Geography

China is a big country, very similar in size to the United States. It is mountainous and has a lot of rivers, thus travel was always very arduous. Roughly speaking, we can divide China a number of ways. The main political division is called a province, though there are now several cities that are themselves at the province level, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing, and there are several Autonomous Regions, including Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Guangxi.

There are also fairly clear geographical divisions in terms of the languages spoken.

Here is a topographical map of China showing the various elevations, which go from sea level in the east to the highest elevations in the world in Tibet.