Learning Chinese History and Geography

Mandarin 普通话
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While I’ve been trying to learn the language and become more culturally fluent – realized the other day how embarrassingly ignorant I was of Chinese geography and history. I found some resources that I like, and hope maybe the community might have some that are even better.

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Geoguessr has a map quiz game specific to the major provinces of China – not very comprehensive, and I wish it included the province capitol cities, but it definitely helped me learn the basic provinces and their layout.

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GatesOfKilikien channel on YouTube has an entire series of history videos covering the basics of the geographical forces that shaped China’s development, each dynasty, the history of the north, the south, the battles between, the Yellow river, the Yangtze, others, and the great canals, the wall, the Mongolian invasions. This is the early history, the first emperor included.

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Intro to Chinese Geography’s impact on History – some interesting tidbits such as (in a central area) Zuopingyi being right on the map and Youfufeng left on the map… so why is Zuo left and You right? Because in ancient history, Chinese maps had Nan (south) at the top!

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Xiangyang – one of the most important cities in ancient China – including holding up to the Mongols for years before falling allowing the onset of the Yuan (元朝, Yuáncháo) Dynasty. It featured the first use of counterweight trebuchets the Mongols brought from their conquests in Europe – and the Mongols would hold China until the Chinese successfully revolted and recaptured China, with the help of that same trebuchet technology which they called 回回炮 (Huíhuí pào) and 霹雳车 (Pīlì chē) bringing about the Ming Dynasty (明朝, Míngcháo) in 1368. There are numerous other videos covering other dynasties, I won’t list them all.

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Thank you so much for all these sharings. I didn’t know about this until you shared it here. It seems like you are very interested in Chinese history and culture. Are you learning about other Asian countries’ cultures as well, or just China?

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I’m starting with China as that’s my main language focus initially, but about once a week, I work on Hiragana, Hangul, and Vietnamese, so I eventually want to study at least most of Southeast Asia. I’d welcome any good resources, and will share any I come by! :lexthelion_face_teeth_smile:

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Thanks for sharing - my Chinese geography definitely needs improving! Will definitely take a look at these :sunglasses:

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Thanks for sharing.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong has free courses on Coursera.org. (There is a paying option, but that is only if you want to take the quizzes and earn a certificate.) A series of classes I’m taking now is covering the cultural history of China, starting with the Warring States (481-256 BCE). Here is the first course: Coursera | Online Courses & Credentials From Top Educators. Join for Free | Coursera

There are other courses from different universities as well: I’m taking a couple on Chinese medicine, and have some in queue covering literature, and Kungqu Opera, to name a couple.

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哟去啊！ 多谢！我会去看看。

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That’s very interesting thank you for sharing! Coursera has a lot of interesting courses

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Thanks for sharing! I will definitely look into this because I need to learn more about Chinese geography and history :sweat_smile:

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