Preface xiii
forested steppe lands of Siberia in the far north, the forested mountains
of Manchuria in the northeast, and the arid fl at grasslands of Mongolia
in the north. To the west lie the barren stretches of the Gobi and Takla
Makan deserts, and to the southwest the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, with
the world’s highest mountain peaks. To the east the long coastline, with
few natural deep harbors, has provided another natural barrier against
potential external threats for much of the past three millennia. These
peripheral regions of ocean, arid steppes, deserts, and mountains were
natural barriers that helped the Chinese maintain relative political and
cultural continuity over three millennia.
The geographical setting of China helped facilitate political unity by
limiting external threats from beyond China’s borders and by allowing
greater ease of communication and transportation within China proper
than with the outside world. Throughout China’s history, the peripheral
areas have been relatively poor and sparsely populated. Until recently,
for example, only 5 percent of the People’s Republic of China’s popula-
tion lived in these regions. Yet, as will become clear below, these periph-
eral regions have also been steady conduits of products, customs, and
peoples into the Chinese political and cultural realm. Thus, geography
has deeply infl uenced both the remarkable continuity and the profound
changes in Chinese life over the past 3,000 years.
Within China proper, or what we might call Inner China, two great
river systems—the Yellow River in the north, the Yangzi River in cen-
tral China—wind their way from west to east, draining water from the
Himalayan range and from the other mountains that separate the rivers
into the Pacifi c Ocean. Both rivers have been key factors in the develop-
ment of Chinese civilization.
The Yellow River of north China is so called because it carries enor-
mous quantities of yellowish silt, the fi ne-grained loess soil that covers
most of the north China plain. Blown eastward from the Gobi Desert
over many millennia, and also deposited far and wide by frequent fl ood-
ing, this “Yellow Earth” (sometimes a metaphor for China itself) covers
some parts of north China to a depth of 80 meters (280 feet). Its natural
fertility helped facilitate the early development of agriculture and the
growing of wheat and millet along the Yellow River around 5000 bce.
Because North China is relatively dry (the Himalayas cutting it off from
the monsoon rains of South and Southeast Asia), the Yellow River has
remained too shallow in many places to serve as an effective shipping
route. In the semiarid climate of North China, the Yellow River has
been a key source of water for settled agriculture over the past four
thousand years.