China

History

"A journey of a thousand miles begins from beneath ones' feet."

—Laozi (Lao Tzu) circa 4th ct. B.C.E.

China is one of the oldest enduring civilizations in the world, with archaeological and historical records dating back over three-thousand years. From the 7th through 14th centuries China claimed the world's most advanced civilization, and its capital once stood as the most economically developed and populous multicultural urban center the world had seen, contributing many of the innovations and technologies that have changed the course of world history, including papermaking, printing, gunpowder, porcelain, silk and the magnetic compass, to name just a few.  Read more...

Geography

The expansive territory of China comprises several diverse geographic regions and borders fourteen neighboring countries: from the fertile agricultural plains in the east, bordering the South China Sea; to the forested mountains in the northeast, the historical region of Manchuria bordering Russia and North Korea; to the semiarid loess-covered plateau and the high-elevation grasslands in the north, bordering Mongolia; to the arid deserts in the northwest, bordering Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan; to the snowcapped Himalayas of the Tibetan Plateau in the west, bordering India, Nepal and Bhutan; to the lush tropics in the southwest, bordering Myanmar and Laos; to the fantastic karst topography in the south, bordering Vietnam.


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People

The Chinese outnumber all other people in the world and are the most widely dispersed ethnic group on earth. The People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), founded in 1949, is the third largest country (after Canada and Russia) and is the most populous nation in the world today. On January 6, 2005, China’s population reached the 1.3 billion mark, meaning more than one-fifth of humanity now lives in China, and this is in addition to the sizable and widely dispersed diaspora (by 2000 an estimated thirty-four million overseas Chinese live in over 140 countries across the globe). Almost 92% of China's population is ethnic Han Chinese, but the remaining 8% (over a 105 million people, more than three times the population of Canada) belong to one of the fifty-five officially recognized ethnic minorities that compose China's multicultural society.  Read more...

Language

It is not surprising that with such a large country and diverse people there are many different languages and a variety of regional dialects spoken in China, some related and others mutually unintelligible. The written language, however, was first standardized in the 3rd century B.C.E., during the reign of China's first emperor, and standard spoken Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect was first promoted in the early twentieth century at the end of the last dynastic period. Called Putonghua by the mainland Chinese since 1955, standard Mandarin is spoken by 70% of the population. Today Chinese is spoken by more native speakers than any other in the world.  Read more...