Chinese, the characters are read as the expression wéi ní. This is an example of Gugyeol words where the radical is read in Korean for its meaning. Hanja was the means of writing Korean until King Sejong the Great promoted the invention of hangul in the 15th century. However, even after the invention of hangul, most Korean scholars continued to write in hanmun and it was not until the 20th century that hangul truly replaced hanja. Officially, hanja has not been used in North Korea since June 1949, additionally, many words borrowed from Chinese have been replaced in the North with native Korean words. However, there are a number of Chinese-borrowed words in widespread usage in the North. The replacement has been less total in South Korea where, although usage has declined over time, some remains in common usage in some contexts. Each hanja is composed of one of 214 radicals plus in most cases one or more additional elements, the vast majority of hanja use the additional elements to indicate the sound of the character, but a few hanja are purely pictographic, and some were formed in other ways. This dual meaning-sound reading of a character is called eumhun, the word or words used to denote the meaning are often—though hardly always—words of native Korean origin, and are sometimes archaic words no longer commonly used. South Korean primary schools abandoned the teaching of hanja in 1971 and it is taught in separate courses in South Korean high schools, separately from the normal Korean-language curriculum
12.
Revised Romanization of Korean
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The Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea proclaimed by Ministry of Culture and Tourism to replace the older McCune–Reischauer system. The new system eliminates diacritics in favor of digraphs and adheres closely to Korean phonology than to a suggestive rendition of Korean phonetics for non-native speakers. The Revised Romanization limits itself to the ISO basic Latin alphabet, apart from limited and it was developed by the National Academy of the Korean Language from 1995 and was released to the public on 7 July 2000 by South Koreas Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Proclamation No. 2000-8, which cites these reasons for the new system, It promotes consistent romanization by native Korean speakers by the transcription of important language characteristics. It reduces the confusion caused by the frequent omission of apostrophes and it rationalizes the Korean language with the plain ASCII text of internet domain names. Basic principles of romanization are, Romanization is based on standard Korean pronunciation, symbols other than Roman letters are avoided to the greatest extent possible. These are notable features of the Revised Romanization system, Vowels ㅓ/ʌ/ and ㅡ/ɯ/ are written as digraphs, however, ㅝ/wʌ/ is written as wo, and ㅢ/ɰi/ is written as ui. Unlike McCune–Reischauer, aspirated consonants have no apostrophe, k, t, p and their unaspirated counterparts are written with letters that are voiced in English, g, d, b, j. ㅅ/s/ is written as s regardless of the vowels and semivowels, there is no sh, 사 → sa. When followed by another consonant or when in position, it is written as t, 옷 → ot. ㄹ/l/ is r before a vowel or a semivowel and l everywhere else, 리을 → rieul, 철원 → Cheorwon, 울릉도 → Ulleungdo, other rules and recommendations include the following, A hyphen optionally disambiguates syllables, 가을 → ga-eul versus 개울 → gae-ul. However, few official publications make use of this provision since actual instances of ambiguity among names are rare, however, names for geographic features and artificial structures are not hyphenated, 설악산 → Seoraksan, 해인사 → Haeinsa Proper nouns are capitalized. Given names and commercial names are encouraged to change, but it is not required, all Korean textbooks were required to comply with the new system by February 28,2002. English-language newspapers in South Korea initially resisted the new system by citing its flaws, the Korea Times was the last major English-language newspaper to do so and switched only in May 2006. North Korea continues to use a version of the McCune–Reischauer system of Romanization, textbooks and dictionaries intended for students of the Korean language tend to include this Romanization. However, some publishers have acknowledged the difficulties or confusion it can cause for non-native Korean speakers who are unused to the conventions of style of Romanization. ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㄹ are usually transcribed as g, d, b, and r when appearing before a vowel, and as k, t, p, and l when followed by another consonant or when appearing at the end of a word. The revised romanization transcribes certain phonetic changes that occur with combinations of the consonant of a character
13.
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
14.
Yellow River
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The Yellow River or Huang He is the second-longest river in Asia, following the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest river system in the world at the estimated length of 5,464 km. Originating in the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai province of western China, it flows through nine provinces, the Yellow River basin has an east–west extent of about 1,900 kilometers and a north–south extent of about 1,100 km. Its total basin area is about 742,443 square kilometers and its basin was the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilization, and it was the most prosperous region in early Chinese history. Early Chinese literature including the Yu Gong or Tribute of Yu dating to the Warring States period refers to the Yellow River as simply 河, the first appearance of the name 黃河 is in the Book of Han written during the Eastern Han dynasty about the Western Han dynasty. The adjective yellow describes the color of the muddy water in the lower course of the river. One of its older Mongolian names was the Black River, because the river runs clear before it enters the Loess Plateau, in Mongolia itself, it is simply called the Šar Mörön. In Qinghai, the rivers Tibetan name is River of the Peacock above sea level they are the two largest plateau freshwater lakes nationwide, flowing east at the eastern edge of the Amne Machin Mountains, the Yellow River enters Maqu County in Gansu. Here, the river skirts through the peat bog known as the Zoigê Wetlands. Flowing now along the edge of Amne Machin, the river reenters Qinghai. The valley section stretches from Longyang Gorge in Qinghai to Qingtong Gorge in Gansu, steep cliffs line both sides of the river. The water bed is narrow and the drop is large, so the flow in this section is extremely turbulent. There are 20 gorges in this section, the most famous of these being the Longyang, Jishi, Liujia, Bapan, the flow conditions in this section makes it the best location for hydroelectric plants. The Yellow River exits Qinghai for the second and final time in these gorges, downstream from the Yanguo Gorge, the provincial capital of Lanzhou is built upon the Yellow Rivers banks. The Yellow River flows northeasterly out of Gansu and into Ningxia before the Qingtong Gorge, after emerging from the Qingtong Gorge, the river comes into a section of vast alluvial plains, the Yinchuan Plain and Hetao Plain. In this section, the regions along the river are mostly deserts and grasslands, the Hetao Plain has a length of 900 km and width of 30 to 50 km. It is historically the most important irrigation plain along the Yellow River, the Ordos Loop formed by an enormous twist of the Yellow River, beginning at Zhongning County in Ningxia and ending with a drastic eastward turn at its confluence with the Wei at Tongguan in Shaanxi. However, the division for the middle reaches of the river run from Hekou in Togtoh County, Inner Mongolia, to Zhengzhou. The middle reaches are 1,206 km long, with an area of 344,000 square kilometers,45. 7% of the total, with a total elevation drop of 890 m
15.
Hai River
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The Hai River, formerly known as the Peiho or Pei Ho, is a Chinese river connecting Beijing to Tianjin and the Bohai Sea. The Hai River at Tianjin is formed by the confluence of five rivers, the Southern Canal, Ziya River, Daqing River, Yongding River, the southern and northern canals are parts of the Grand Canal. The Southern Canal is joined by the Wei River at Linqing, the Northern Canal joins with the Bai He at Tongzhou. The Northern Canal is also the only waterway from the sea to Beijing, therefore, early Westerners also called the Hai He the Bai He. At Tianjin, through the Grand Canal, the Hai connects with the Yellow, the construction of the Grand Canal greatly altered the rivers of the Hai He basin. Previously, the Wei, Ziya Yongding and Bai Rivers flowed separately to the sea, the Grand Canal cut through the lower reaches of these rivers and fused them into one outlet to the sea, in the form of the current Hai He. Hai He is 1,329 kilometres long measured from the longest tributary, however, the Hai He is only around 70 kilometres from Tianjin to its estuary. Its basin has an area of approximately 319,000 km2 and its annual flow is only half that of the Yellow River, or one-thirtieth that of the Yangtze River. In 1863 seagoing ships could reach the head of navigation at Tongzhou and this was reported by American military intelligence in the United States. War Dept. by the United States, like the Yellow River, the Hai is exceedingly muddy because of the powdery soil through which it flows. The silt carried by the deposits in the lower reaches, sometimes causing flooding. The waters from the five major tributaries only have one shallow outlet to the sea, because Chinas capital, Beijing, and the third largest city, Tianjin, both lie in the Hai He Basin, Hai He floods cause a significant loss. To alleviate flooding, reservoirs have been built and artificial channels dug to divert excess water directly into the sea, for example, the Chaobai River is diverted to the Chaobai Xin River and no longer joins with the Northern Canal. Due to industrial and urban development in the Hai He Basin, many smaller tributaries and some of the major tributaries are dry for most of the year. With reduced water flow, water pollution worsens, the water shortage in the Hai He basin is expected to be alleviated by the South-North Water Transfer Project. Geography of China Taku Forts This article incorporates text from Publication, Issue 33 Document, military Information Division, a publication from 1901 now in the public domain in the United States. This article incorporates text from Reports on military operations in South Africa, slocum, Carl Reichmann, Adna Romanga Chaffee, a publication from 1901 now in the public domain in the United States. This article incorporates text from Reports on military operations in South Africa and China, slocum, Carl Reichmann, Adna Romanza Chaffee, United States
16.
