China

rugged terrain, many small to medium-sized valleys. Plains along rivers and lakes. .
             Major rivers.
             The Yellow River (China's Sorrow, Cradle of Chinese civilization) .
             The Yangtze River.
             .
             People.
             .
             The Han Chinese.
             1. Some general characteristics.
             The Han Chinese today form the most important group. Their field of expansion extends over nearly fifteen million square kilometers (six million square miles). .
             amount to more than a billion and are the majority in the twenty-one provinces that form China proper. .
             Overseas Han Chinese consisting of large Chinese communities which have established themselves in most of the countries of South-East Asia (Indo-Chinese peninsula, Indonesia, and the Philippines), Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, etc. (See the table below). .
             Not a homogeneous whole. There is wide difference in the dialects they speak. Actually, between some dialects, there is more difference among them than some Indo-European languages, for example Spanish and Italian. .
             Why they are called dialects? .
             Chinese Romanization systems (Pinyin, Wade-Giles, Zhuyin Fuhao). .
             There is one relatively homogeneous block, the Northern dialects spoken by roughly 70% of the Han Chinese. .
             2. The Han population and the area they occupy.
             Han populations in East Asia outside of the People's Republic of China (1986) estimates).
             Countries/areas Population.
             Taiwan 19,400,000.
             Hong Kong 5,600,000.
             Macao 300,000.
             Singapore 1,800,000.
             Thailand 11,000,000.
             Malaysia 6,400,000.
             Indonesia 5,100,000.
             Vietnam 1,500,000.
             Total 51,200,000.
             .
             Comparative areas of some provinces with a Han majority and the countries of Europe (in square kilometers).
             Chinese provinces Area European countries.
             Szechwan 569,000 .
             550,800 France.
             504,900 Spain.
             Heilungkiang 463,600 .
             449,200 Sweden.
             Yunnan 436,200 .
             Kansu 366,000 .
             311,700 Poland.
             301,100 Italy.
             244,800 United Kingdom.
             243,400 Romania.
             Kwangtung 231,400 .
             .
             The Non-Han minorities.
             There are fifty-five non-Han minorities in China.