North China Plain
Historical significance

The geography of the North China Plain has had profound cultural and political implications. Unlike areas to the south of the Yangtze, the plain generally runs uninterrupted by mountains and has far fewer rivers. As a result, communication by horse is rapid within the plain, and the spoken language of the plain is relatively uniform, in contrast to the plethora of languages and dialects in southern China. In addition the possibility of rapid communication has meant that the political center of China has tended to be located here.

Because the fertile soil of the North China Plain gradually merges with the steppes and deserts of Dzungaria, Inner Mongolia, and Northeast China, the plain has been prone to invasion from nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes originating from those regions, prompting the construction of the Great Wall of China. Although the soil of the North China Plain is fertile, the weather is unpredictable, being at the intersection of humid winds from the Pacific and dry winds from the interior of the Asian continent. This makes the plain prone to both floods and drought. Moreover, the flatness of the plain promotes massive flooding when river works are damaged. Many historians have proposed that these factors have encouraged the development of a centralized Chinese state to manage granaries, maintain hydraulic works, and administer fortifications against the steppe peoples. (The " hydraulic society " school holds that early states developed in the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Indus and Yellow Rivers due to the need to supervise large numbers of laborers to build irrigation canals and control floods.)

Philosophically, the North China Plain was also the birthplace of Confucius, the traditional patriarch of East Asian philosophy. Confucius lived and taught in the State of Lu from 551 to 479 BCE. His teachings, recorded in The Analects, eventually became the school of thought known as Confucianism. Tied to the Classical Chinese writing system, Confucianism swept throughout China and onto Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, heavily influencing their respective political, legal, and educational bureaucracies.
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