Yalu River
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The Yalu River, also called the Amnok River, is a river on the border between North Korea and China. There are two versions regarding the origin of the river name, one version is that the name derived from Yalv ula in the Manchu language. The Manchu word Yalu means the boundary between two countries, in Mandarin Chinese, Yalu phonetically approximates the original Manchu word Yalu, but literally means Duck Green, which was said to have been once the color of the river. The other version is that the river was named after the combination of its two branches, which were called Ya and Lu respectively. The bordering Chinese provinces are Jilin and Liaoning, the river is 795 km long and receives the water from over 30,000 km² of land. The Yalus most significant tributaries are the Changjin, the Hochon, the Tongro, the river is not easily navigable for most of its length. Most of the river freezes during winter and can be crossed on foot, the depth of the Yalu River varies from some of the more shallow parts on the eastern side in Hyesan to the deeper parts of the river near the Yellow Sea. The estuary is the site of the Amrok River estuary Important Bird Area, there are 205 islands on the Yalu. A1962 border treaty between North Korea and China split the islands according to ethnic group were living on each island. North Korea possesses 127 and China 78, due to the division criteria, some islands such as Hwanggumpyong Island belong to North Korea but abut the Chinese side of the river. The river basin is the site where the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo rose to power, during the Korean War, the movement of United Nations troops approaching the river precipitated massive Chinese intervention from around Dandong. In the course of the conflict every bridge across the river one was destroyed. The one remaining bridge was the Sino–Korean Friendship Bridge connecting Sinuiju, North Korea to Dandong, the river has frequently been crossed by North Koreans fleeing to China since the early 1990s, although the Tumen River is the most used way. The river is important for power, and one of the largest hydroelectric dams in Asia is in Supung Dam,106 m high and over 850 m long, located upstream from Sinuiju. The dam has created a lake over a portion of the river. In addition the river is used for transportation, particularly of lumber from its forested banks, the river provides fish for the local population. Downstream of Supung is the Taipingwan Dam, upstream of Supung is the Yunfeng Dam. Both dams produce hydroelectric power as well
17.
Taedong River
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The Taedong River is a large river in North Korea. It rises in the Rangrim Mountains of the countrys north and it then flows southwest into Korea Bay at Nampo. In between, it runs through the capital, Pyongyang. Along the river are landmarks such as the Juche Tower and Kim Il-sung Square, the river has a length of 439 kilometers and is generally deep. It is the fifth longest river on the Korean peninsula and the second longest in North Korea, Pyongyang is approximately 110 km upstream from the mouth, Sunchon 192 km upstream, and Taehŭng 414 km upstream. Because of its depth, it is used for river transport, it is navigable by large ships up to 65 km inland. The kingdom of Koguryo was founded on its shores, many archeological sites dating to the neolithic and Bronze ages have been found along the river, as well as relics and ruins from Koguryo. It was also known as the Pae River. In 1986, the government completed the 8 kilometer long West Sea Barrage, the dam acts to control floodwater and to irrigate lands newly reclaimed from the Korea Gulf. The dam has reduced the natural ability to purify itself. Other dams, such as the Nyongwon Power Station, have built to provide energy to the country. In Pyongyang, there are six bridges on the Taedong, including the Okryu Bridge, Rungra Bridge, Taedong River estuary Important Bird Area Taedonggang, a beer named after the river List of Korea-related topics Rivers of Asia Rivers of Korea Geography of North Korea
18.
Han River (Korea)
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The Han River or Hangang is a major river in South Korea and the fourth longest river on the Korean peninsula after the Amnok, Tuman, and Nakdong rivers. The river begins as two rivers in the eastern mountains of the Korean peninsula, which then converge near Seoul. The Han River and its area have played an important role in Korean history. The Three Kingdoms of Korea strove to control of this land. However, the river is no longer used for navigation. The river serves as a source for over 12 million Koreans. In July 2000, the US military admitted to having dumped toxic chemicals in the river, currently, the lower stretches of the Han river are lined with pedestrian walkways, bicycle paths, public parks and restaurants, particularly in Seoul. The Han is formed by the confluence of the Namhan River, which originates in Mount Daedeok, and the Bukhan River, the River flows through Seoul and then merges with the Rimjin River shortly before it flows into the Yellow Sea. The two major branches of the river, the Namhan River and the Bukhan River, come together at Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi province and it then passes through Seoul and continues on to the Yellow Sea. Broad tidal flats can be found at the mouth of the Han River, the total length of the Han River is approximately 494 kilometres. Although it is not a river, the lower Han is remarkably broad for such a relatively short river. Within Seoul city limits, the river is more than 1 kilometre wide, prior to the construction of a number of major dams, the river was known for its huge coefficient of river regime of 1,390. The Namhangang is sometimes, but not always, referred to as the Han in South Korea, the term South Han is understood irrespective of which side of the border one stands. Even though Namhan and Bukhan are homophones with the acronyms Namhan and Bukhan, used commonly in South Korea, the hanja for the Han River is not 韓 but 漢. It is also easily mistaken with the use of 漢 in Seouls older name, 漢城 where 漢 does not refer to Chinese people, Han River has been called by different names through the course of Korean history. During the period of the Han Commanderies on the peninsula and the part of the three kingdoms period the river was often referred to as the Daesu. The state of Goguryeo called it the Arisu, Baekje called it the Ungniha, while the kingdom of Silla termed it the Iha. The Han River has played a role in Korean history from the earliest times
19.
Drainage basin
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A drainage basin or catchment area is any area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. Drainage basins connect into other drainage basins at elevations in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins. Other terms used to describe drainage basins are catchment, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin and water basin. In closed drainage basins the water converges to a point inside the basin, known as a sink, which may be a permanent lake. The drainage basin acts as a funnel by collecting all the water within the covered by the basin. Each drainage basin is separated topographically from adjacent basins by a perimeter, drainage basins are similar but not identical to hydrologic units, which are drainage areas delineated so as to nest into a multi-level hierarchical drainage system. Hydrologic units are defined to allow multiple inlets, outlets, or sinks, in a strict sense, all drainage basins are hydrologic units but not all hydrologic units are drainage basins. Drainage basins of the oceans and seas of the world. Grey areas are endorheic basins that do not drain to the oceans, the following is a list of the major ocean basins, About 48. 7% of the worlds land drains to the Atlantic Ocean. The two major mediterranean seas of the world also flow to the Atlantic, The Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico basin includes most of the U. S. The Mediterranean Sea basin includes much of North Africa, east-central Africa, Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the areas of Israel, Lebanon. Just over 13% of the land in the world drains to the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Oceans drainage basin also comprises about 13% of Earths land. It drains the eastern coast of Africa, the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Burma, antarctica comprises approximately eight percent of the Earths land. The five largest river basins, from largest to smallest, are the basins of the Amazon, the Río de la Plata, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi. The three rivers that drain the most water, from most to least, are the Amazon, Ganga, endorheic drainage basins are inland basins that do not drain to an ocean. Around 18% of all land drains to endorheic lakes or seas or sinks, the largest of these consists of much of the interior of Asia, which drains into the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and numerous smaller lakes. Some of these, such as the Great Basin, are not single drainage basins but collections of separate, in endorheic bodies of standing water where evaporation is the primary means of water loss, the water is typically more saline than the oceans. An extreme example of this is the Dead Sea, drainage basins have been historically important for determining territorial boundaries, particularly in regions where trade by water has been important
20.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
21.
North Korea
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North Korea, officially the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, is a country in East Asia, constituting the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang is both the capital as well as its largest city. To the north and northwest the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok, the country is bordered to the south by South Korea, with the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone separating the two. Negotiations on reunification failed, and in 1948 two separate governments were formed, the communist Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea in the north, an invasion initiated by North Korea led to the Korean War. The Korean Armistice Agreement brought about a ceasefire, and no peace treaty was ever signed. North Korea officially describes itself as a self-reliant socialist state and formally holds elections, critics regard it as a totalitarian dictatorship. Various outlets have called it Stalinist, particularly noting the elaborate cult of personality around Kim Il-sung, International organizations have assessed human rights violations in North Korea as belonging to a category of their own, with no parallel in the contemporary world. Over time, North Korea has gradually distanced itself from the world communist movement, Juche, an ideology of national self-reliance, was introduced into the constitution as a creative application of Marxism–Leninism in 1972. The means of production are owned by the state through state-run enterprises, most services such as healthcare, education, housing and food production are subsidized or state-funded. From 1994 to 1998, North Korea suffered from a famine that resulted in the deaths of between 0.24 and 3.5 million people, and the continues to struggle with food production. North Korea follows Songun, or military-first policy and it is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 9,495,000 active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel. Its active duty army of 1.21 million is the fourth largest in the world, after China, North Korea is an atheist state with no official religion and where public religion is discouraged. The name Korea derives from the name Goryeo, the name Goryeo itself was first used by the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo in the 5th century as a shortened form of its name. The 10th-century kingdom of Goryeo succeeded Goguryeo, and thus inherited its name, the modern spelling of Korea first appeared in the late 17th century in the travel writings of the Dutch East India Companys Hendrick Hamel. After the division of the country into North and South Korea, the two sides used different terms to refer to Korea, Chosun or Joseon in North Korea, in 1948, North Korea adopted Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea as its new legal name. After the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Korea was occupied by Japan, Japan tried to suppress Korean traditions and culture and ran the economy primarily for its own benefit. Korean resistance groups known as Dongnipgun operated along the Sino-Korean border, some of them took part in allied action in China and parts of South East Asia. One of the leaders was the communist Kim Il-sung, who later became the leader of North Korea
22.
