Geography and Language Ancient china

China is the largest country in Asia, and the third largest country in the world. What is unique about Chinese culture is that it is continuous, or unbroken, from its earliest recorded history to today. Writing, art, artifacts, and archaeological remains reveal a culture that remained mostly unified over centuries.

The North China Plain Historians trace human settlement and culture in China to the North China Plain. Land is fertile on the plain because it is enriched with loess, or a yellowish brown soil that blows in from the desert. Winters are cold and summers are hot on the plain. Crops grow on terraces, or platforms of earth that look like stairs. Beijing, the country’s capital, is located on the northern top of the plain. Label Beijing on your map. Today, the North China Plain is the center of industry and agriculture.

China’s Sorrow The Huang He (Hwahng Huh), or Huang River, cuts through the North China Plain. It is nearly 3,400 miles long. Also called the Yellow River. About 3000 B.C. early civilizations in China made their homes near the Huang River Valley. The great river picks up and carries a large amount of yellow silt, dissolved in water. This causes the river to take on a yellowish color. Floods occur when the river rises during heavy summer rains. People built levees to help control the flooding. The Huang has been called “China’s Sorrow” because for centuries, floods have wiped out crops and left people homeless. Label the Huang Huh (Yellow River) on your map.

Guangxi Zhungzu Warm waters of the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea wash the land’s southern shoreline. There is plenty of rain and sun throughout the year. This region is called Guangxi Zhungzu. Label the Gulf of Tonkin, South China Sea, and Guangxi Zhungzu on your map

The Guangxi Zhungzu has one of the best climates for farming in China The Guangxi Zhungzu has one of the best climates for farming in China. The growing season is long in these lowland. Farmers in this region use a cultivation system called double cropping, in which two crops are grown on the same land in the same year. They can double-crop rice and a vegetable or rice and sugar cane.

To the Roof of the World The Tibetan Plateau is very rocky with many mountain ranges. Label the Tibetan Plateau on your map. The Tibetan Plateau is sometimes called the Roof of the World. It is where the Himalayas, a mountain range, is located. This is where Mount Everest is located.

Chinese Language We known about Chinese history from artifacts like tortoise shells and animal bones with writing on them. The Chinese language is written in pictographs, or pictures that represent words. Many characters in the Chinese language have been written in similar ways for long periods of time. Scholars who recorded history could read and interpret other writers’ works written thousands of years before.

Your ticket out of the door… Use a ThinkPad piece of paper and generate a question about today’s lesson using one of the words on the VERB PHRASES flipbook. You can pick a word from any of the pages in the flipbook.

THINK How does China compare in size to other countries in the world? What is unique about the culture of China? Why do many people live on the North China Plain? What positive effect might double cropping have on the economy in the Guangzi Zhungzu? What would life be like if you lived on the Tibetan Plateau?