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The earliest and longest man-made canal in the world is the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. The canal was first built in the 5th century BC and was substantially extended twice during the Sui and Yuan dynasties. The canal begins at Tongxian County in Beijing in the north and ends in Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province in the south and has a length of 1,794 kilometers and a drainage area of 4,583 square meters, with 24 locks and some 60 bridges.
The Grand Canal flows past Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang and links five major rivers — the Haihe River,Yellow River, Huaihe River, Yangtze River and Qiantangjiang River.The Grand Canal of China is the world’s oldest and longest canal, far surpassing the next two grand canals of the world: Suez and Panama Canal.
canal . Yellow River
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The largest public square in the world is Tian’anmen Square in Beijing. It covers an area of 40 hectares.
The Tian’anmen Square found in the center of Beijing boasts the largest of its kind in the world. Over a hundred years, many ceremonies and demonstrations have been held here.
The grand of Tian’anmen Gate (Heavenly Peace Gate) is a national symbol with the Great Hall of the People on the western side and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution and the Museum of Chinese History to its east and west.
The Monument to the People’s Heroes — the 36 meters high obelisk made of Qingdao granite, dominates the center of the square. The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall and the Qianmen gate, sit in the south.
People's Heroes . Tian'anmen
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The biggest and earliest encyclopedia in the world is theYongle Encyclopedia(Yongle Da Dianin Chinese), complied between 1403 and 1408 in the Ming Dynasty by more than 2,000 scholars. It consists of 22,937 volumes.
Yongle is thereign name of the Ming emperor Yongle (1402-1424). The original edition of this large work was comprised of 917,480 pages — in 11,095 bound books divided into 22,937 volumes. Produced by a commission of over two thousand scholars in 1408, it purported to record all knowledge of the Confucian canon, Buddhism, history, philosophy, astronomy, geography, medicine, and the arts. Although a printed edition was intended, multiple production of such a massive text proved prohibitive. Instead, one manuscript copy was made in 1567.
Later, the original book was lost. Some say it was buried with the Ming emperor. Then, during the Boxer Rebellion (the Siege of Peking) in 1900, the Han-Lin Academy, where the copy had been housed since the late Ming Dynasty, was set on fire. TheYongle Encyclopedia– along with the library–was almost entirely destroyed. It is estimated that only about 400 books remain in the world, in eight different countries and regions.
encyclopedia . scholar
