History
Further information: History of the political divisions of ChinaZhou were first mentioned in ancient Chinese texts, notably the "Tribute of Yu" (禹貢, Yǔ Gòng) section of the Classic of History. All agreed on the division of China into nine zhou, though they differed on their names and position. These zhou were geographical concepts, not administrative entities.
The Han Dynasty was the first to formalize the zhou into actual administrative divisions by establishing 13 zhou all across China. Because these zhou were the largest divisions of the China at the time, they are usually translated as "provinces". After the Han Dynasty, however, the number of zhou began to increase. By the time of the Sui Dynasty, there were over a hundred zhou all across China.
The Sui and Tang dynasties merged zhou with the next level down, the commanderies (郡, pinyin: jùn). The Tang also added another level on top: the circuit. Henceforth, zhou were lowered to second-level status, and the word becomes translated into English as "prefecture". Thereafter, zhou continued to survive as second- or third-level political divisions until the Qing Dynasty.
The Republic of China abolished zhou altogether, leaving the word only in the names of cities such as Guangzhou and Hangzhou. The People's Republic of China recycled the name, using it to refer to the autonomous prefectures granted to various ethnicities.
Read more about this topic: Zhou (country Subdivision)
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“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)