China by Harry Alverson Franck — Read

China is so large a country that what is true in the north is often not true at all in the south, nor perhaps even in what is called Central China, the basin of the Yang-tze Kiang. This "Son of the Sea," as its name means in English, cuts China in two much as the Mississippi does the United States. But instead of flowing from north to south, it flows from west to east. Rising among the lofty mountain ranges of Tibet, it runs clear across China proper to the Pacific Ocean. It is more than three thousand miles long, considerably longer than the Mississippi, and with its many branches it drains fully as much territory as our own greatest river.

Yet though most foreigners think so, the Yang-tze does not exactly divide northern from southern China. The real dividing-line is farther north, about at the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude. In crossing that invisible line on our way south by railway, either from Peking to Shanghai or from Peking to Hankow, six hundred miles up the Yang-tze, we shall see an almost sudden change in the life and realize how much difference is made by climate. There will be no more camels; no more "Peking carts" bumping along on wheels having sharpened spikes for tires; no more wide roads. We shall see narrow trails winding through the rice fields, wide enough only for men on foot or for wheelbarrows.