China and Olympic Games

In 1984 Chinese athletes earned 15 gold, 8 silver and 9 broze medals in the 23^rd Olympic Games. This is the first Olympic Games New China had attended. This Olympic Games has ended China’s history of never having won a gold medal in the Olympiad.

In 1996 Chinese athletes won 16 gold, 22 silver and 12 bronze medals at the 26^th Olympic Games held in Atlanta, ranking fourth in both gold medals and total medals, after the United States, Russia and Germany.

In 2008, China will be the host for Olympic Games.

China’s Mass Sports

China’s mass sports are carried on in schools among workers and staff members, peasants, the armed forces, the aged and the handicaped.

In 1995, The Chinese Government put forward the Plan for All People to Build Up Their Health with all the citizens as participants and youngsters and children as the mainstay so as to develop mass sports more widely and to improve people’s physical quality and helath level.

Sports activities are popular among workers and staff members. Workers and employees of industrial and commercial enterprises, government offices and other organizations have a fifteen minute break both in the morning and afternoon to do exercises or attend other sports.

Eight types of setting up exercises to radio music are offered, so that there is activity for everyone.

In many cities, the traditional sports, such as wushu (martial arts), taijiquan (shodow boxing) qigong (breathing exercise) and body building exercises are popular.

Particularly in the early morning, people are seen in parks and open spaces doing morning exercisex. Sports in China’s rural areas may reflect regional differences but participation is encouraged.

Traveling China by the rivers and lakes

Most of China’s rivers flow from west to eash into the Pacific Ocean except a few in southwest China that flow to the south. The rivers in China total 200,000 kilometers in length and more than 1,500 of them drain an area of 1,000 square kilometers or large each. The total flow of these rivers is 2,700 bilion cubic meters. This is the sama as the total flow of the rivers in Europe.

China’s largers rivers originate on the Qinghai Tibet Plateau and thus have a high drop. Therefore China is very rich in hydropower resouces, leading the world with 680 million kilowatss hydropower reserves.

The Yangtze River (Changjiang) is more than 6,000 kilometers long and become the largest river in China. It has a catchment area of 1,800,000 square kilometers and is the major inland river transport artery in China.

The Yelow River (Huanghe) is stretching over 5,464 kilometers. This is the China’s second largest. Its area covering 700,000 square kilometers and believed as the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilization and has a wealth of historic sites and relics, many of them buried underground.

China also has a famous man made waterway. The Grand Canal which is running from Beijing in the north to Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, in the south.

China has also many natural lakes, most of them scatterd in the Middle Lower Yangtze palins and the Qinghai Tibet Plateau. China’s largest freshwater lake is Lake Poyang with an area of 3,583 square kilometers and the largest salt lake is Lake Qinghai in the west with an area of 4,583 square kilometers.

Your destination: China’s mountain

China’s surface slopes down from west to east in a four step staircase. The top of the staircase is the Qinghai Tibet Plateau, with an average elevation of more than 4,000 meters and know as the roof of the world. The Qinghai Tibet Plateau is composed of rows of snow capped peaks and glaciers. The major mountain ranges are the Kunlun, Gangdise and Himalayas.

The second step consists of the Inner Mongolia, Loess and Yunnan Guizhou plateaus, and the Tarim, Junggar and Sichuan basins, on an altitude of 1,000 – 2,000 meters.

The third step, about 500 – 1,000 meters in elevation, begins at the line from the Greater Hinggan, Taihang, Wushan and Xuefeng mountain range eastward to the sea coast.

To the east of the third step the shallow waters of the continental shelf, an extension of the land into the ocean, form the fourth step of the staircase. The depth of the water here is less than 200 meters.

Great quantities of mud and sand have been carried here by the rivers.

China’s many mountains are well known throughout the world.