South Korea
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South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea, is a sovereign state in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. The earliest Korean pottery dates to 8000 BC, with three kingdoms flourishing in the 1st century BC and its rich and vibrant culture left 19 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritages of Humanity, the third largest in the world, along with 12 World Heritage Sites. Annexed into Imperial Japan in 1910, Korea was divided after its surrender in 1945, peace has since mostly continued with the two agreeing to work peacefully for reunification and the South solidifying peace as a regional power with the worlds 10th largest defence budget. South Koreas tiger economy soared at an average of 10% for over 30 years in a period of rapid transformation called the Miracle on the Han River. A long legacy of openness and focus on innovation made it successful, today, it is the worlds fifth largest exporter with the G20s largest budget surplus and highest credit rating of any country in East Asia. It has free trade agreements with 75% of the economy and is the only G20 nation trading freely with China, the US. Since 1988, its constitution guarantees a liberal democracy with high government transparency, high personal freedoms led to the rise of a globally influential pop culture such as K-pop and K-drama, a phenomenon called the Korean Wave, known for its distinctive fashionable and trendy style. Home of the UN Green Climate Fund and GGGI, South Korea is a leader in low carbon growth, committed to helping developing countries as a major DAC. It is the third least ignorant country in the Index of Ignorance, ranking eighth highest for peaceful tolerance. It is the worlds largest spender on R&D per GDP, leading the OECD in graduates in science, the name Korea derives from the name Goryeo. The name Goryeo itself was first used by the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo in the 5th century as a form of its name. The 10th-century kingdom of Goryeo succeeded Goguryeo, and thus inherited its name, the modern spelling of Korea first appeared in the late 17th century in the travel writings of the Dutch East India Companys Hendrick Hamel. After Goryeo was replaced by Joseon in 1392, Joseon became the name for the entire territory. The new official name has its origin in the ancient country of Gojoseon, in 1897, the Joseon dynasty changed the official name of the country from Joseon to Daehan Jeguk. The name Daehan, which means great Han literally, derives from Samhan, however, the name Joseon was still widely used by Koreans to refer to their country, though it was no longer the official name. Under Japanese rule, the two names Han and Joseon coexisted, there were several groups who fought for independence, the most notable being the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. Following the surrender of Japan, in 1945, the Republic of Korea was adopted as the name for the new country. Since the government only controlled the part of the Korean Peninsula
23.
East China Sea
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The East China Sea is a marginal sea east of China. The East China Sea is a part of the Pacific Ocean, to the east lies the Japanese islands of Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands, to the south lies the South China Sea, and to the west by the Asian continent. The sea connects with the Sea of Japan through the Korea Strait, the sovereign states which border the sea include South Korea, Japan, the Republic of China and the Peoples Republic of China. The East China Sea is a part of the Pacific Ocean and it is bounded on the east by Kyūshū and the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, on the south by the South China Sea, and on the west by the Asian continent. It connects with the Sea of Japan through the Korea Strait, it opens in the north to the Yellow Sea, states with borders on the sea include, South Korea, Japan, Republic of China and the Peoples Republic of China. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Eastern China Sea as follows, the Northern limit of the South China Sea, thence from Santyo the Northeastern point of Formosa to the West point of Yonakuni Island and thence to Haderuma Sima. The Yangtze River is the largest river flowing into the East China Sea, tong Island There is a cluster of submerged reefs in the northern East China Sea. These include, Socotra Rock, also called Suyan Rock or Ieodo, hupijiao Rock Yajiao Rock The sea is called the East Sea in Chinese, being one of the Four Seas of Chinese literature. There are three other seas, one for each of the four cardinal directions, until World War II, the sea was referred to as 東支那海 in Japanese. In 2004, official documents of the Japanese Foreign Ministry and other departments switched to the name 東シナ海, common usage in Indonesia refers to the sea as Laut Cina Timur. Despite this, many Indonesian media outlets and publications continue to use the sea name. American whaleships cruised for whales in the sea between 1849 and 1892. There are disputes between the Peoples Republic of China, Japan, and South Korea over the extent of their exclusive economic zones. The dispute between the PRC and Japan concerns the different application of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, China and Japan both claim 200 nautical miles EEZ rights, but the East China Sea width is only 360 nautical miles. China proposed the application of UNCLOS, considering the natural prolongation of its continental shelf, in 2012, China presented a submission under the UNCLOS concerning the outer limits of the continental shelf to the UN. Japan has objected to PRC development of gas resources in the East China Sea near the area where the two countries Exclusive Economic Zone claims overlap. The specific development in dispute is the PRCs drilling in the Chunxiao gas field, Japan therefore seeks a share in the natural gas resources. The gas fields in the Xihu Sag area in the East China Sea are estimated to hold reserves of 364 BCF of natural gas
24.
Pacific Ocean
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The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of the Earths oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, the Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres. Both the center of the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean, the oceans current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favourable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means peaceful sea, important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan, trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but apparently not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality, from 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean. The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and he named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Later, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian expedition of world circumnavigation starting in 1519, Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century, sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, and Papua New Guinea. In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached Japan, in 1564, five Spanish ships consisting of 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi and sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. The Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history, Spanish expeditions also discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the 16th and 17th century Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a Mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers, as the only known entrance from the Atlantic the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western end of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines, Spain also sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest reaching Vancouver Island in southern Canada, and Alaska. The French explored and settled Polynesia, and the British made three voyages with James Cook to the South Pacific and Australia, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Northwest, one of the earliest voyages of scientific exploration was organized by Spain in the Malaspina Expedition of 1789–1794. It sailed vast areas of the Pacific, from Cape Horn to Alaska, Guam and the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific. Growing imperialism during the 19th century resulted in the occupation of much of Oceania by other European powers, and later, Japan, in Oceania, France got a leading position as imperial power after making Tahiti and New Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853 respectively. After navy visits to Easter Island in 1875 and 1887, Chilean navy officer Policarpo Toro managed to negotiate an incorporation of the island into Chile with native Rapanui in 1888, by occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations
25.
Mainland China
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Mainland China, also known as the Chinese mainland, is the geopolitical area under the direct jurisdiction of the Peoples Republic of China. It generally includes Hainan island and excludes the special regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The term mainland China was coined by the Kuomintang after receiving control of Taiwan from Japan after World War II. By 1949, the KMT-led Republic of China government was defeated in the Chinese Civil War, there are two terms in Chinese for mainland, Dàlù, which means continent, and Nèidì, literally inland or inner land. In the PRC, the usage of the two terms are interchangeable and there is no prescribed method of reference in any jurisdiction. To emphasize equal footing in Cross-Strait relations, the term is used in official contexts with reference to Taiwan, but in its relations with Hong Kong and Macau, the PRC government refers to itself as the Central Peoples Government. Mainland area is the term to free area of the Republic of China used in the ROC Constitution. It treats the mainland as part of ROCs territory despite the lack of effective control, by 1949, the Communist Party of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army had largely defeated the Kuomintang s National Revolutionary Army in the Chinese Civil War on the mainland. This has resulted in a situation in which two co-existing governments compete for legitimacy and recognition as the government of China. The phrase mainland China emerged as a neutral term to refer to the area under control of the Communist Party of China. Until the late 1970s, both the PRC and ROC envisioned a military takeover of the other, during this time the ROC referred to the PRC government as Communist Bandits while the PRC referred to the ROC as Chiang Bandits. Later, as a military solution became less feasible, the ROC referred to the PRC as Communist China, due to their status as colonies of foreign states during the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, the phrase mainland China excludes Hong Kong and Macau. Since the return of Hong Kong and Macau to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 and 1999, respectively, the territories also have their distinct identities. Therefore, mainland China generally continues to exclude these territories, because of the One country, the term is also used in economic indicators, such as the IMD Competitiveness Report. International news media often use China to refer only to mainland China or the Peoples Republic of China, in the PRC, the term 内地 is often contrasted with the term 境外 for things outside of the mainland region. Examples include Administration of Foreign-funded Banks or the Measures on Administration of Representative Offices of Foreign Insurance Institutions, Hainan is an offshore island, therefore geographically not part of the continental mainland. Nonetheless, Hainanese people still refer to the mainland as the mainland. In some coastal provinces such as Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangsu, in contrast, the pro-Taiwan independence Democratic Progressive Party prefer to use the term China instead, referring to the PRC, to imply that Taiwan is separate from China
26.
