China

The People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) is a huge country! It is useful if you have a good head for numbers and geography when you start looking at China, because some of the facts are enough to make you dizzy.

The Chinese name for China is Zhōngguó, which means 'the Middle Kingdom'. 

China has an area of 9,572,900 sq km and close to 1.5 billion people live there – that’s 1,500,000,000!! The highest mountain in the world, Mt Everest (the Chinese call it Zhūmùlángmǎ Fēng) is on its border with Nepal. It has the 3rd and 4th longest rivers in the world – the Yangtze and the Yellow River.

China is divided into 23 Provinces, 5 Autonomous Regions, and 4 Municipalities. The Provinces are Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guizhou, Hainan, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Yunan, Zhejiang and Taiwan. Although it is also known as Taiwan and some of the Taiwanese want to become independent from China. The Autonomous Regions are Guangxi, Nei Menggu (Inner Mongolia), Ningxia, Xinjiang and Xizang (Tibet). Tibet also thinks it should be independent of China and a country by itself.

The Municipalities are something new in China that are an important part of its growth as a world economic power. They are Beijing, Chongquing, Shanghai and Tianjin. Finally, there are Hong Kong and Macau. These are China’s only Special Administrative Regions. Often the regions have very different food.

Chinese money is called Renminbi (人民币 / rénmínbì).