Get to Know Geography of China from American Perspective
从美国角度了解中国地理：写给小学生
China is a big country. How big is it? It is as big as America. In the United States, there are 50 states and in China, there are 33 provinces or provincial-level administrative divisions. If you compare the two countries in a global map, we may treat a province in China like a state in the United State. Do you know how the states in the U.S. are named? Are there any state named after mountain, river, lake, city, location, or Native American tribes? Similarly in China, how the provinces are named? Let’s check it out.
There are a lot of beautiful mountains in America. However, we don’t have a state exactly named after a mountain. Maybe we can count Nevada, which is named after the Sierra Nevada (snow covered mountain range) in Spanish. If you speak some Spanish, probably you will also count the Montana State. In Spanish, Montana means mountain. That is to say that Montana is a state of mountain. It is true that one a few states’ names are relevant to mountains. However, we do have a lot of cities named after mountains or hills, for example, Chapel Hill. What is the most famous mountain in North Carolina? Many people would say the Great Smokey Mountain, which is a part of the Appalachian Mountain. The Appalachian Mountain is very important in the US geography. Many states’ boundaries are long the ridge of the mountain. In China, there is a similar mountain, called the Taihang Mountain. Chinese people inhabited in the east and the west side of mountain have quite different cultures and traditions. They live in two different administrative divisions called Shandong Province and Shanxi Province. “dong” and “xi” means east and west in Chinese while “shan” means mountain. Apparently, the “shan” here indicates the Taihang Mountain.
What is the largest river in North America? Yes, it is the Mississippi River. Do you happen to know any of its big tributaries? Do the Ohio River and the Missouri River flow into the Mississippi River? Yes they do. In the colonial age, early immigrants traveled along those big rivers and name their new home after them. Therefore, we have Ohio State, Missouri State and Mississippi State. The Colorado River is a big river in the Southwestern United State. It flows to Rio Grand and eventually goes to the Mexican Gulf. The beautiful Colorado state is named after the beautiful river. Similarly, there are also other states named after rivers. The Delaware state is named after the Delaware River; the Minnesota state is named after the Minnesota River; and the Wisconsin River is named after the Wisconsin River.
Are there any rivers in China as big as the Mississippi in the United State? Certainly yes! From north to south, China has several rivers as long as our Mississippi. They are the Yellow River, the Yangtze River and the Pearl River. A lot of Chinese call the Yellow River as their mother river because they believe that Chinese culture was developed along the river. Do you know why the Yellow River is yellow? There are a lot of sand and dirt in the water and they dye the river water into yellow color. Very much like the Nile River in Egypt, the Yellow River caused many floods in history. The floods brought soils from mountains to plains and later the soils turned into good farmlands. Ancient Chinese built their homes and raised their families in the plains generation by generation. Several provinces in China are named according to rivers. In the Northern China, there are Hebei Province and Henan province, which located to the north and the south of the Yellow River. In the Southern China, there are Guangdong Province and Guangxi Province, which are located to the east and the west of the Pearl River. Hold on, each of these province named after one big river. What if there are several big rivers in a province? In the Southwest China, there is a province called “Sichuan”. “Si” means the number four and “Chuan” means big river. I believe there are four big rivers in the province and then the province gets the name as “four big rivers” literally. In the Northeast China, the Province Heilongjiang is named after a big river with the same name, which flows along the border of the province. Another province, Liaoning, is named after the Liao River flows in the province. In the southern China, there are Zhejiang province, Jiangsu province and Jiangxi province. In Chinese, “Jiang” means big river. The names of these provinces are related to big rivers in or nearby them.
