Chinese climatic history is colored with desertification. Desertification is the transformation of arable or habitable land to desert, by means of a change in climate or destructive land use.1 China is covered by deserts, however this becomes problematic during times of drought and aridity as the deserts expand and threaten local populations. The Gobi desert is the most threatening to Beijing, the capital of China.
A study of desertification illustrates Beijing and China ’s weather, climate, and society of both the past and the present. Chinese climatic history of desertification should be taken as both a guide and a warning to scientists and policy makers concerned about current climatic conditions in Beijing.
Several documented events in Chinese history hint that increasing aridity and drought associated with desertification presented problems to ancient peoples. In 1500 BC the ancient Chinese Yang-shao and Lung-shan cultures were overwhelmed by horse-riding people, invading from central Asia, a presumable signal of an early stage of increasing aridity and/or colder winters.3 A climate like the present one in China fostered great droughts around 1100 BC. This time marked a retraction of bamboo lines and disappearance of papyrus reeds hinting at a drying trend in climate.4 An analysis of trade and migrations can also be used as an indication that drought and desertification occurred and forced people from their place of origin. From 150 BC until AD 300, the Great Silk Road extended across Asia and acted as a mechanism for trade in luxuries from China.5 The Silk Road served as an avenue of cultural exposure and integration: introducing new languages, religions (Buddhism and Confucism), and commodities between the east and ...
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...ngs and fences), chemical methods (bonding agents added to loose shifting sand to form a nonerodible crust), and land management practices.16 180,000 people living near Beijing will be forced to relocate, not because of immediate desertification danger, but to make room to implement these desertification stalling methods.17
Desertification has consistently haunted Chinese climatic history. However, recent evidence suggests that the Chinese might have a little more on their hands than the global climate change experienced by generations before them. While global warming and climate change are a world concern, the Chinese have an invested interest in combating the desert destruction of their capital city. If these methods prove futile and anthropogenic forces accelerate desertification, then Beijing could be the first victim in the battle against global warming.
To begin, around 4000 B.C.E., China’s biggest seller was Silk. In fact, that’s mostly why the Silk Road was built! Everyone wanted some of China’s beautiful silk. In India, everyone traveled for spices as Christopher Columbus...attempted. But that was in the 1400’s. Around 50 C.E., the Kushan Empire started to take over these countries and the road after the Han Empire was overthrown. In the Background Essay, it says “Starting in 50 CE, another Asian Empire took shape and began profiting
One reason for China’s water shortage is the climate change. In the past years many parts of China haven’t have enough rainfall and the sun is absorbing the sun (doc A) . Rivers are drying up according to Doc. A1. According to a 2006 report that
There is a great art that can be found in being able to describe the world of an ancient civilization. Especially in one where large man made walls form because of the creases of a sleeping dragon’s back, or that the layout of the fields and streams of a small village create the image of a galloping unicorn when looked from up above. Yet, this is Imperial China, or as Barry Hughhart writes in his Novel Bridge of Birds, “an Ancient China that Never Was” (Hughhart 1984). This novel explores the history and the world of Ancient China, and the tales of the people who have walked across the land. Offering a summary of the book, we will be able to analyze
In Southern China, the Yangzi River provides transportation and irrigation throughout China. The Yangzi River, also referred to as “China’s blessing,” rarely floods and creates a warm, long growing season. The land around the river is lush and ideal conditions to grow vegetables, fruits, and grains. In contrast, the Yellow River of the North is essentially opposite. The river is often referred to as “China’s sorrow.” The weather is cold and dry and it leads to harsh seasons with drought, flooding, and frost.
Doc 2-Source: Zhi Dun, Chinese scholar, author, and confidant of Chinese aristocrats and high officials during the period when northern China was invaded by central Asian steppe nomads, circa 350 C.E.
The negative circumstances surrounding China in the 19th century were critical in driving masses out of the country. For one thing, China is no stranger to droughts, in fact “The four famines of 1810, 1811, 1846 & 1849 are reported to have killed no fewer than 45 million people in China over a 39-year period” (Barnes, 2011). The droughts across parts of the mainland during the 1840’s had left farmlands badly infertile and arid. Lack of rain caused provinces such as Guangxi and Henen to suffer crippling famines, leaving many malnourished and/or dead. The unpreparedness ...
