The Chinese earth is pervasively humanized through long occupation. Signs of man's presence vary from the obvious to the extremely subtle. The building of roads, bridges, dams, and factories, and the consolidation of farm holdings alter the Chinese landscape and these alterations seem all the more conspicuous because they introduce features that are not distinctively Chinese. In contrast, traditional forms and architectural relics escape our attention because they are so identified with the Chinese scene that they appear to be almost outgrowths of nature. Describing the natural order of human beings in the context of the Chinese earth and civilization, "A Historical Geography of China" narrates the evolution of the Chinese landscape from prehistoric times to the present.Tuan views landscape as a visible expression of man's efforts to gain a living and achieve a measure of stability in the constant flux of nature. The book ranges the period of time from Peking man to the epoch of Mao Tse-tung. It moves through the ancient and modern dynasties, the warlords and conquests, earthquakes, devastating floods, climatic reversals, and staggering civil wars to the impact of Western civilization and industrialization. The emphasis throughout is on the effect of a changing environment on succeeding cultures.This classic study attempts to analyze and describe traditional Chinese settlement patterns and architecture. The result is a clear and succinct examination of the development of the Chinese landscape over thousands of years. It describes the ways the Communist regime worked to alter the face of the nation. This work will quickly prove to be crucial reading for all who are interested in this pivotal nation. It goes far beyond the usual political spectrum, into the physical and social roots of Chinese history.

This book offers a unique contribution to the burgeoning field of Chinese historical geography. Urban transformation in China constitutes both a domestic revolution and a world-historical event. Through the exploration of nine urban sites of momentous change, over an extended period of time, this book connects the past with the present, and provides much-needed literature on city growth and how they became complex laboratories of prosperity. The first part of this book puts Chinese urban changes into historical perspective, and probes the relationship between nation and city, focusing on Shanghai, Beijing and Changchun. Part two deals with the relationship between history and modernity, concentrating on Tunxi, a traditional trade center of tea, New Villages in Shanghai and street names in Taipei and Shanghai. Part three showcases the complexities of urban regeneration vis-à-vis heritage preservation in cities such as Datong, Tianjin and Qingdao. This book offers an innovative interdisciplinary and international perspective, which will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese urban studies, as well Chinese politics and society.

Until the seventeenth century, Professor Knapp reminds us, Taiwan lay obscure off the southeast coast of China-an island cloaked in anonymity and inhabited principally by aborigines. Then, rather abruptly, the island was thrust into the maelstrom of European commercial expansion in East Asia, which in its wake drew Chinese peasant pioneers across the straits to Taiwan. This is the story, told from many viewpoints, of how Taiwan was transformed over a period of three centuries from a raw frontier to a stable entity with social and economic patterns similar to those found along the coastal mainland of southeastern China.

The authors in this volume believe that long-term, profound, and sometimes tumultuous changes in the last five hundred years of the history of China have been no less geographical than social, political, or economic. From the dialectics of local-empire relations to the imperial state’s persistent array of projects for absorbing and transforming ethnic regions on the margins of empire; from the tripling of imperial territories in the Qing to the disputes over the identity of the former “outer zones” in the early Republican era; and from the universalistic imagination of “all-under-heaven” to the fraught processes of re-drawing a new set of nation-state boundaries in the twentieth century, the study of the dynamics of geography, broadly conceived, promises to provide insight into the contested development of the geographical entity which we, today, call 'China.'

This book is intended primarily for serious students of geography but it will also appeal to the general reader. For this reason technical terms have been used as sparingly as is consistent with correct meaning. Wherever the subject matter permits, the author emphasizes geographical growth and shows the interaction of geographical environment and the human activity and institutions. When originally published in the 1960s China was beginning to change with breathtaking rapidity. These changes are presented here against geographical and historical background. Knowledge of the environmental facts is essential to an appreciation of the political, economic, and social problems that have faced the Chinese people.

This book represents the most important academic achievements won by Dr. Renzhi Hou, one of the founding fathers of and pioneering researchers in the modern historical geography of China. His collected papers and speeches, spanning from the 1940s to the 1990s, serve as a window into Hou’s academic experience as well as the development of the historical geography of China during the second half of the 20th century. Dr. Hou has made his greatest contributions mainly in two areas, namely, urban historical geography and desert historical geography. Roughly a quarter of this book is devoted to the former, and above all to the study of Beijing’s historical geography and its influence on urban planning. It is worth noting that “From Beijing to Washington—A Contemplation on the Concept of Municipal Planning,” presented here, is the only historical geography-based comparative study of a Chinese city and a Western one by a Chinese scholar. Dr. Hou’s studies on desert historical geography have garnered him a prominent reputation in the natural sciences academia. “Ancient City Ruins in the Deserts of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China,” also included here, can be considered a masterwork. Moreover, many of his original thoughts on some interesting topics can also be found in this book, such as the communication between China and Africa in ancient times, and the rediscovery of the value of geographical classics in the modern context.