CHINA

HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS

• The Himalayas are among the youngest mountain ranges on the planet and consist mostly of metamorphic rock.
• The Himalayan range encompasses about 15,000 glaciers.
• The Himalayan region is dotted with hundreds of lakes.
• The Himalayas have a profound effect on the climate of the Indian subcontinent and the Tibetan plateau.
• In Hinduism, the Himalaya have also been personified as the god Himavat, the God of snow.

YELLOW RIVER

• The Yellow River or Huang He is the second-longest river in Asia, following the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest in the world.
• Prior to the advent of modern dams in China, the Yellow River was extremely prone to flooding.
• The Yellow River has been reckoned to have flooded 1,593 times.
• The source of the Yellow River is at 34° 29' 31.1" N, 96° 20' 24.6" E.
• The Yellow River is notable for the large amount of silt it carries.

YANGTZE RIVER

• The Yangtze River or Chang Jiang is the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world.
• It flows from the glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in Qinghai eastward across southwest, central and eastern China before emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghai.
• It is also one of the biggest rivers by discharge volume in the world.
• Its river basin is home to one-third of the PRC's population.
• Along with the Yellow River, the Yangtze is the most important river in the history, culture and economy of China.

GRAND CANAL

• The Grand Canal, also known as the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, is the longest canal or artificial river in the world.
• The oldest parts of the canal date back to the 5th century B.C.
• The total length of the Grand Canal is 1,104 mi.
• Historically, periodic flooding of the adjacent Yellow River threatened the safety and functioning of the canal.
• Though the canal nominally crosses the watersheds of five river systems, in reality the variation between these is so low that it has only a single summit section.

KUNLUN MOUNTAINS

• One of the longest mountain chains in Asia, extending more than 3,000 km.
• It forms the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau south of the Tarim Basin and the Gansu Corridor and continues east south of the Wei River to end at the North China Plain.
• It stretches along the southern edge of what is now called the Tarim Basin, the infamous Takla Makan or "sand-buried houses" desert, and the Gobi Desert.
• The mountain range formed at the northern edges of the Cimmerian Plate during its collision, in the Late Triassic, with Siberia, which resulted in the closing of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean.
• The range has very few roads and in its 3,000 km length is crossed by only two.