Looking at the following topographic map of China, I will try to explain in one article the topography, river climate, historical evolution of China, and explain how China came to be.
China occupies almost the entire East Asian continent, and if Outer Mongolia does not become independent, China is equivalent to the East Asian continent. The western part of China is a vast mountain range and plateau. We can regard China's mountain ranges as three great dragon veins in the east-west direction: one is the Altai Mountains, Tianshan Mountains, Qilian Mountains, Helan Mountains, Great Khing'an Mountains, Outer Khing'an Mountains, and Xiaoxing'an Mountains-Changbai Mountains, the second is the Pamir Plateau-Kunlun Mountains, Altun Mountains, Qinling-Taihang Mountains, and the third is the Himalayas-Hengduan Mountains-Wushan Mountains-Xuefeng Mountains-Dabie Mountains-Wuyi Mountains-Nanling-Taiwan Mountains. Tens of millions of years ago, the Indian subcontinent moved to the Eurasian continent and was squeezed, and as a result, the ancient Mediterranean Sea was uplifted into the Tibetan Plateau, and the mountain plateau in western China was the product of this squeezing. The ancient Yangtze River and the ancient Yellow River originally emptied the ancient Mediterranean Sea from east to west, and then flowed into the Pacific Ocean from west to east.
The stepped topography of China is also a product of this great squeezing, and the Kunlun Mountains, Qilian Mountains, Altun Mountains, Hengduan Mountains, and Himalayas form the first stage of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, with an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters. Asia's major rivers originate from the Tibetan Plateau and flow down the river. The west of Daxinganling-Taihang Mountain-Wushan is the second stage, with an average altitude of more than 500 meters, mainly plateaus and basins, including Junggar Basin, Tarim Basin, Qaidam Basin, Sichuan Basin, Mongolian Plateau, Loess Plateau, Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. The third echelon is dominated by plains, which are the main gathering places of the Chinese population and economy today.
From the Tibetan Plateau, sediment from the upper reaches of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River and their tributaries accumulate downstream to form fertile plains.
Under the influence of the subtropical high pressure belt, the southeast monsoon from the Pacific Ocean carries warm and humid water vapor into China in summer and reaches the Qilian Mountains-Helan Mountains, forming a monsoon zone in eastern China; in winter, cold air from Siberia invades China from the northwest direction, carrying sand and dust to form dust storms and cold waves in northern China; in autumn, cyclones often form in the western Pacific Ocean and move towards the southeast coast of China due to uneven heating, bringing typhoon disasters and abundant precipitation.
The right climate and fertile plains prepared the way for civilization.
About 20,000 years ago, the ancestors of the East Asian race crossed the dense rainforests of Southeast Asia into Yunnan, and the group parted ways with their brothers and sisters in India about 50,000 years ago, who headed north into Central Asia to become the ancestors of today's white people. The hot and humid climate of southwest China is not conducive to human habitation, but there are still people from the tribe who are the ancestors of today's ethnic minorities in southwest China. The group that remained was left behind about 10,000 years ago and headed east into the Yangtze River valley and all the way to Zhejiang, where they learned to grow rice and built cities and civilization.
The rest of the tribe decided to continue north, and more than 10,000 years ago they came to the Qinghai and Gansu regions, where the rich pastures and countless cattle and sheep were located. About 7,000 years ago, due to the large population, a part of the tribe decided to go east in search of new places to live. So they walked and walked, through the narrow Hexi Corridor and the Guanzhong Plain, and they were greeted by the endless North China Plain, so they settled down happily. The aborigines of the North China Plain are a group of dwarf black people who arrived in China about 50,000 years ago, and our ancestors happily wiped out these alien races.
The vast fertile plains of North China made it no longer necessary for them to be nomadic, so they began to build houses, cultivate crops, and begin to explode in population and productivity. About 5,000 years ago, different tribes such as Xiqiang-Dongyi-Miaoman-Baiyue were formed on the land of China, and these tribes merged and fought with each other, and a unified sense of community began to emerge. About three or four thousand years ago, the most powerful tribes in the Central Plains began to dictate to the Quartet tribes in the name of China, and the Chinese culture began to take shape. After the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, and finally in the Qin and Han dynasties, China became a unified country.
It can be seen that East Asia (including Southeast Asia) in a broad sense is a complete geographical section
The relatively closed and isolated geography of East Asia has kept Chinese civilization safe from the invasion of foreign civilizations for a long time, and even if a foreign race conquers China, it can only be assimilated; China's vast plains have nourished a huge population, so that Chinese civilization has a huge size, and it has been on the verge of extinction several times before rising again.