Korean Peninsula
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The Korean Peninsula is a peninsula in East Asia. Until the end of World War II, Korea was a political entity whose territory roughly coincided with the Korean Peninsula. The northern boundaries for the Korean Peninsula are commonly taken to coincide with political borders between North Korea and its northern neighbors, China and Russia. These borders are formed naturally by the rivers Yalu/Amnok and Tumen/Tuman/Duman, taking this definition, the Korean Peninsula has an area of 220,847 km2. The peninsulas names in Korean, Chinese and Japanese all have the origin, that being Joseon. In North Koreas Chosonmal, the peninsula is called Chosŏn Pando, while in China, in Japan, it is either Chōsenhantō or Kanhantō. Meanwhile, in South Korea, it is called Hanbando, referring to the Samhan and they both use Korea as part of their official English names, which is a name that comes from the Goryeo dynasty. Korea Geography of Korea Geography of North Korea Geography of South Korea List of Korea-related topics KOIS, location of the Korean Peninsula — The official Korean Tourism guide website
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Gobi Desert
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The Gobi Desert is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia, the Gobi is most notable in history as part of the great Mongol Empire, and as the location of several important cities along the Silk Road. The Gobi is a rain shadow desert, formed by the Himalayan mountain range blocking rain-carrying clouds from the Indian Ocean reaching the Gobi territory, the Gobi measures over 1,600 km from southwest to northeast and 800 km from north to south. The desert is widest in the west, along the joining the Lake Bosten. It occupies an arc of land 1,295,000 km2 in area as of 2007, it is the fifth-largest desert in the world, much of the Gobi is not sandy but has exposed bare rock. The Gobi is a desert, with frost and occasionally snow occurring on its dunes. Besides being quite far north, it is located on a plateau roughly 910–1,520 metres above sea level. An average of approximately 194 millimetres of rain falls annually in the Gobi, additional moisture reaches parts of the Gobi in winter as snow is blown by the wind from the Siberian Steppes. These winds cause the Gobi to reach extremes of temperature ranging from −40 °C or −40 °F in winter to 45 °C or 113 °F in summer, the climate of the Gobi is one of great extremes, combined with rapid changes of temperature of as much as 35 °C. These can occur not only seasonally but within 24 hours, in southern Mongolia, the temperature has been recorded as low as −32.8 °C. In contrast, in Alxa, Inner Mongolia, it rises as high as 37 °C in July, average winter minimums are a frigid −25 °C while summertime temperatures are warm to hot, with highs that range up to 50 °C. Most of the falls during the summer. Hence, the icy sandstorms and snowstorms of spring and early summer plus early January, the Gobi Desert is the source of many important fossil finds, including the first dinosaur eggs. They are occasionally visited by snow leopards, brown bears, drought-adapted shrubs in the desert included gray sparrows saltwort, gray sagebrush, and low grasses such as needle grass and bridlegrass. Several large nature reserves have established in the Gobi, including Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park, Great Gobi A. The area is vulnerable to trampling by livestock and off-road vehicles, in Mongolia, grasslands have been degraded by goats, which are raised by nomadic herders as source of cashmere wool. The economic trends of livestock privatization and the collapse of the economy have caused people to return to subsistence rural lifestyles. Large copper and gold deposits located at Oyuu Tolgoi, about 80 kilometres from the Chinese border into Mongolia, are being investigated for development as mining operations
28.
Sand storm
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A dust storm is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand, fine particles are transported by saltation and suspension, a process that moves soil from one place and deposits it in another. Drylands around North Africa and the Arabian peninsula are the main sources of airborne dust. Also with some contributions from Iran, Pakistan and India into the Arabian Sea, the term dust storm is more likely to be used when finer particles are blown long distances, especially when the dust storm affects urban areas. As the force of wind passing over loosely held particles increases, particles of sand first start to vibrate, as they repeatedly strike the ground, they loosen and break off smaller particles of dust which then begin to travel in suspension. At wind speeds above that which causes the smallest to suspend, there will be a population of dust grains moving by a range of mechanisms, suspension, saltation, a study from 2008 finds that the initial saltation of sand particles induces a static electric field by friction. Saltating sand acquires a negative charge relative to the ground which in turn loosens more sand particles which then begin saltating and this process has been found to double the number of particles predicted by previous theories. Particles become loosely held mainly due to drought or arid conditions, gust fronts may be produced by the outflow of rain-cooled air from an intense thunderstorm. S. Following the passage of a dry cold front, convective instability resulting from cooler air riding over heated ground can maintain the dust storm initiated at the front. In desert areas, dust and sand storms are most commonly caused by either thunderstorm outflows, the vertical extent of the dust or sand that is raised is largely determined by the stability of the atmosphere above the ground as well as by the weight of the particulates. In some cases, dust and sand may be confined to a shallow layer by a low-lying temperature inversion. In other instances, dust may be lifted as high as 20,000 feet high, drought and wind contribute to the emergence of dust storms, as do poor farming and grazing practices by exposing the dust and sand to the wind. One poor farming practice which contributes to dust storms is dryland farming, particularly poor dryland farming techniques are intensive tillage or not having established crops or cover crops when storms strike at particularly vulnerable times prior to revegetation. In a semi-arid climate, these practices increase susceptibility to dust storms, however, soil conservation practices may be implemented to control wind erosion. A sandstorm can transport and carry large volumes of sand unexpectedly, Dust storms can carry large amounts of dust, with the leading edge being composed of a wall of thick dust as much as 1.6 km high. Dust and sand storms which come off the Sahara Desert are locally known as a simoom or simoon, the haboob is a sandstorm prevalent in the region of Sudan around Khartoum, with occurrences being most common in the summer. The Sahara desert is a key source of dust storms, particularly the Bodélé Depression and an area covering the confluence of Mauritania, Mali, and Algeria. Saharan dust storms have increased approximately 10-fold during the half-century since the 1950s, causing loss in Niger, Chad, northern Nigeria
29.
Bohai Sea
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The Bohai Sea or Bo Sea, also known as Bohai Gulf or Bo Gulf, is the innermost gulf of the Yellow Sea and Korea Bay on the coast of Northeastern and North China. It is approximately 78,000 km2 in area and its proximity to Beijing, until the early 20th century, Bo Hai was often called the Gulf of Chihli or the Gulf of Pechihli or Pechili. Zhili and Beizhili were historic provinces in the area surrounding Beijing, the Bohai Sea is bounded by the Changshan Islands chain between the Liaodong and Shandong Peninsulas. It has become one of busiest sea routes in recent times, there are three major bays inside the Bohai Sea, Laizhou Bay to the south, Liaodong Bay to the north, and Bohai Bay to the west. At the easternmost end of the Bohai Sea, between the southernmost end of the Liaodong Peninsula and northernmost end of the Shandong Peninsula, is the Bohai Strait, a few of the rivers entering the gulf include the Yellow, Hai, Liao, and Luan Rivers. There are a few important oil reserves in the vicinity of the gulf, important island groups or islands in the gulf include the Changshan Islands, Changxing Island, and Xizhong Island. The PRC provincial-level divisions that have a Bohai Sea coastline are, from the south, going clockwise, Shandong, Hebei, Tianjin, Hebei again, and Liaoning. The ports of Dalian and Yantai are also considered part of the Bohai rim. The Port of Longkou reached 70 million tons of cargo in 2013, the main field in the region is named Shengli and has been exploited since the 1960s. It is still producing about half a million barrels a day, production is dominated by Chinese majors but foreign companies are also present, like ConocoPhilips, Roc Oil, and others. The Gudao Field, located in the Zhanhua sedimentary basin, was discovered in 1968, based on gravity, the reservoir includes the Guantao and Minghuazhen geologic formations within the dome-like anticline. The Suizhong 36-1 Oil Field was discovered in 1987, and produces from Oligocene fluvial-deltaic, Oil spills have been reported frequently in this region, three spills occurred in a two-month timeframe in 2011. In February 2011, the PRC announced that it would build a road, when completed, the tunnel would be 106 kilometres long. This plan seems have been superseded as of July 2013, with a plan involving a 123-kilometre tunnel between Dalian, Liaoning and Yantai, Shandong. The overall concept had its origins in a 1994 plan, which had intended for completion by 2010 at a cost of $10 billion. Balhae, Korean kingdom named after Bohai Bijia Mountain Bohai Economic Rim Bastion Unep Reports – Regional Definition, Bohai Sea
30.
