Explore "The Civilization of China" by Herbert A. Giles on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is a very common thing now-a-days to meet people who are going to / "China," which can be reached by the Siberian railway in fourteen or / fifteen days. This brings us at once to the question -- What is meant by / the term China?
Taken in its widest sense, the term includes Mongolia, Manchuria, / Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the Eighteen Provinces, the whole being / equivalent to an area of some five million square miles, that is, / considerably more than twice the size of the United States of America. / But for a study of manners and customs and modes of thought of the / Chinese people, we must confine ourselves to that portion of the whole / which is known to the Chinese as the "Eighteen Provinces," and to us as / China Proper. This portion of the empire occupies not quite two-fifths / of the whole, covering an area of somewhat more than a million and a / half square miles. Its chief landmarks may be roughly stated as Peking, / the capital, in the north; Canton, the great commercial centre, in the / south; Shanghai, on the east; and the Tibetan frontier on the west.