Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
rules over massive numbers of people without precedent in human
history.
These numbers and proportions, which may seem both astronomical
and abstract in their statistical forms, have real-world manifestations
and represent vast challenges and liabilities for China. China is in fact a
grossly overpopulated country, and its major cities team and overflow
with people, bicycles, taxis, and buses. The high population density
seems to have an adverse effect on courtesy and social manners. When
a city bus arrives at a stop, waiting throngs stampede and pack into it
like sardines. People waiting for an elevator crowd into it before those
alreadyinsidehavehadachancetogetout.TheChinesehaveno
concept of lining or queuing up in an orderly manner for any purchase
or service, and people who crowd and push the most aggressively and
obnoxiously are usually the first to obtain the service or item they wish
to purchase. Retail stores are cramped and narrow because space is
always at a premium. Traffic on city streets is unimaginably chaotic by
Western standards, and in some major cities electronic timer displays at
stoplights remind impatient taxi and bus drivers of how much time
remains before it is their turn to proceed. Municipal refuse removal
services are largely inadequate, and public garbage receptacles are few
and far between. Garbage and organic refuse litters the streets, and
parked bicycles, motorcycles, and crates of commercial goods clog the
sidewalks, making them all but impassable. In the hot and humid
summer months, the city air is filled with the odor of rotting refuse and
stagnant, polluted water in streetside ditches. No Western traveler to East
Asia can help but note that the filth and disorder of Chinese cities stands
in marked contrast with the cleanliness and order of cities in Japan.
Unfortunately, the scruffiness and litter of Chinese cities even seems to
characterize some of the Chinatowns in North America and Europe.
EARLY HISTORY
Earliest China: Xia and Shang, to 1122 B.C.
China is the world's oldest living civilization. Such an assertion may
seem startling at first, but it is true. The Sumerian and Egyptian civili-
zations are older, but they are now dead. The Chinese today are quite
justified in feeling a more direct and continuous connection with their
heritage than Europeans can claim from their Roman, Teutonic, Slavic,
Celtic, or Jewish pasts.
