Misplaced Pages

#835164

18-509: The Miyun Reservoir is the largest comprehensive water conservancy project in North China . The reservoir covers an area of 180 square kilometers, with a reservoir capacity of 4 billion cubic meters and an average depth of 30 meters, making it the largest and only source of drinking-water supply for Beijing, serving over 11 million people. The Miyun Reservoir is the largest artificial lake in Asia and

36-515: A peak in the 18th century in the Qinling Mountains. The region is home to the endemic Qinling panda ( Ailuropoda melanoleuca qinlingensis ), a brown-and-white subspecies of the giant panda ( A. melanoleuca ), which is protected with the help of the Changqing and Foping nature reserves . An estimated 250 to 280 pandas live in the region, which is thought to represent around one-fifth of

54-614: Is about 100 kilometers (62 mi) west of the ancient Chinese capital of Xi'an . Three culturally significant peaks in the range are Mount Hua (2,155 meters or 7,070 feet), Mount Li (1,302 meters or 4,272 feet), and Mount Maiji (1,742 meters or 5,715 feet). The environment of the Qin Mountains is a deciduous forest ecoregion . The Qin Mountains form the watershed of the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins; historically,

72-628: Is billed as the "Pearl in North China" (华北明珠). Construction of the Miyun Reservoir started on 1 September 1958 and was completed in September 1960. The chief designer of the project was Zhang Guangdou . The Miyun Reservoir was designed by the Department of Water Resources of Tsinghua University , with the participation of a large number of migrant workers from Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei , and

90-448: Is consequently somewhat impoverished in regard to fertility and species diversity. Furthermore, the mountains have also acted in the past as a natural defense against nomadic invasions from the north, as only four passes cross the mountains. In the late 1990s a railway tunnel and a spiral were completed, thereby easing travel across the range. The highest mountain in the range is Mount Taibai at 3,767 meters (12,359 ft), which

108-586: Is known from the Cishan culture in Hebei province , recovered as phytoliths from pits in stratigraphic sections. Sediments from the pits have radiocarbon dates from 8500 to 7500 BCE. Archaeological evidence of charred grains found in early Holocene layers in Hebei province at Nanzhuangtou and Cishan has led scholars to revise the earliest dates associated with millet by about two millennia. Millet sites are concentrated along

126-530: Is one of the largest amphibians in the world, and is critically endangered ; it is locally pursued for food, and for use of its body parts in traditional Chinese medicine . An environmental education program is being undertaken to encourage sustainable management of wild populations in the Qin Mountains, and captive-breeding programs have also been set up. According to the Nuclear Information Project, China "keeps most of its nuclear warheads at

144-583: The Nanshan ("Southern Mountains"), are a major east–west mountain range in southern Shaanxi Province, China. The mountains mark the divide between the drainage basins of the Yangtze and Yellow River systems, providing a natural boundary between North and South China and support a huge variety of plant and wildlife, some of which is found nowhere else on earth. To the north is the densely populated Wei River valley, an ancient center of Chinese civilization. To

162-689: The Yellow River to its north. Further north of the Yellow River lies the Gobi Desert and steppe lands that extend west across Eurasia . This region has long, harsh winters. It has relatively little in the way of water resources. Despite these challenges, some forms of agriculture have been successful in this region, especially animal husbandry , certainly of horse and camel, and possibly other types of animals. The crops Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica , both types of millet grain, are believed to be indigenous to northern China. Panicum miliaceum

180-428: The understory . The region is home to a large number of rare plants, of which around 3,000 have been documented. Plant and tree species native to the region include ginkgo ( Ginkgo biloba —thought to be one of the oldest species of tree in the world), as well as Huashan or Armand pine ( Pinus armandii ), Huashan shen ( Physochlaina infundibularis ), Acer miaotaiense and Chinese fir . Timber harvesting reached

198-562: The Engineering Bureau of the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power. Along the Miyun Reservoir, there is a 110-kilometer-long Huanku Road (环库公路). North China North China ( Chinese : 华北 ) is a region of the People's Republic of China . It consists of five provincial administrative regions, namely Beijing , Tianjin , Hebei , Shanxi , and Inner Mongolia . Part of

SECTION 10

#1732848764836

216-676: The People's Republic of China. Jin Chinese and Mongolian are also widely spoken due to the political and cultural history of the area. In prehistory, the region was home to the Yangshao and Longshan cultures . Peking Man was found near modern-day Beijing. The main agricultural lands of China lay in the area known as the Central Plain , an area located bordered by the Yangtze River to its south and

234-1114: The boundaries of the Loess and Mongolian Plateau , separated by a mountain chain from the Huabei plain and the Dongbei plain , North China's main alluvial plains , located to the west. Millet cultivation was similarly situated relative to the Qinling mountains at Dadiwan, and the Yitai mountains at Yuezhuang . Macrofossil evidence (charred grains of foxtail and broomcorn millet) has been recovered from Xinglonggou in Inner Mongolia , Xinle in Liaoning , Cishan in Hebei, and Dadiwan in Gansu , among other sites in Eastern and Central China. Qinling mountains The Qinling ( Chinese : 秦岭 ) or Qin Mountains , formerly known as

252-564: The entire wild giant panda population. The Qinling Mountains are also home to many other species of wildlife, including numerous birds , like the crested ibis , Temminck's tragopan , golden eagle , black throat and golden pheasants , as well as mammals like the Asiatic golden cat , Asiatic black bear , clouded leopard , golden takin , golden snub-nosed monkey , yellow-throated marten , and leopard . The Chinese giant salamander ( Andrias davidianus ), at 1.8 meters (5 ft 11 in),

270-810: The former was home to deciduous broadleaf forests, while the latter has milder winters with more rainfall, and was generally covered in warmer, temperate, evergreen broadleaf forests. Thus, the Qin Mountains are commonly used as the demarcation line between northern and southern China . The low-elevation forests of the Qin foothills are dominated by temperate deciduous trees, like oaks ( Quercus acutissima , Q. variabilis ), elm ( Ulmus spp.), common walnut ( Juglans regia ), maple ( Acer spp.), ash ( Fraxinus spp.) and Celtis spp. Evergreen species of these low-elevation forests include broadleaf chinquapins ( Castanopsis sclerophylla ), ring-cupped oaks ( Quercus glauca ), and conifers , like Pinus massoniana . At

288-519: The larger region of Northern China ( Beifang ), it lies north of the Qinling–Huaihe Line , with its heartland in the North China Plain . Most inhabitants here speak variants of Northern Chinese languages such as Mandarin , which includes Beijing dialect and its cousin variants. The Beijing dialect is largely the basis of Standard Chinese (or Standard Mandarin), the official language of

306-450: The middle elevations, conifers, like Pinus armandii , are mixed with broadleaf birch ( Betula spp.), oaks ( Quercus spp.), and hornbeams ( Carpinus spp.); from about 2,600 to 3,000 meters (8,500 to 9,800 ft), these mid-elevation forests give way to a subalpine forest of firs ( Abies fargesii , A. chensiensis ), Cunninghamia , and birch ( Betula spp.), with rhododendrons ( Rhododendron fastigiatum ) abundant in

324-515: The south is the Han River valley. To the west is the line of mountains along the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau . To the east are the lower Funiu and Dabie Mountains, which rise out of the coastal plain. The northern side of the range is prone to hot weather, the rain shadow cast by the physical barrier of the mountains dictating that the land to the north has a semi-arid climate, and

#835164