Yanmen Pass Scenic Area
Yanmen Pass, also known by its Chinese name Yanmenguan and as Xixingguan, is a mountain pass which includes three fortified gatehouses along the Great Wall of China. The area was a strategic choke point in ancient and medieval China, controlling access between the valleys of central Shanxi and the Eurasian Steppe. This made it the scene of various important battles, extending into World War II, and the area around the gatehouses and this stretch of the Great Wall is now a AAAAA-rated tourist attraction. The scenic area is located just outside YanmenguanVillage in YanmenguanTownship in Dai County, Xinzhou City, Shanxi Province, China. Name Yanmen Pass, sometimes translated in English to Wild Goose Pass or Wildgoose Gate, is named after the wild geese who migrate through the area. ''Yànménguān'' is the pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese placename written as or in traditional characters and as in the simplified characters now used in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Great Wall
The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand Li (unit), ''li'' long wall") is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against Eurasian nomads, various nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe. The first walls date to the 7th century BC; these were joined together in the Qin dynasty. Successive dynasties expanded the wall system; the best-known sections were built by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). To aid in defense, the Great Wall utilized watchtowers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and its status as a transportation corridor. Other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls (allowing control of immigration and emigration, and the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road), and the regulation of trade. The collective fortifications constituting the Great Wall stret ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Romanization Of Chinese
Romanization of Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Varieties of Chinese, Chinese. Chinese uses a logographic script and its Chinese characters, characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems using Romanization, Roman characters to represent Chinese throughout history. Linguist Daniel Kane (linguist), Daniel Kane wrote, "It used to be said that sinologists had to be like musicians, who might compose in one key and readily transcribe into other keys." The dominant international standard for Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin since about 1982 has been Pinyin, Hanyu Pinyin, invented by a group of Chinese linguists, including Zhou Youguang, in the 1950s. Other well-known systems include Wade–Giles (Beijing Mandarin) and Yale romanization (Yale romanization of Mandarin, Beijing Mandarin and Yale romanization of Cantonese, Cantonese). There are many uses for Chinese romanization. Most broadly, it is used to provide a useful way for ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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River Basin
A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, the drainage divide, made up of a succession of elevated features, such as ridges and hills. A basin may consist of smaller basins that merge at river confluences, forming a hierarchical pattern. Other terms for a drainage basin are catchment area, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin, water basin, and impluvium. In North America, they are commonly called a watershed, though in other English-speaking places, " watershed" is used only in its original sense, that of the drainage divide line. A drainage basin's boundaries are determined by watershed delineation, a common task in environmental engineering and science. In a closed drainage basin, or endorheic basin, rather than flowing to the ocean, water converges toward the interio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Datong
Datong is a prefecture-level city in northern Shanxi Province, China. It is located in the Datong Basin at an elevation of and borders Inner Mongolia to the north and west and Hebei to the east. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 3,105,591 of whom 1,790,452 lived in the built-up (or metro) area made of the 2 out 4 urban districts of Pingcheng and Yungang as Yunzhou and Xinrong are not conurbated yet. History The area of present-day Datong was close to the state of Dai, which was conquered by the Zhao clan of Jin in 457 BC. It was a frontier land between the agricultural Chinese and the nomads of the Great Steppe. The area was well known for its trade in horses. The area of present-day Datong eventually came under the control of the Qin dynasty, during which it was known as Pingcheng County (平城县) and formed part of the Qin commandery of Yanmen. Pingcheng County continued under the Han dynasty, which founded a site within present-day Datong in 2 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sanggan River
The Sanggan River or Sanggan He (), also known in English as Sangkan River, is a river in northern China. It runs 506 kilometers and has a drainage area of 23,900 square kilometers. In addition to its significance in hydrology, it is culturally significant as it has been mentioned in various poems, essays, and novels, including a poem by Chen Tao and an award-winning novel ''The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River'' by Ding Ling.Davis, 80 (note 1, on page 29) It is also one of the rivers that gave birth to early civilizations. Geology The Sangan River is a part of the drainage system of Hai River. It originates in Shanxi Province. It merges with the Yang He (洋河) in Hebei Province and then flows into the Guanting Reservoir. The outflow of the reservoir is known as the Yongding River (formerly known as the Wuding River). See also *Ding Ling *Shanxi *Zhuolu County Zhuolu County () is a county in the northwest of Hebei province, bordering Beijing's Mentougou District to the east. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mount Heng (Shanxi)
Mount Heng, also known by its Chinese name Hengshan, is a mountain in north-central China's Shanxi Province, known as the northern mountain of the Five Great Mountains of China. Heng Shan in Shanxi Province is sometimes known as the Northern Heng Shan, and the one in Hunan Province as Southern Heng Shan. Both mountains have the same pronunciation in Chinese, and the Southern Heng Shan is also one of the Five Sacred Mountains. History Like the other mountains in China with strong Taoist presence, Heng Shan has been considered a sacred mountain since the Zhou dynasty. Due to its northerly location, often under control of non-Chinese nations, the mountain has a weaker history of pilgrimage than its four fellows. Indeed, to this day it is the least-visited and least-developed of the five, also the smallest in area. Because of this, Hengshan is not nearly as religiously important in China as the other Taoist mountains.Goosseart (2008), p. 481. But as a further consequence, it is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Postal Map Romanization
Postal romanization was a system of transliterating place names in China developed by postal authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For many cities, the corresponding postal romanization was the most common English-language form of the city's name from the 1890s until the 1980s, when postal romanization was replaced by pinyin, but the system remained in place in Taiwan until 2002. In 1892, Herbert Giles created a romanization system called the Nanking syllabary. The Imperial Maritime Customs Post Office would cancel postage with a stamp that gave the city of origin in Latin letters, often romanized using Giles's system. In 1896, the Customs Post was combined with other postal services and renamed the Chinese Imperial Post. As a national agency, the Imperial Post was an authority on Chinese place names. When the Wade–Giles system became widespread, some argued that the post office should adopt it. This idea was rejected at a conference held in 1906 in Sha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mainland China
"Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addition to the geographical mainland, the geopolitical sense of the term includes islands such as Hainan, Chongming Island, Chongming, and Zhoushan. By convention, territories outside of mainland China include: * Special administrative regions of China, which are regarded as subdivisions of the country, but retain distinct administrative, judicial and economic systems from those on the mainland: ** Hong Kong, formerly a British Hong Kong, British colony ** Macau, formerly a Portuguese Macau, Portuguese colony * Taiwan, along with Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu Islands, Matsu and other minor islands, are collectively known as the Taiwan Area, where has been the major territorial base of the government of the Republic of China (ROC) since 1950. Though the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Simplified Characters
Simplified Chinese characters are one of two standardized character sets widely used to write the Chinese language, with the other being traditional characters. Their mass standardization during the 20th century was part of an initiative by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to promote literacy, and their use in ordinary circumstances on the mainland has been encouraged by the Chinese government since the 1950s. They are the official forms used in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore, while traditional characters are officially used in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Simplification of a component—either a character or a sub-component called a radical—usually involves either a reduction in its total number of strokes, or an apparent streamlining of which strokes are chosen in what places—for example, the radical used in the traditional character is simplified to to form the simplified character . By systematically simplifying radicals, large swaths of the characte ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Traditional Characters
Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages. In Taiwan, the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education and standardized in the ''Standard Form of National Characters''. These forms were predominant in written Chinese until the middle of the 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variants of the predominant forms. Simplified characters as codified by the People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is a retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese languages ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |