An Historical Geography of Peiping by Renzhi Hou

By Renzhi Hou

This e-book is set the town of Peiping in China, often referred to as Beijing and Peking, and a urban of significant historic value. Divided into 3 components, this paintings explores Peiping first as a frontier urban at a time whilst the good Wall used to be confirmed, from the Chou dynasty (ca.1122—220 B.C.) till the T’ang Dynasties as much as the Khitan profession (A.D. 590—937). the second one half explores Peiping because it turns into a countrywide centre, throughout the Liao Dynasty and the Chin Dynasty, until eventually 1234, and the 3rd half explores the way it turned the capital of the chinese language empire, till 1911. This paintings is a ancient geography and the advent information topographical good points and geographical kinfolk of the town, describing the way the mountains upward push from the apparent developing concave hands to surround Peiping, resulting in the identify, the ‘Bay of Peiping’. We examine that the mountains usually achieve over 3000ft and feature essentially no foot-hills, when the bay itself is full of sediments of gravel, sand, loam and loess that have been deposited in horizontal strata, to an exceptional intensity. a variety of illustrations and figures are integrated, and readers will see how town sits among rivers, the Hun (浑河 or Muddy River) and the Pai (白河 or White River). those chapters demonstrate how every one river has made its contribution to the fabric improvement of town and its environs, together with via irrigation and because the Hun River shifted its direction. due to the geography of the sector, just about all roads best from the northern lands of Mongolia and Manchuria to the good simple of North China within the south are absolute to converge at Peiping. The ancient effects of this, in addition to neighborhood weather stipulations and different elements of geography are explored during this ebook, which lines the historic upward push to eminence of Peiping.