Shandong
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Shandong is a coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China, and is part of the East China region. Shandongs Mount Tai is the most revered mountain of Taoism and one of the sites with the longest history of continuous religious worship. The Buddhist temples in the mountains to the south of the capital of Jinan were once among the foremost Buddhist sites in China. The city of Qufu is the birthplace of Confucius, and was established as the center of Confucianism. Individually, the two Chinese characters in the name Shandong mean mountain and east, Shandong could hence be translated literally as east of the mountains and refers to the provinces location to the east of the Taihang Mountains. A common nickname for Shandong is Qílǔ, after the States of Qi and Lu that existed in the area during the Spring and Autumn period. Whereas the State of Qi was a power of its era. Lu, however, became renowned for being the home of Confucius, the cultural dominance of the State of Lu heritage is reflected in the official abbreviation for Shandong which is 鲁. English speakers in the 19th century called the province Shan-tung, the province is on the eastern edge of the North China Plain and in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, and extends out to sea as the Shandong Peninsula. The earliest dynasties exerted varying degrees of control over western Shandong, over subsequent centuries, the Dongyi were eventually sinicized. During the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, at this time, Shandong was home to two major states, the state of Qi at Linzi and the state of Lu at Qufu. Lu is noted for being the home of Confucius, the state was, however, comparatively small, and eventually succumbed to the larger state of Chu from the south. The state of Qi was, on the hand, was a major power throughout the period. Cities it ruled included Linzi, Jimo and Ju, the Qin dynasty conquered Qi and founded the first centralized Chinese state in 221 BCE. The Han dynasty that followed created a number of commanderies supervised by two regions in what is now modern Shandong, Qingzhou in the north and Yanzhou in the south, during the division of the Three Kingdoms, Shandong belonged to the Cao Wei, which ruled over northern China. After the Three Kingdoms period, a period of unity under the Western Jin dynasty gave way to invasions by nomadic peoples from the north. Northern China, including Shandong, was overrun, Shandong stayed with the Northern Dynasties for the rest of this period. The Sui dynasty reestablished unity in 589, and the Tang dynasty presided over the golden age of China
31.
Jinan
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Jinan, formerly romanized as Tsinan, is the capital of Shandong province in Eastern China. The city has held sub-provincial administrative status since 1994, Jinan is often called the Spring City for its famous 72 artesian springs. Its population was 7,067,900 in 2014 with a population of 4,693,700. The modern-day name Jinan literally means south of the Ji and refers to the old Ji River that had flowed to the north of the city until the middle of the 19th century. The Ji River disappeared in 1852 when the Yellow River changed its course northwards, the current pronunciation of the character Ji with the third tone was established in the late 1970s. Prior to this, it was pronounced with the fourth tone, older texts spell the name as Tsinan or Chi-nan. During the times of the Zhou dynasty, the city of Lixia was the settlement in the area. The name Lixia refers to the location of Jinan at the foot of Mount Li, today, Lixia is the name of one of the citys districts. Marco Polo gives a description of Jinan under the name Chingli or Chinangli. 19th and early 20th century texts frequently give the name of the city as Tsinan Fu where the additional Fu comes from the dated Chinese term for a provincial capital. Jinan is also referred to by the nickname City of Springs, because of the artesian springs in the urban city centre. The area of present-day Jinan has been inhabited for more than 4000 years, the Neolithic Longshan Culture was first discovered at the Chéngzǐyá site to the east of Jinan in 1928. One of the features of the Longshan Culture are the intricate wheel-made pottery pieces it produced. Most renowned is the black pottery with wall thicknesses that can go below 1 millimeter. During the Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period, the area of Jinan was split between two states, the state of Lu in the west and the state of Qi in the east. In 685 BCE, the state of Qi started to build the Great Wall of Qi across Changqing county, portions of the wall still remain today and are accessible as open air museums. Biǎn Què, according to the legend the earliest Chinese physician, Zou Yan, a native of Zhangqiu City, developed the concepts of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements. Joseph Needham, a British sinologist, describes Zou as The real founder of all Chinese scientific thought, during the times of the Han dynasty, Jinan was the capital of the Kingdom of Jibei and evolved into the cultural and economic hub of the region
32.
Hai He
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The Hai River, formerly known as the Peiho or Pei Ho, is a Chinese river connecting Beijing to Tianjin and the Bohai Sea. The Hai River at Tianjin is formed by the confluence of five rivers, the Southern Canal, Ziya River, Daqing River, Yongding River, the southern and northern canals are parts of the Grand Canal. The Southern Canal is joined by the Wei River at Linqing, the Northern Canal joins with the Bai He at Tongzhou. The Northern Canal is also the only waterway from the sea to Beijing, therefore, early Westerners also called the Hai He the Bai He. At Tianjin, through the Grand Canal, the Hai connects with the Yellow, the construction of the Grand Canal greatly altered the rivers of the Hai He basin. Previously, the Wei, Ziya Yongding and Bai Rivers flowed separately to the sea, the Grand Canal cut through the lower reaches of these rivers and fused them into one outlet to the sea, in the form of the current Hai He. Hai He is 1,329 kilometres long measured from the longest tributary, however, the Hai He is only around 70 kilometres from Tianjin to its estuary. Its basin has an area of approximately 319,000 km2 and its annual flow is only half that of the Yellow River, or one-thirtieth that of the Yangtze River. In 1863 seagoing ships could reach the head of navigation at Tongzhou and this was reported by American military intelligence in the United States. War Dept. by the United States, like the Yellow River, the Hai is exceedingly muddy because of the powdery soil through which it flows. The silt carried by the deposits in the lower reaches, sometimes causing flooding. The waters from the five major tributaries only have one shallow outlet to the sea, because Chinas capital, Beijing, and the third largest city, Tianjin, both lie in the Hai He Basin, Hai He floods cause a significant loss. To alleviate flooding, reservoirs have been built and artificial channels dug to divert excess water directly into the sea, for example, the Chaobai River is diverted to the Chaobai Xin River and no longer joins with the Northern Canal. Due to industrial and urban development in the Hai He Basin, many smaller tributaries and some of the major tributaries are dry for most of the year. With reduced water flow, water pollution worsens, the water shortage in the Hai He basin is expected to be alleviated by the South-North Water Transfer Project. Geography of China Taku Forts This article incorporates text from Publication, Issue 33 Document, military Information Division, a publication from 1901 now in the public domain in the United States. This article incorporates text from Reports on military operations in South Africa, slocum, Carl Reichmann, Adna Romanga Chaffee, a publication from 1901 now in the public domain in the United States. This article incorporates text from Reports on military operations in South Africa and China, slocum, Carl Reichmann, Adna Romanza Chaffee, United States
33.
Beijing
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Beijing is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China and the worlds third most populous city proper. It is also one of the worlds most populous capital cities, the city, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under the national government with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts. Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by population after Shanghai and is the nations political, cultural. It is home to the headquarters of most of Chinas largest state-owned companies, and is a hub for the national highway, expressway, railway. The citys history dates back three millennia, as the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political centre of the country for much of the past eight centuries. Beijing was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium A. D, the city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates. Its art treasures and universities have made it centre of culture, encyclopædia Britannica notes that few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural centre of an area as immense as China. Siheyuans, the traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing. The city hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and was chosen to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, many of Beijings 91 universities consistently rank among the best in China, of which Peking University and Tsinghua University are ranked in the top 60 universities in the world. Beijings Zhongguancun area is known as Chinas Silicon Valley and Chinas center of innovation. According to the 2016 InterNations Expat Insider Survey, Beijing ranked first in Asia in the subcategory Personal Finance Index, expats live primarily in urban districts such as Dongcheng and Chaoyang in the east, or in suburban districts such as Shunyi. Over the past 3,000 years, the city of Beijing has had other names. The name Beijing, which means Northern Capital, was applied to the city in 1403 during the Ming Dynasty to distinguish the city from Nanjing, the English spelling is based on the pinyin romanisation of the two characters as they are pronounced in Standard Mandarin. Those dialects preserve the Middle Chinese pronunciation of 京 as kjaeng, the single Chinese character abbreviation for Beijing is 京, which appears on automobile license plates in the city. The official Latin alphabet abbreviation for Beijing is BJ, the earliest traces of human habitation in the Beijing municipality were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where Peking Man lived. Homo erectus fossils from the date to 230,000 to 250,000 years ago. Paleolithic Homo sapiens also lived more recently, about 27,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found neolithic settlements throughout the municipality, including in Wangfujing, the first walled city in Beijing was Ji, a city from the 11th to 7th century BC
34.
