Mr. Zoller's Podcast on the Geography of China

Greeting students and welcome to this edition of mister Zoller's social studies podcast. On today's edition, we're going to be talking a little bit about the geography of China. And when talking about Chinese geography, the most important question to ask is where in the world is China? Well, look at this map and identify the location of China. China is located in eastern Asia. Now, let me pause for a second because when we go through these podcasts, I want to give you a pointer here on how you can use them best. If you want to take any of this information and write it down in your notes, all you need to do is pause the podcast, record the information, for example, in this case, the location of China, and then when you're ready, simply unpause the video and will go on. Let's try that right now. Go ahead and pause the video. And we're back, all right. Now that we've talked about the location of China, let's see if we can understand exactly why that location is so important. There are two important geographic factors that limited China's contact with outsiders. One example of this would be long distances, quite simply, because of China's location in eastern Asia, they were just simply very far away from other contemporary civilizations in the world at that time. But there's another geographic factor at work here as well. And that is natural barriers. China is surrounded by a series of imposing natural barriers that makes it very difficult for people to come into or out of China. Let me give you some examples of what I'm talking about. The first natural barrier that I want to talk about is the Tibetan plateau. Go ahead and write that down. Now, in order to understand why the Tibetan plateau is such an imposing barrier, we first need to make sure that we understand exactly what a plateau is. Do you remember your geographic terms? A plateau is a mostly level, expanse of land that is at a very high elevation. Let me give you a photo of what I'm talking about. This is the city of Lhasa, which is the capital city of Tibet. But what I want you to notice here in the background is that we do have mountains. We do have some elevation within the plateau. A plateau itself is not necessarily entirely flat. They'll still be peaks and valleys, but what I want you to understand is the entire landscape itself is raised to a very high elevation. That's why plateaus can be challenging natural barriers to cross. Let me give you another example of a natural barrier. We also see the Himalayan mountains forming part of the natural border of China. Now, when we're talking about the Himalayan mountains, then you've got to remember that that is the largest mountain range in the world. Take a look at a photo here of one of these particular mountains. By the way, do you have an idea of exactly what mountain we must be looking at here? That's right. That is a picture of Mount Everest, all 29,000 plus feet of Mount Everest. So that gives you a good idea of exactly how challenging it would be to try to enter China by crossing over the Himalayan mountains. Here's another imposing natural barrier. The Gobi desert forms part of the natural border of China between China and what is today Mongolia. Now, why is the Gobi desert such an imposing natural barrier? Well, what you have to remember is even though it's relatively flat like we see in this picture. Deserts are areas that get very little rainfall. In fact, they get less than ten inches of rain per year. What that means is there's not going to be a lot of available sources of water, not a lot of rivers or streams, not a lot of natural rain pools that collect, so it's going to be difficult to cross over this desert. Certainly for a small group, but especially for a large army to try to enter China from that direction. The last natural barrier that I want to talk to you about today is a natural barrier to the east. And if you look at the map, you can tell that we have the Pacific Ocean then located to the east as well. All right, so let's pause for a second. And look at this from a different perspective. Specifically, what we're doing is looking down on Asia. This is a composite satellite map of Asia. So we've got China over here down here in the corner. That's the beginning of the Peninsula of India that we see. And what I'd like to do is see if, based on what we have discussed, if you can identify these various natural barriers here of China. Well, let's start with our first one. Take a look at the color, first of all, that'll give you a clue. Notice we don't see the deep greens like what we see in some of the regions in eastern China. We don't see a lot of speckling or anything indicating that probably that terrain is relatively flat. If you guessed that this was the Gobi desert, you would be correct. Now look down here to the southwest, what you'll see there is kind of a line and on one side you see some more browns on the other. You see some deeper greens, but right along that ridge there you notice that we have some speckling of white. Well, that white that we're looking at is actually snow. So this natural barrier is, that's right. You guessed it, these are the Himalayan mountains. That snow on the top of those mountains that we can see, even in this satellite image, which is pretty neat. Now look at this