Brill’s Encyclopedia of China

With the founding of the Qin dynasty a centrally administered empire which was to exist for more than two millennia, until 1911, replaced the plurality of states of the Eastern Zhou. In 221 BCE the last rival in the power struggles between the states, the State of Qu, had been conquered by the Qin. Its ruler, King Zheng (259 - 210 BCE; reign: 247 - 210 BCE) took the title of huangdi, the conventionally used appellation for "emperor," and had himself proclaimed the "first emperor of the Qin" (Qin Shihuang). The reasons for the successful unification of the empire th…

Qingdao (Tsingtao) is a port city at the southern coast of the Shandong Peninsula. It occupies an area of 10,654 km2 (including the surrounding areas it administers). Its population in 1997 was 6.9 million (2006: 7.49 million). The actual city area has 2.2 million inhabitants on 1102 km2. Through the incorporation of the rural districts of Jimo, Jiaozhou, and Jiaonan in 1977, as well as Laixi and Pingdu in 1984, Qingdao expanded to its current size. The origins of Qingdao, today one of the rising coastal cities, lie in the German founding of the city in 1898 (Germany; l…

The Qing dynasty (1644-1911) was the last dynasty of the Chinese Empire, and the only one which has come into close contact with Europe. First this contact was established through Catholic missionaries and, after 1842, through diplomatic, economic, and cultural relations which were forced upon the empire by Europe. For this reason the Qing Empire has to a certain degree become the incarnation of "old" China in Western consciousness. Nevertheless, China under Manchu rule substantially differed in many ways from China under previous dynasties. The Jurchen tribes, who lived scatte…

Qing Xining 43 counties, 3 cities 5.48 million inhabitants 721,200 km2 8 inhabitants/km2 The province of Qinghai in northwestern China borders on Tibet in the south, Xinjiang in the northwest, Gansu in the northeast, and Sichuan in the east. Besides the capital Xining, Golmud, and Delingha are important cities. Qinghai covers the northeast of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a high-elevation region dotted with numerous lakes, mostly salty, and surrounded and subdivided by mountain chains, principally the Q…