Tianjin
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Tianjin, formerly known in English as Tientsin, is a metropolis in northern coastal Mainland China and one of the five national central cities of the country, with a total population of 15,469,500. It is governed as one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of the PRC and is thus under direct administration of the central government, Tianjin borders Hebei Province and Beijing Municipality, bounded to the east by the Bohai Gulf portion of the Yellow Sea. Part of the Bohai Economic Rim, it is the largest coastal city in northern China, in terms of urban population, Tianjin is the fourth largest in China, after Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou. In terms of area population, Tianjin ranks fifth in Mainland China. The walled city of Tianjin was built in 1404, as a treaty port since 1860, Tianjin has been a major seaport and gateway to Beijing. During the Boxer Rebellion the city was the seat of the Tianjin Provisional Government, under the Ta-tsing Empire, and the Republic of China, Tianjin became one of the largest cities in the region. At that time, numerous European-style buildings and mansions were constructed in concessions, after the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, Tianjin suffered a depression due to the policy of the central government and Tangshan earthquake, but recovered from 1990s. As of the end of 2010, around 285 Fortune 500 companies have set up base in Binhai, Tianjin is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese characters 天津, which mean Heavenly Ford or Ford of Heaven. The origin of the name is obscure, one folk etymology is that it was an homage to the patriotic Chu poet Qu Yuan, whose Li Sao includes the verse. departing from the Ford of Heaven at dawn. Another is that it honors a former name of the Girl, a third is that it derives from a place name noted in the River Record of the History of Jin. The most common are that it was bestowed by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming, before this time, it was open sea. The opening of the Grand Canal during the Sui dynasty prompted the development of Tianjin into a trading center, during the Qing dynasty Tianjin was promoted to a prefecture or Zhou in 1725 with Tianjin County established under the prefecture in 1731. Later it was to upgraded to a prefecture or Fu before becoming a relay station under the command of the Viceroy of Zhili. In 1856, Chinese soldiers boarded The Arrow, a Chinese-owned ship registered in Hong Kong flying the British flag and suspected of piracy, smuggling and they captured 12 men and imprisoned them. In response, the British and French sent gunboats under the command of Admiral Sir Michael Seymour to capture the Taku forts near Tianjin in May 1858. At the end of the first part of the Second Opium War in June of the year, the British and French prevailed, and the Treaties of Tianjin were signed. The treaties were ratified by the Emperor of China in 1860, and Tianjin was formally opened to Great Britain and France and these nations left many architectural reminders of their rule, notably churches and thousands of villas. Today those villas provide a flavour to Tianjin
35.
Sand
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Sand is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles. It is defined by size, being finer than gravel and coarser than silt, Sand can also refer to a textural class of soil or soil type, i. e. a soil containing more than 85% sand-sized particles by mass. The second most common type of sand is calcium carbonate, for example aragonite, for example, it is the primary form of sand apparent in areas where reefs have dominated the ecosystem for millions of years like the Caribbean. Sand is a non renewable resource over human timescales, and sand suitable for making concrete is in high demand, in terms of particle size as used by geologists, sand particles range in diameter from 0.0625 mm to 2 mm. An individual particle in this size is termed a sand grain. Sand grains are between gravel and silt, a 1953 engineering standard published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials set the minimum sand size at 0.074 mm. A1938 specification of the United States Department of Agriculture was 0.05 mm. Sand feels gritty when rubbed between the fingers. ISO14688 grades sands as fine, medium and coarse with ranges 0.063 mm to 0.2 mm to 0.63 mm to 2.0 mm. In the United States, sand is commonly divided into five sub-categories based on size, very fine sand, fine sand, medium sand, coarse sand, and very coarse sand. These sizes are based on the Krumbein phi scale, where size in Φ = -log2D, on this scale, for sand the value of Φ varies from −1 to +4, with the divisions between sub-categories at whole numbers. The composition of sand is highly variable, depending on the local rock sources. The gypsum sand dunes of the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico are famous for their bright, arkose is a sand or sandstone with considerable feldspar content, derived from weathering and erosion of a granitic rock outcrop. Some sands contain magnetite, chlorite, glauconite or gypsum, Sands rich in magnetite are dark to black in color, as are sands derived from volcanic basalts and obsidian. Chlorite-glauconite bearing sands are typically green in color, as are sands derived from basaltic with a high olivine content, many sands, especially those found extensively in Southern Europe, have iron impurities within the quartz crystals of the sand, giving a deep yellow color. Sand deposits in some areas contain garnets and other resistant minerals, the study of individual grains can reveal much historical information as to the origin and kind of transport of the grain. Quartz sand that is weathered from granite or gneiss quartz crystals will be angular. It is called grus in geology or sharp sand in the trade where it is preferred for concrete. Sand that is transported long distances by water or wind will be rounded, people who collect sand as a hobby are known as arenophiles
36.
Silt
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Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay, whose mineral origin is quartz and feldspar. Silt may occur as a soil or as sediment mixed in suspension with water in a body of such as a river. It may also exist as soil deposited at the bottom of a water body, Silt has a moderate specific area with a typically non-sticky, plastic feel. Silt usually has a floury feel when dry, and a slippery feel when wet, Silt can be visually observed with a hand lens. Silt is created by a variety of physical processes capable of splitting the generally sand-sized quartz crystals of primary rocks by exploiting deficiencies in their lattice and these involve chemical weathering of rock and regolith, and a number of physical weathering processes such as frost shattering and haloclasty. The main process is abrasion through transport, including fluvial comminution, aeolian attrition and it is in semi-arid environments that substantial quantities of silt are produced. Silt is sometimes known as rock flour or stone dust, especially produced by glacial action. Mineralogically, silt is composed mainly of quartz and feldspar, sedimentary rock composed mainly of silt is known as siltstone. Liquefaction created by an earthquake is silt suspended in water that is hydrodynamically forced up from below ground level. In the Udden–Wentworth scale, silt particles range between 0.0039 and 0.0625 mm, larger than clay but smaller than sand particles, ISO14688 grades silts between 0.002 mm and 0.063 mm. In actuality, silt is chemically distinct from clay, and unlike clay, grains of silt are approximately the size in all dimensions, furthermore. Clays are formed from thin plate-shaped particles held together by electrostatic forces, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture Soil Texture Classification system, the sand-silt distinction is made at the 0.05 mm particle size. The USDA system has been adopted by the Food and Agriculture Organization, in the Unified Soil Classification System and the AASHTO Soil Classification system, the sand-silt distinction is made at the 0.075 mm particle size. Silts and clays are distinguished mechanically by their plasticity, Silt is easily transported in water or other liquid and is fine enough to be carried long distances by air in the form of dust. Thick deposits of silty material resulting from deposition by aeolian processes are called loess. Silt and clay contribute to turbidity in water, Silt is transported by streams or by water currents in the ocean. When silt appears as a pollutant in water the phenomenon is known as siltation, Silt, deposited by annual floods along the Nile River, created the rich, fertile soil that sustained the Ancient Egyptian civilization. In south east Bangladesh, in the Noakhali district, cross dams were built in the 1960s whereby silt gradually started forming new land called chars, the district of Noakhali has gained more than 28 square miles of land in the past 50 years
37.
Korea Bay
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The Korea Bay, sometimes the West Korea Bay, is a northern extension of the Yellow Sea, between Liaoning Province of China and North Pyŏngan Province of North Korea. It is separated from the Bohai by the Liaodong Peninsula, with Dalian at its southernmost point, the Yalu River, which marks the border between China and North Korea, empties into the Korea Bay between Dandong and Sinŭiju. East Korea Bay Geography of China Geography of North Korea Korean Peninsula Ta-lien-wan
38.
Black Sea
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The Black Sea is a body of water between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. It is supplied by a number of rivers, such as the Danube, Dnieper, Rioni, Southern Bug. The Black Sea has an area of 436,400 km2, a depth of 2,212 m. It is constrained by the Pontic Mountains to the south and by the Caucasus Mountains to the east, the longest east-west extent is about 1,175 km. The Black Sea has a water balance, that is, a net outflow of water 300 km3 per year through the Bosphorus. Mediterranean water flows into the Black Sea as part of a two-way hydrological exchange, the Black Sea drains into the Mediterranean Sea and then the Atlantic Ocean, via the Aegean Sea and various straits. The Bosphorus Strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and these waters separate Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The Black Sea is also connected to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch, the water level has varied significantly. Due to these variations in the level in the basin. At certain critical water levels it is possible for connections with surrounding water bodies to become established and it is through the most active of these connective routes, the Turkish Straits, that the Black Sea joins the world ocean. When this hydrological link is not present, the Black Sea is a basin, operating independently of the global ocean system. Currently the Black Sea water level is high, thus water is being exchanged with the Mediterranean. The Turkish Straits connect the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea, and comprise the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Black Sea as follows, On the Southwest. The Northeastern limit of the Sea of Marmara, a line joining Cape Takil and Cape Panaghia. Strabos Geographica reports that in antiquity, the Black Sea was often just called the Sea, for the most part, Graeco-Roman tradition refers to the Black Sea as the Hospitable sea, Εὔξεινος Πόντος Eúxeinos Póntos. This is a euphemism replacing an earlier Inhospitable Sea, Πόντος Ἄξεινος Póntos Áxeinos, strabo thinks that the Black Sea was called inhospitable before Greek colonization because it was difficult to navigate, and because its shores were inhabited by savage tribes. The name was changed to hospitable after the Milesians had colonized the southern shoreline and it is also possible that the epithet Áxeinos arose by popular etymology from a Scythian word axšaina- unlit, dark, the designation Black Sea may thus date from antiquity. A map of Asia dating to 1570, entitled Asiae Nova Descriptio, from Abraham Orteliuss Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, english-language writers of the 18th century often used the name Euxine Sea to refer to the Black Sea
39.