natural barrier. Here you notice that we've got a little bit more rugged landscape, some variation in the color, tells us that. So this is the Tibetan plateau. Now, of course, to the east, we have the Pacific Ocean, but what I'd like you to really focus on is these three natural barriers to the west. If you line those up, you'll notice that we create essentially a natural wall, and that natural wall is going to make it very difficult for people to come into China or to leave China. Now, let's stop and talk about the effects of that. How do you suppose this geography is going to influence the way that China develops? You probably could be able to identify that this is really a mixed effect. There are some ways that this geography will help China. But there are also some ways that it will hurt China. I want to see if you can identify some examples of this. So why don't you go ahead and pause the video and write down your answers to this question. Then when you're ready, unpause the video and we'll talk about what you've decided. All right, let's see what you were able to come up with. First of all, how did these natural bears help China in their development? Probably, you said something along the lines of there would be fewer invasions of China. If you take the Gobi desert, for example, it's already difficult to cross the Gobi desert as it is. But can you imagine trying to march an entire army across the Gobi desert with no sources of water? The same thing certainly would be true of the Himalayan mountains. It's going to be very difficult. We're going to see very few examples of armies coming in from outside China and attempting to conquer them. So that certainly is helpful to China. It's going to allow them to develop unopposed so to speak. But how do you suppose we might see some negative effects coming out of these natural bears? Well, you probably said something along the lines of. There would be less trade. If it's difficult for armies to come in and out, it's going to be difficult for merchants to come in and out. But let's pause here for a second because I want to make sure that we understand exactly what it is that we're discussing. Is it reasonable for us to say that long distances prevented all trade between China and other ancient civilizations? Of course not. It's not going to prevent all trade. But what we might say is it's going to make trade more difficult. We're going to see it be more difficult for merchants to bring goods in and out of China. It's going to be difficult for ideas to travel in and out of China. As a result of these natural barriers. All right, let's switch gears and talk a little bit about the rivers of China. There are two rivers that I'm going to want you to know. One is called the hwang hi river, and the other is called the Yangtze River. Now, what we see happening in China is a tendency by these rivers to flood, and that does two different things. On the one hand, it deposits fertile soil on the land around it after it floods. But, of course, there's the destruction that's caused by the floods. So what we see here is, again, a mixed effect from these geographic features. Does this sound familiar to you by the way? Does this sound like any other civilization that you've studied before? Now, you might come up with several different examples. But probably the most famous example that we know of of a river that floods, but as a result of the flood allows the civilization to exist there would be. How about Egypt? Let's look at another satellite image. Here's a satellite image looking down on Egypt, and you can clearly see the location of the Nile River, because along the Nile River we see green area, that's area that's been irrigated by the waters of the Nile River. And that farming wouldn't be there. If it wasn't for the now river, how do I know that? Well, look at the area that surrounds the Nile River. Around it always see is vast open desert. But near the Nile River, we see lush green farmland. We see something similar happening in China as well. Let's go back to China and talk a little bit about the Huang he river, which has a very ominous nickname. It is sometimes called the river of sorrows. Now, where do you suppose it's going to get a name like the river of sorrows? Well, of course, that comes from the destructive flooding. When it floods, it levels crops and houses, so then you might ask, well, then why would people continue to live near this river? Why wouldn't they live farther away from the river so that they didn't experience all these negative effects? Well, the reason is because by living near the river, they can take advantage of the fertile soil that's deposited. There are a lot of crops like, for example, rice that thrive in this sort of environment. So let's talk about that fertile soil for a second. There is a name for this yellow soil that blows off of areas like the Gobi desert. It gets picked up into the waters of the river, and then when the rivers flood, and then they recede again afterwards, they leave behind this yellow soil. This is known as Lois. Go ahead and write that down. Lois is at yellow soil that is brought by the floods, and this is why we see these farmers continuing to live on the banks of these rivers. Well, that's it for today's podcast. I hope you have enjoyed it. And keep studying the social studies.