Beijing Municipality

By: Kati Michelotti

Location

• The absolute location of Beijing is 39 degrees north and 116 degrees east.

• Beijing is south of Neimongol, north of Tianjin, east of Hebei and west of Liaoning. Overall, Beijing is in the northeastern area of China.

• The location of Beijing is important because in the area that it is, there is not too much rain but not too little so it’s good circumstances for agriculture which helps their economy that is currently lacking. Before their economy fell apart they were very wealthy because of their agriculture.

Place• Climate: The climate of Beijing is similar to ours, cold winters and semi-warm humid

summers. They can get anywhere from 100 to 500 mm of rain in one year which is an average amount and good for their crops. Some of the things that they grow are wheat, corn, potatoes, rice, peanuts, soybeans, cotton, silk, tobacco, pears, and grapes.

• Animals: Some of the animals that are commonly found in the wild there are various birds, other small animals including bats, hedgehogs, and rodents. Most people think that in China there are lots of tigers and panda bears but in reality there are very little and some species are going extinct.

• Human Characteristics: The population of Beijing is almost 18 billion people, the population density is about 888 people per square kilometer and most of them speak Mandarin Chinese.

• Customs: In Beijing the things are always improving and changing, some of their traditions have vanished or become way different than they originally were. They still celebrate the spring festival; they still get married and have those services the same way (weddings) for example: they carry the bride in on a sedan chair that is carried by two people. They have many dances such as the Dolly Dance, the Boat Dance, and the Lion Dance, also they decorate and celebrate things a lot with a lot of special streamers called Zhongfans.

PlaceIt is kind of like a ladder!

Place

• Government: Although it has its own government officials that were voted for or elected, Beijing is one of three municipalities in China that are completely under the control of the national government rather than the neighboring province Hebei. For administrative purposes, the urban and suburban parts of Beijing are divided into ten districts and the surrounding rural areas of the municipality are divided into eight counties. The People’s Congress of Beijing elect the officials of the executive branch.

• “Known as the Beijing People's Government, it consists of a mayor, several vice mayors, and the heads of various bureaus. Each district has its own mayor, and within each district some civic duties are assumed at the neighborhood level as well.”

• Economy: Usually Beijing has a very rich economy because of their crops but right now it is pretty poor. They are in a crisis for water and they don't have water for their crops, hardly enough for the citizens alone. They are in a pretty big economic crisis right now because they get most of their money for their crops.

Region

• Functional: Trade partners: Major trade partners include South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, they trade for coal because coal is used for energy. Some metropolitan cities that are close or even surrounding are: Peking, Shunyi, Langfang, Fangshan and there are many more but they just aren’t as commonly know as the ones listed above.

• Rivers: The largest canal in the world is located just south of Beijing, it's the Grand Canal, it runs 1794 km. The Choabai river drains the gullies of the Yanshan Mountains and then flows east. The Yongding river runs the TaiHang Mountains carrying gravel and even sometimes large boulders which block it's path causing it to change it's course, therefore the name of the river has been changed before.

• Perceptual: The citizens of Beijing seem to view themselves as very lucky to have what they have, and as I have previously learned they are very modest .They don't live above their means and they are very thankful for what this world have provided them with.

• Formal: They have 5 climate regions, cold-temperate zone, mid-temperate zone, warm-temperate zone, subtropical zone and a tropical zone. The whole area shares quite a bit of rainfall which has a huge impact on their agriculture.

Region

RegionTrading partners on a map.

Choabai River

Human Environment Interaction

• They have built many things such as; channels, moats and aqueducts to keep water from flooding the area.

• Currently there aren't any major rivers that flow right through the city, a long time ago architects managed to build the city around the rivers; but, there are a few little rivers that flow through the municipality such as the Yongding and the Chaobai.

• "More dams, diversion canals, pipelines and desalination plants may be technically feasible but they are economically and environmentally ruinous."

• There are now water laws being created so that high water-guzzling companies don’t waste a bunch of water that is immensely needed in other places.

• This is very important because if they didn’t step in and create these things to control the water then there would be lots of heavy floods killing Beijing’s population.

Human Environment Interaction

In December of 2007, they started running out of water which heavily harmed their crops and their economy, you can see the huge drop.

Movement

• Movement of people:People were never actually forced out of Beijing, but during the 2008 Olympics if you were demonstrating very poor sportsmanship then you were forced out of the playing arena.

• Movement of goods: Lots of their different recipes and ingredients came from various places around the world such as Mongolia. They transport their goods and manufactured goods by trucks and planes to get them to other places. When trading, they got a lot of ideas and ways of life from the Malaysians and the Koreans since they traded with them so often.

• Movement of ideas: The Chinese cuisine and recipes are referred to as a “melting pot” just like the United States. They say that because it all comes from different places but mixes into one individual thing. They got a lot of ideas and recipes from the different ancient families called Dynasties.

• The movement of ideas and goods are very important to Beijing because if they didn’t have all these different cultures mixed in, it wouldn’t be the interesting place that it is. Also, since their economy is really bad right now, other places can give them ideas on how to fix it. If they have communication with other places, then it just makes Beijing a whole lot better.

Movement• Ethnic groups: The Hais and Manchus were some of the first ethnic groups

that settled in Beijing. The Manchurians are very easy to distinguish, they are a tribe from the Tang Dynasty and they were united or created by a man named Nurachai in the late 1500's. They established what was called the Qing Dynasty; in their ethnic group the males were forced to shave the hair off of their foreheads and to wear long braided queues, many think of these people when they hear the word China. They had invented their own Altaic-based language and writing system in the late 1600's , but now most of them speak Mandarin Chinese.

Movement

A few interesting facts

• Beijing has been the country's capital for over eight hundred years, ever since the Yuan Dynasty.

• In 2008 the Olympic games took place in Beijing.• Beijing is the capitol of all of China!• In Beijing one of their most special things to raise is the Beijing Duck, which

is also the number one ranked thing to eat their.• Until 1980, Beijing was called Peking in English.• In 1993 their bid for the 2000 Olympics was denied because of too high

levels of pollution, which caused an immense clean up campaign.

Citation •

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Thanks for watching!