Red Sea
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The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait, to the north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez. The Red Sea is a Global 200 ecoregion, the sea is underlain by the Red Sea Rift which is part of the Great Rift Valley. The Red Sea has an area of roughly 438,000 km2, is about 2250 km long and. It has a depth of 2211 m in the central median trench. However, there are also extensive shallow shelves, noted for their marine life, the sea is the habitat of over 1,000 invertebrate species, and 200 soft and hard corals. It is the worlds northernmost tropical sea, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Red Sea as follows, On the North. The Southern limits of the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, a line joining Husn Murad and Ras Siyyan. Red Sea is a translation of the Greek Erythra Thalassa, Latin Mare Rubrum, Arabic, البحر الأحمر. Al-Baḥr Al-Aḥmar, Somali Badda Cas and Tigrinya Qeyyiḥ bāḥrī, the name of the sea may signify the seasonal blooms of the red-coloured Trichodesmium erythraeum near the waters surface. A theory favored by modern scholars is that the name red is referring to the direction south. The basis of this theory is that some Asiatic languages used color words to refer to the cardinal directions, herodotus on one occasion uses Red Sea and Southern Sea interchangeably. Historically, it was known to western geographers as Mare Mecca. Some ancient geographers called the Red Sea the Arabian Gulf or Gulf of Arabia. C, in that version, the Yam Suph is translated as Erythra Thalassa. The Red Sea is one of four seas named in English after common color terms — the others being the Black Sea, the White Sea and the Yellow Sea. The direct rendition of the Greek Erythra thalassa in Latin as Mare Erythraeum refers to the part of the Indian Ocean. The earliest known exploration of the Red Sea was conducted by ancient Egyptians, one such expedition took place around 2500 BC, and another around 1500 BC. Both involved long voyages down the Red Sea, historically, scholars argued whether these trips were possible
40.
White Sea
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The White Sea is a southern inlet of the Barents Sea located on the northwest coast of Russia. It is surrounded by Karelia to the west, the Kola Peninsula to the north, the whole of the White Sea is under Russian sovereignty and considered to be part of the internal waters of Russia. Administratively, it is divided between Arkhangelsk and Murmansk Oblasts and the Republic of Karelia, the major port of Arkhangelsk is located on the White Sea. For much of Russias history this was Russias main centre of maritime trade. In the modern era it became an important Soviet naval and submarine base, the White Sea-Baltic Canal connects the White Sea with the Baltic Sea. The White Sea is one of four seas named in English after common colour terms — the others being the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the northern limit of the White Sea as A line joining Svyatoi Nos and Cape Kanin. There are four main bays or gulfs on the White Sea and these bays connect with the funnel-shaped opening to the Barents Sea via a narrow strait called gorlo. Kandalaksha Gulf lies in the part of the White Sea, it is the deepest part of the sea. On the south, Onega Bay receives the Onega River, to the southeast, the Dvina Bay receives the Northern Dvina River at the major port of Arkhangelsk. On the east side of the gorlo, opposite the Kola peninsula, is Mezen Bay and it receives the Mezen River and the Kuloy River. Other major rivers flowing into the sea are the Vyg, Niva, Umba, Varzuga and Ponoy. The seabed of the part and Dvina Bay is covered in silt and sand, whereas the bottom of the northern part. Ice age deposits often emerge near the sea shores, northwestern coasts are tall and rocky but the slope is much weaker at the southeastern side. The White Sea contains a number of islands, but most of them are small. The main island group is the Solovetsky Islands, located almost in the middle of the sea, kiy Island in Onega Bay is significant due to a historic monastery. Velikiy Island, located close to the shore, is the largest island in the Kandalaksha Gulf, the White Sea is a water-filled depression in the block of a continental shelf known as the Baltic Shield. Its bottom is very uneven and contains the Kandalaksha Hollow in the northwest, also, the Onega Bay has many small underwater elevations. The opening and the gorlo of the sea are rather shallow, in addition, there is an underwater ridge in the northern part of the gorlo, resulting in maximum depths of 40 metres in that part
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International Hydrographic Organization
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The International Hydrographic Organization is the inter-governmental organisation representing hydrography. A principal aim of the IHO is to ensure that the seas, oceans. It does this through the setting of standards, the co-ordination of the endeavours of the worlds national hydrographic offices. The IHO enjoys observer status at the United Nations where it is the competent authority on hydrographic surveying. When referring to hydrography and nautical charting in Conventions and similar Instruments, it is the IHO standards, the IHO was established in 1921 as the International Hydrographic Bureau. The present name was adopted in 1970 as part of a new international Convention on the IHO adopted by the member nations. The former name International Hydrographic Bureau was retained to describe the IHO secretariat until 8 November 2016, there were substantial differences in hydrographic procedures charts, and publications. In 1889, an International Maritime Conference was held at Washington, D. C. similar proposals were made at the sessions of the International Congress of Navigation held at Saint Petersburg in 1908 and the International Maritime Conference held at Saint Petersburg in 1912. In 1919 the hydrographers of Great Britain and France cooperated in taking the steps to convene an international conference of hydrographers. London was selected as the most suitable place for this conference, and on 24 July 1919 and this is still the major purpose of the IHO. As a result of the conference, a permanent organization was formed, the IHB, now the IHO, began its activities in 1921 with 18 nations as members. The Principality of Monaco was selected as the seat of the organization as a result of the offer of Albert I, the IHO develops hydrographic and nautical charting standards. These standards are adopted and used by its 86 member countries and others in their surveys, nautical charts. Much has been done in the field of standardisation since the Bureau was founded, the IHO has encouraged the formation of Regional Hydrographic Commissions. Each RHC coordinates the national surveying and charting activities of countries within each region, the 15 RHCs plus the IHO Hydrographic Commission on Antarctica effectively cover the world. The IHO, in partnership with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, directs the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans programme, in 2010 the IHO introduced a new, contemporary hydrographic geospatial standard for modelling marine data and information, known as S-100. S-100 and any dependent product specifications are underpinned by an on-line registry accessible via the IHO website, S-100 is aligned with the ISO19100 series of geographic standards, thereby making it fully compatible with contemporary geospatial data standards. Because S-100 is based on ISO19100, it can be used by other providers for their maritime-related data
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Jeju-do
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Jeju Island, and before the year 2000 as Cheju-do, is the largest island off the coast of the Korean Peninsula, and the main island of Jeju Province of South Korea. The island lies in the Korea Strait, southwest of South Jeolla Province, the island contains the natural World Heritage Site Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes. Jejudo has a climate, even in winter, the temperature rarely falls below 0 °C. Before the Japanese annexation in 1910, the island was known as Quelpart to Europeans. According to Korean records, a fleet of seventy pirate craft attacked Quelpart Island, when Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, Jeju then became known as Saishū, which is the Japanese reading of the hanja for Jeju. Before 2000, when the Seoul government established the official Revised Romanization of Korean, almost all written references to the island before that use that spelling. From April 3,1948 to May 1949, the South Korean government conducted a brutal anticommunist campaign to suppress an uprising on the island. The main cause for the rebellion was the election scheduled for May 10,1948, the elections were only planned for the south of the country, the half of the peninsula under UNTCOK control. Though atrocities were committed by both sides, the used by the South Korean government to suppress the rebels were especially cruel. On one occasion, American soldiers discovered the bodies of men, women. On another, American soldiers caught police in the act of carrying out an execution of seventy-six villagers. In the end, between 14,000 and 30,000 people died as a result of the rebellion, some 40,000 others fled to Japan to escape the fighting. In the decades after the uprising, memory of the event was suppressed by the government through strict punishment. Only in 2006, more than 60 years after the rebellion, although the government simultaneously promised reparations, as of 2010, nothing had been done to this end. In 2008, bodies of victims of a massacre were discovered in a grave near Jeju International Airport. Jejudo is an island, dominated by Hallasan, a volcano 1,950 metres high. The island measures approximately 73 kilometres across, east to west, the eruptions took place in the Cenozoic era. Step 1, About 1.2 million years ago, a chamber formed under the sea floor
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Jindo Island
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Jindo Island is the third largest island in South Korea. Together with a group of smaller islands, it forms Jindo County. It is located in South Jeolla province, just off the southwest corner of the Korean peninsula, the island is separated from the mainland by the Myeongnyang Strait, however, this strait is now spanned by South Koreas longest cable-stayed bridge spanning 484 meters. Here in 1597 admiral Yi Sun-sin won the Battle of Myeongnyang, defeating a vastly superior Japanese fleet, the Korea Jindo Dog is native to Jindo Island. Every year, on a day in the spring or summer. This event attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists and is accompanied by local festivals, the island was known and inhabited since prehistoric time. In 995, it was called Haeyangdo, and later renamed to Okju county, in 1001, the island Okju was changed to Jindo. During the Mongol invasions of Korea of 1231–1270, the served as a refuge for the Sambyeolcho Rebellion forces. However, in 1271, Mongols captured the island and removed all settlements from there, the population that returned after the Mongol invasion was constantly threatened by Japanese pirates invasions, and thus the island was nearly empty during the 14th century. On 16 September 1597, during the Seven Year War, the Korean admiral Yi Sun-sin achieved a victory in the Battle of Myeongnyang held at the Myeongnyang Strait. With 13 panokseons and about 200 men he defeated the Japanese fleet of 133 warships and 200 support ships. During the lifetime of Yi Sun-sin, the strait was known as Uldolmok, or the Roaring Channel, most likely due to the powerful tidal forces in the channel. The Myeongnyang Strait separates Jindo Island and Jindo County from Haenam County on the mainland, at its narrowest point, the strait is about 300 meters wide and up to 22 meters deep, with the tide variations up to 6 meters in spring. The tidal currents reach up to 6 m/s and are considered as the fastest in Asia, combined with a whirlpool in the strait, these fast tides hinder navigation. The area is hit by typhoons with typical average wind speeds of 48 m/s. The coastline is irregular and contains numerous minor valleys, mountains. The shores are steep and are made by eroding igneous and volcanic rocks, there is significant navigation in the strait. A twin bridge, consisting of two cable-stayed bridges of similar design, connect Jindo Island with the mainland, and its shape is reflected in the logo of the Jindo County