In North America, there are five great lakes. They are Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Except the Lake Michigan, the other four lakes are jointly owned by the United States and Canada. What is the state near the Lake Michigan? Of cause the Michigan State, which is the only state named after a lake in the Untied State. How about China? Do you happen to know the big lakes in China? China also has many big lakes. Even though they are not as big as the Great Lakes in North America, they are beautiful and bring plenty of resources to local people, such as fishes. For example, Lake Dongting and Lake Boyang are lakes of fresh water and Lake Qinghai is a salt-water lake. The Hunan Province and the Hubei Province are named after the Lake Dongting. In Chinese “Hu” means Lake, “Nan” means south and “Bei” means north. From the names we can tell that Hunan Province is to the south of the Lake Dongting and the Hubei Province is to the north of the Lake Dongting. Similarly in the United States, we can tell the relative locations of the South Carolina and North Carolina, as well as the South Dakota and the North Dakota. In America, the Salt Lake City is named after the Salt Lake in Utah. Similarly in China, the Qinghai Province is named after the Lake Qinghai.
Is the New York State named after the New York City? I believe that it is not. Both the state and the city were named for the Duke of York in England. Similarly, the New Jersey is not named after the city Jersey and the Kansas State is not named after the Kansas city. However, many provinces in China are named after important Cities in the provinces, which came much earlier than the provinces. For example, there were two important cities, Fuzhou and Jianzhou, when the Fujian Province was formed. In ancient China, “Zhou” usually indicated big city. The Fujian province was named as the short name of the two cities. The Anhui Province is named after two important cities Anqing and Huizhou in it. Similarly, the Gansu province was named after two important historical cities in it, namely “Ganzhou” and “Suzhou”. The Shaanxi Province is named after an important historical city, called “Shanzhou”, which is in nowadays Henan Province. The name means that the province is to the west of Shanzhou city since “Xi” means west in Chinese as mentioned earlier. The Guizhou province is directly named after an ancient city called Guizhou in it. The Yunnan Province is named after a military post of the same name, which was built about 2000 years ago. The Jilin Province is named after Jinlin City, which still uses the same name nowadays.
In the United State, many states are named after Native American tribes whose people originally lived in these areas. For example, South Dakota, North Dakota and Kansas. The majority ethnic group in China is Han Chinese. There are other 55 ethnic groups in China. Some of provinces are named after the names of the ethnic groups. For example, Inner Mongolia, or Neimenggu, is named after the Mongolia ethnic group, which mainly distributed in the province. Another example, Xizang, is named after the Tibetan ethnic group, which is called “Zang” in China. Xinjiang and Ningxia are very unique provinces in China. The major populations there are Muslins. The Ningxia Province is named after an ancient Kingdom, called Xia. Its territory was mostly in and around the Ningxia province. In Chinese, “Xin” means new and “Jiang” means territory. The province Xinjiang is similarly named like the New Mexico in the United States. From the name we can learn that Xinjiang province is the territory, which newly jointed in China.
Are there any states of the U.S. are in islands? Yes, we have Hawaii. There are also two provinces in China, which are detached from the continental part of China. They are Hainan Province and Taiwan Province. There is one interesting thing that you probably should learn. There are actually two China in the world. One is the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the other is Republic of China (RC). Most of us are from PRC, which controls all the provinces other than Taiwan. RC, sometimes is called as Taiwan, is mainly ruling the Taiwan Island, which is claimed by PRC as a province. Because the PRC is so big and economically powerful, usually we mean PRC when we talk about China.
If your parents are from China, you must know Beijing, and probably you also know Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing. They are not provinces but actually have the status of province in China. There are two more spatial areas, Hong Kong and Macau, which you should know. These two cities are used to be colonies of United Kingdom and Portugal and recently taken back by China. They have their own governments and laws. So the people there live differently from Chinese in many ways. Some of them even are not willing to acknowledge themselves as Chinese. This also happens to some people in Taiwan. As Chinese American, we can have our own opinions but should also respect others’ opinions.
说明：自知英语很烂。所以，欢迎您指教帮我提高改进，不欢迎辱骂讥讽。写这个短文的目的，就是为了给读小学的孩子们介绍一点中国的地理知识。从美国的角度去评述，希望孩子们会接受。虽然英语表达不算好，里面的信息应该还算不错。有什么建议，多多指教。谢谢！
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