Jiangxi
Excerpts from Wikipedia.org
Jiangxi (江西; Postal map spelling: Kiangsi) is a southern province of the People's Republic of China, spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south.
The name of the province does not mean "west of the Yangtze" as a literal reading would imply, but originated as a contraction of "Jiangnan Xi" (江南西; "West Jiangnan", or more literally "the west of the south of the Yangtze"). The name was coined when Jiangnan ("south of the Yangtze") Circuit was split into western and eastern halves during the Tang Dynasty. The short name for Jiangxi is 赣, for the Gan River.
Jiangxi is landlocked and surrounded by six provinces. It borders Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to the northwest.
Geography
Mountains surround Jiangxi on three sides, with the Mufu Mountains, Jiuling Mountains, and Luoxiao Mountains on the west; Huaiyu Mountains and Wuyi Mountains on the east; and the Jiulian Mountains and Dayu Mountains in the south. The southern half of the province is hilly with ranges and valleys interspersed; while the northern half is flatter and lower in altitude. The highest point in Jiangxi is Mount Huanggang in the Wuyi Mountains, on the border with Fujian. It has an altitude of 2157 m.
The Gan River dominates the province, flowing through the entire length of the province from south to north. It enters Lake Poyang in the north, the largest freshwater lake of China; that lake in turn empties into the Yangtze River, which forms part of the northern border of Jiangxi. Important reservoirs include the Xiushui Tuolin Reservoir in the northwest of the province on the Xiushui River, and the Wan'an Reservoir in the upper section of the Gan.
Economy
Rice is the dominant crop in Jiangxi. Cash crops commonly grown include cotton and rapeseed.
Jiangxi is rich in mineral resources, leading the provinces of China in deposits of copper, tungsten, gold, silver, uranium, thorium, tantalum, niobium, among others. Noted centers of mining include Dexing (copper) and Dayu County (tungsten).
Jiangxi is a rather poor province when compared to its neighboring provinces. It is located in extreme proximity to some of the richest provinces of China (Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian), which are sometimes blamed for taking away talent and capital from Jiangxi.
Languages
Jiangxi is the main area of concentration of the Gan varieties of Chinese, spoken over most of the northern two-thirds of the province. Examples include the Nanchang dialect, Yichun dialect and Ji'an dialect. The southern one-third of the province speaks Hakka. There are also Mandarin, Huizhou, and Wu dialects spoken along the northern border.
Demographics
The population of Jiangxi is approximately 39.66 million. 99% of that is Han Chinese. Minorities include Hui and Zhuang. The Hakka, a Han Chinese people with their own distinctive identity, inhabit the southern parts of the province.
