Читать книгу Children of China онлайн

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Now we must talk of China as it is to-day. The country in which Chinese children live is a land of hills and plains, covered with cities, villages and temples. You can imagine how big it is when you remember that Szechuan, which is but one of its eighteen provinces, is larger than Great Britain and Ireland.

How China grew into a great empire is one of the most wonderful stories of the world. Its people are said to have come from the west, across the middle of Asia, settling at length in what is now the province of Shansi, just where the Yellow River bends sharply eastwards. Small at first and surrounded by savages, the baby kingdom soon began to grow. Like the tiny tent of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, which unfolded until an army could rest beneath the roof, China spread until, a thousand years before the time of Our Lord, its borders on the north and west were pretty much what they are to-day, and it had crept southwards many miles beyond the Yellow River. The nation went on growing, drawing other tribes and peoples into itself, until, not long after King Alfred’s time, the mother kingdom, without counting its subject countries, was fifteen times as large as Great Britain.