In order to understand why China is in such environmental difficulties we need to understand why the lifestyles of people in Europe and the US could be to blame. The first area to consider is the environmental issues that China is currently suffering with. Once this is established I can assert what impact the US and Europe has in relation to these issues and what actually causes them. In linking the events it will be easier to see the chain of events. To do this I am going to work backwards and understand the issues that exist within China and then secondly what they are a result of. This will give me the background of why China’s environmental issues have become so dire.
as an effect of the great migration out of Africa. The neighborhood of the Yellow River gave birth to two Neolithic societies known as the Yangshao and the Longshan cultures. In addition, similar communities began to appear in the Yangtze valley, but was based on rice rather than dry crops. The Yellow and Yangtze Rivers are considered the core regions in the development of Chinese civilization as they spread to other lowland areas. With China’s 12 percent of total land area arable, much of the remainder consists of mountains and deserts that ring the country north and west. The geographical barriers served to isolate China from advanced agrarian societies. When China was unified with capable rulers, it kept the nomadic intruders at bay. But in times of internal weakness, China was vulnerable to attack from the north, and sometimes nomadic people succeeded in overthrowing native Chinese rulers. The other directions of China was little to fear. The east laid the China Sea and a lair for pirates, but was not a source of concern. The south was a hilly region inhabited by a mixture of varied
Between 1644 and 1911 China was in a new dynasty called the Qing Dynasty, during the Qing Dynasty many new foreigners migrated into China, to trade their merchandise with the chinese. This had great influence on the chinese people and culture, which lead to a number of events occurring during this period. For so long China was isolated, and that was because: in the East; laid the vast Pacific ocean, South; lay mountain ranges and dense jungles, North; laid the cold yet piercing sun of the Gobi desert, and in the West; the rough and jagged mountains of the Tibetan Plateau. Having this isolation was a benefit to the chinese people, it gave them more arable land and resources, along with new materials and more population growth expansion (R darlington,
Dry lands is a previous stage into what can develop the atrocity of desertification. These plains of ground lack moisture. These areas lose it either to evaporation or by transpiration of plants. Generally the land that is considered dry lands is still used by primitive technologies within herding and farming. This weak land is put on even l...
The Chinese and the pastoral people had an unsettled relationship, due to both parties greed of China’s nourished land and wealth. When the Chinese rulers were kind and did not bother the nomadic people, there was a sign of peace through and a slight Chinese government power over the frontier people. However, there were various times when China was under, “internal weakness,”(pg.81) and the Chinese administrators invaded the pastorals people, yet the nomadic people’s astonishingly advanced war tactics aided in the overthrown of several Chinese Rulers. This relationship was comparable to North Africa and Western Asia, because China was not located near any advanced societies. “China was separated from the other civilizations [North Africa and
This investigation attempts to analyze the Silk Road’s impact on cultural diffusion. The Silk Road was a trade route connecting Eastern China to the Mediterranean regions. It was incredibly important because it brought Europe, Asia, and the Middle East together in trade, and allowed them to trade goods and ideas. The parameters are the cultural diffusion east meets west and the spread of religion. It will focus on the time period between the 2nd and the late 17th centuries and the places investigated will be the west, (made up of Europe and the Middle-East) and the east (which refers to most of Asia, although in this investigation it will focus mostly on China). This will be accomplished through a thorough examination of historical books such as Horizon Book Division’s History of China, John S. Bowman’s Exploration in the World of the Ancients, and Daniel Waugh’s “THE SILK ROADS IN HISTORY”.
Early on we see the emergence of civilization in China, where relatively isolated within geographical barriers, China’s early civilization developed with little contact with other cultures. During the Neolithic period, peoples living in environmentally distinctive zones—the Yellow and Yangzi River Valleys—mastered agriculture, animals became domesticated, the production of ceramics became more elaborate, built fortified towns, and developed better practice relating to the treatment of the dead. Later on during the Shang Dynasty, (ca. 1500–ca. 1050 B.C.E.), China entered the Bronze Age. Shang civilization was urban, its cities encompassing an aristocratic and religious core around which grew industrial and residential districts. Beyond these were farming settlements. The Shang practiced human sacrifice, and human remains compose some of the contents of the rich underground tombs. The Shang period saw the emergence of writing, the distinct logographic system that enabled centuries of cultural continuity.
Urbanization (or urbanisation) is the increasing number of people that live in urban areas. Urbanization has been the result of economic growth for most countries. In fact, every developed nation in the world has gone through urbanization and this is no news to Chinese leaders. To turn the nation of China from being a developing nation to a developed nation, China encouraged the migration of citizens from the countryside to move to large cities and fuel the industrializing nation. Though urbanization has been a process many countries have gone through, China’s urbanization plans are very distinct compared to western examples. The main reason for China’s urbanization distinctions is its sheer magnitude and pace. In this paper, we will review this mass migration, the economic growth, China’s environmental concerns (specifically air pollution) due the urbanization and the focus on industrialization, and we will briefly see China’s newest seven year urbanization plan.
World Ecology Repert (Spring 2009), SPECIAL FOCUS: Desertification: Its Effects on People and Land http://worldinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/library/wer/english/2009_Spring_Vol_XXI_no_1.pdf