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Korea
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Korea is a historical state in East Asia, since 1945 divided into two distinct sovereign states, North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by China to the northwest and it is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait and the Sea of Japan. Korea emerged as a political entity after centuries of conflict among the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Later Silla divided into three states during the Later Three Kingdoms period. Goryeo, which had succeeded Goguryeo, defeated the two states and united the Korean Peninsula. Around the same time, Balhae collapsed and its last crown prince fled south to Goryeo, Goryeo, whose name developed into the modern exonym Korea, was a highly cultured state that created the worlds first metal movable type in 1234. However, multiple invasions by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty during the 13th century greatly weakened the nation, following the Yuan Dynastys collapse, severe political strife followed, and Goryeo eventually fell to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established Joseon in 1388. The first 200 years of Joseon were marked by peace and saw the creation of the Korean alphabet by Sejong the Great in the 14th century. During the later part of the dynasty, however, Koreas isolationist policy earned it the Western nickname of the Hermit Kingdom, by the late 19th century, the country became the object of imperial design by the Empire of Japan. Despite attempts at modernization by the Korean Empire, in 1910 Korea was annexed by Japan and these circumstances soon became the basis for the division of Korea by the two superpowers, exacerbated by their incapability to agree on the terms of Korean independence. To date, both continue to compete with each other as the sole legitimate government of all of Korea. Korea is the spelling of Corea, a name attested in English as early as 1614. It is a derived from Cauli, Marco Polos transcription of the Chinese 高麗. This was the Hanja for the Korean kingdom of Goryeo or Koryŏ, Goryeos name was a continuation of the earlier Goguryeo or Koguryŏ, the northernmost of the Samguk, which was officially known by the shortened form Goryeo after the 5th-century reign of King Jangsu. The original name was a combination of the go with the name of a local Yemaek tribe. The name Korea is now used in English contexts by both North and South Korea. In South Korea, Korea as a whole is referred to as Hanguk, the name references the Samhan—Ma, Jin, and Byeon—who preceded the Three Kingdoms in the southern and central end of the peninsula during the 1st centuries BC and AD. It has been linked with the title khan used by the nomads of Manchuria
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Liao River
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The Liao River is the principal river in southern Northeast China, and one of the seven main river systems in mainland China. The province of Liaoning and the Liaodong Peninsula derive their names from this river, the river is also popularly known as the mother river in Northeast China. The Liao River has a high sediment load because many parts of it flow through powdery loess. The Liao River is also an important geographical landmark, as it divides the province of Liaoning into two broad regions — Liaodong and Liaoxi. The Liao River is formed from the confluence of its two tributaries, the Xiliao River from the west, and Dongliao River from the east. The resultant river, the Liao River proper, then enters Liaoning Province and courses southwards through the Northeast China Plain and it makes a westward turn near Pingdingbao Town, Tieling County, and after receiving more tributaries, earns an infrequently used nickname Juliu River. The eastern distributary, originally the one and the main body of lower Liao River, was called the Wailiao River. However, the Liao River Delta is has a flat topography made up of soft sediment soil and this coupled with the risk of storm surges due to the regions low elevation, created a huge problem in flood control. This flood risk at the section of the Liao River system was particularly threatening to Yingkou. Therefore, since 1958, the Hun River and Taizi River were no longer considered tributaries of the Liao River, but an autonomous water system of their own. Xiliao River, historically known as Huang River, is the largest tributary of Liao River, running 449 kilometres. The Xiliao River is formed by the confluence of Laoha River flowing from the southwest and its headwaters arise in the low mountains near Dongliao County in Jilin Province, where more than 80% of its entire length resides. The Dongliao River then traverses a short west course through Liaoning Province and these following tributaries drain into the Liao River proper throughout its course within the Liaoning Province. Running 415 kilometres and draining a basin of 11,500 square kilometres and it flows through the most populous area of Liaoning Province, including the provincial capital and largest city, Shenyang, as well as the 10th largest city, Fushun. The river got its current name from the fast flow speed and high sediment load, the rivers middle section was also called Shen River, which gave name to the capital city Shenyang to its north, and the lower section is also called Clam River. However in 1958, an engineering project was conducted to address flood control problem in the coastal area near Yingkou. Therefore since 1958, the Hun and Taizi River were considered an independent river system of their own and it was formally the third largest tributary of the Liao River, running 413 kilometres and draining a basin of 13,900 square kilometres. Like its sister river, the Hun River, the Taizi River has numerous tributaries and its headwaters arise from hill regions between Benxi and Fushun, and contains the famous Benxi Water Caves
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Baengnyeongdo
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Baengnyeong Island is a 45. 8-square-kilometre,8.45 kilometres long and 12.56 kilometres wide island in Ongjin County, Incheon, South Korea, located near the Northern Limit Line. The 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement which ended the Korean War specified that the five islands including Baengnyeong Island would remain under United Nations Command and this agreement was signed by both the DPRK and the United Nations Command. Since then, it serves as a demarcation between North and South Korea in the Yellow Sea. It has a population of approximately 4,329, the meaning of its name is white wing island, since the island resembles a flying ibis with its wings spread. Given its proximity to North Korea, it has served as a base for intelligence activity by South Korea, numerous North Korean defectors have also boated here to escape economic and political conditions in their homeland. In the recent past there have been several skirmishes between the two countries in the area, and Kim Jong-Un threatened on 11 March 2013 to wipe it out. National Treasures of South Korea #391–#393 are located on Baengnyeong Island, Baengnyeong Island is the westernmost point of South Korea. Travel time by boat to the island from Incheon is about four hours, changsan Cape in Ryongyon, North Korea, can be seen from Baengnyeong on clear days. The area is rich in oceanic fauna and bird diversities. The Chinese egret, which is considered to be one of the fifty rarest birds in the world, the area hosts a nature reserve for spotted seals, and they can be observed on the rocks and beaches. Presences of seals occasionally attract predators such as Great white shark into the area, finless porpoisees in adjacent waters are also curious and playful. Incheon Coast Guard has been investigating illegal whaling targeting minke whales in the area, owing to the geographical location, Christianity went through Baengnyeong Island ahead of other Korean regions. After the Gabo Reform, Kim Seong-jin was exiled to island. There are ten churches on the island at the present time, two smaller islands nearby are Daecheong Island and the much smaller Socheong Island. During the Korean War, the USAF designated the airfield on Paengyong-do as K-53, the island was defended by the West Coast Island Defense Task Unit composed of men of the 2d Korean Marine Corps Regiment under the direction of US Marines. In April 1951 Paengyong-do was used as a base for a mission to recover wreckage of a downed Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 near the Chongchon River. The overloaded helicopter then flew the team and samples back to Paengyong-do where they were transferred onto an SA-16, the USAF established a communications interception site on the island in mid-1951 which was used to intercept Chinese military communications. The H-5s were later replaced by the more capable Sikorsky H-19, on 12 November 1952 several aircraft, believed to be Po-2s, bombed the base in a night attack causing minimal damage
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Daebudo
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Daebu Island is an island in the Yellow Sea, within the municipal borders of Ansan city, Gyeonggi province. It has a population of roughly 7,114 people and an area of 41.98 km², due to rising mudflats, the island has merged with neighbouring Seongam-do and Tan-do. Administratively, the island today is divided into five dong, Daebubuk-dong, Daebunam-dong, Daebudong-dong, Seongam-dong and Pungdo-dong, the predominant industries are tourism and fishing. During the Goryeo and Joseon Dynasties, Daebu Island was included in the old jurisdiction of Namyang, on March 1,1914, it was transferred to Bucheon, and on July 1,1973 responsibility was transferred to Ongjin County. On December 26,1994 the island was moved into the jurisdiction of Ansan, Daebu Island has three kindergartens, three elementary schools, one middle school and a high school. The island is home to the Gyeonggi English Villages Ansan Camp. List of Korea-related topics Islands of South Korea Geography of South Korea Daebu-dong Citizens Centre Ansan City Council Gyeonggi English Village - Ansan Camp
