Longest river of China and Asia. The official name for the entire length of the river is Chang Jiang; the Yangtze refers to a 650 km/400 mi stretch of the river identified with the Yang Kingdom of the 10th century BC.
From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations The second half of the Eastern Zhou dynastic period witnessed emergence of about 170 city-states in north central China, ultimately reduced by war, conquest, and merger to fewer than ten, and then to one: Qin, which began the classical period of Imperial China.
The divine design of the empire—supposedly founded in 660 B.C. by the emperor Jimmu, a lineal descendant of the sun goddess and ancestor of the present emperor—was held as official dogma until 1945.
From The Columbia Encyclopedia Aborigines of Japan who may be descended from a Caucasoid people who once lived in N Asia. More powerful invaders from the Asian mainland gradually forced the Ainu to retreat to the northern islands of Japan and Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in what is now the Russian Far East.
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia Smallest of the four main islands of Japan, south of Honshu, east of Kyushu; area 18,800 sq km/7,250 sq mi; population (2000 est) 4,154,000.
Major river of India and Bangladesh; length 2,510 km/1,560 mi. It drains a fertile and densely populated basin, approximately a quarter of the total area of India, and is the most sacred river for Hindus.
