From 3.54 million square kilometers in the Qin Dynasty, to 12.51 million square kilometers in the Tang Dynasty, to 21.22 million square kilometers in the Yuan Dynasty, to 12.84 million square kilometers in the Qing Dynasty, to 1141 square kilometers in the Republic of China, and finally to more than 9.6 million square kilometers today, it can be said that China's territory has been in constant flux in the long river of history.
As for why today's map is like a rooster, in fact, to be precise, what it looks like, only more people will form a subconscious mind.
In traditional Chinese culture, the "rooster" has both the auspicious meaning of the rooster singing the world white, and also takes into account the harmonic sound of "attack", why "attack"? It must be clear to those who know modern history, because to many people, japan's map today is like a bug, and for many reasons, people finally call the shape of the Chinese map a "rooster". Among them, the twists and turns, nature is self-evident.
Careful friends will find that China's territorial area decreased sharply after the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, and the root cause of the current situation cannot but mention the history of Russia.
As we all know, the former Soviet Union was finally formed after the Second World War, when the territory of the Soviet Union was about 22.4 million square kilometers, which was definitely the largest country in the world at that time, but how did its large territory come into being step by step?
In the second half of the 10th century, equivalent to the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty in China, a branch of the East Slavs, Kievan Rus' grew rapidly, and the Rus' prince Sviatoslav and his son Vladimir expanded their territory through conquest and established a powerful state.
However, in the 12th century, Kievan Rus' was destroyed during the western expedition to move its capital, and in 1223, it was occupied by the Mongol army and became part of the Golden Horde, which was indirectly ruled by Russian princes.
After the 14th century (quite the end of the Chinese Yuan and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty), the Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually became stronger, and Ivan III (reigned 1462-1505 AD) annexed all the lands of the East Slavs, and broke away from the rule of the Golden Horde, eventually establishing the Russian Empire.
It was not until the second half of the 16th century that Russia's territory expanded to the Volga region, and the fact of annexing eastern Ukraine and Kiev was not recognized by Poland until 1667, taking the area north of the Black Sea in 1775 and capturing Crimea in 1783. In the following decades, which began to expand into Asia, the present-day Far East and parts of Asia, Russia signed a series of unequal treaties with the Qing court, resulting in the loss of large areas of territory by the Qing government. In the end, the original "begonia leaf" also became the "rooster" today.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that the Chinese map "rooster" is not set in stone, and recently some people have proposed that China's map should be like a "torch", as to why they say so, I think it may be because they include the islands and reefs in the South China Sea that is more than three million square kilometers.
In fact, about what the map of China is like, it is not strictly stipulated by the relevant departments, the iron needs to be hard, the economic development is good, the military strength is strong, this is the most important, Napoleon also said that China is a sleeping lion, the poor and weak Qing Dynasty is not still bullied by others. Therefore, those things with empty heads and brains have no value at all, and we should not live proudly in the prophecies of others.
References: Treaty of Nebuchu, Treaty of Kyakhta, Treaty of Yaohun, Treaty of Beijing, Treaty of Ili