Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/24

themselves "Sons of Han" (Han-tsz), "men of Tang" (Tang-jin), or "people of the Great Pure Dynasty" (the Ta-tsing, now reigning), and more rarely designate the kingdom the "flowery Hia" (Hwa-hia). Perhaps the commonest term of all is Li-min, or "black-haired people." To the earnest student of China and the Chinese it seems not inappropriate that the country and its inhabitants should have more than an ordinary allowance of appellations, and that some of them should reflect the original might and culture of so remarkable a nation.

There is uncertainty also about the area and population; not merely because these have varied within large limits from age to age, but also because neither Chinese geodesy nor Chinese statistology is altogether trustworthy. The Empire proper consists of eighteen provinces, bounded on the east and south by the ocean, on the north by the vast desert of Gobi, and on the west by the mountains of Thibet and India. The area of these eighteen provinces—called by the Chinese Shih-pah-sung (eighteen provinces) or Chung-kwoh (middle country)—has been variously estimated at from one and one fourth to two millions of square miles, and the figure now regarded with most confidence is 1,336,841. For purposes of comparison China proper has been described as seven times the size of France, fifteen times that of the United Kingdom, and one-half that of Europe. The population which Chinese annals