What is the Largest Province in China?

What is the largest province in China by area?  Daninbusiness pretty much hit the nail on the head in response to yesterday's geography quiz with both his answer and his cautious uncertainty about the terminology.  Thanks Dan.

When I asked this question yesterday my research opened a whole can of worms I didn't know about, and I found that to be fair, this is a trick question.  The answer lies in your understanding that not all parts of China are created equally.  I just finished taking a crash course in Chinese Political Geography 101, and I'm lending you my notes to copy.

Political Subdivisions of China

While in the U.S. all subdivisions are referred to as "states", China has actually divided its 'state-like' divisions into 4 different levels:

1. Provinces (ex: Sichuan, Shaanxi)
   
2. Autonomous Regions (ex: Xinjiang, Tibet)
   
3. Municipalities (ex: Beijing, Shanghai)
   
4. Special Administrative Regions or SAR's (ex: Hong Kong, Macau)

It could also be argued that there is a 5th, that of a "claimed territory" such as Taiwan, but since that's really the only one in that category I'll just leave that as a special classification.  Each of these divisions has minor differences in governmental setup, however all ultimately report to the central government in Beijing.

Provinces:  There are 22 different provinces that make up the majority of Chinese territory.  These are usually headed by what is known as a "secretary".  The largest of these is Qinghai (#4 on the left) covering a total of 721,000 km² (278,000 sq mi).

Autonomous Region:  There are 5 Autonomous regions in China designated as such because of the large population of a particular minority group.  While they retain the right to appoint their own minority governor, the head of this region is the Party Secretary who is always Han Chinese.  Xinjiang (#1 on the top left) is the largest Autonomous Region covering 1,660,001 km² (640,930 sq mi).

Municipalities:  A Municipality is basically a huge city that has the same rights as provinces.  These areas usually cover an area much larger than the actual city and are governed by a mayor.  The largest municipality is Chongqing (#3 dead center) with an area of 82,300 km2 (31,776.2 sq mi) which, by the way, is bigger than the smallest province of Hainan.

Special Administrative Regions:  There are only two SAR's: Hong Kong and Macau. They're basically a self-governing nation that report directly to the central government on all issues of foreign policy or national defense, among other things.  The largest of the two is Hong Kong.

 
So Really, What is the Largest Province?

Now that I have an understanding of the political divisions of China, it will be much easier to answer the question I asked at the beginning.  I've already found out that Qinghai is the largest actual province in China, but I think it goes without saying that most people outside of China (and many inside as well) won't recognize or understand these political subdivisions.  Therefore, the best way to answer the question would be to restate it:

What is the biggest (political) subdivision of China?

The answer to that, of course, is Xinjiang.

China Geography Quiz

Here's a quick quick geography question for anybody who thinks they know China.  I actually had a disagreement with somebody about this and we both had to do some research to find out the answer. Think about it, maybe do some research if you have time, and then leave your answer in the comments.

What is the largest province by area in China?
 

Movie Fun Trivia Game: The Answers

Thanks to everybody who participated in the Movie Fun trivia game! I got a few people who told me it was just too hard, and I agree it was difficult - but welcome to our world. The art of translating whatever a Chinese person has attempted to say can become such a task that it has earned its own language category - "Chinglish". I'm not making fun of them, though...I know my Chinese sounds much worse to them.

So here are your answers:

1. Love at 1st Sight - 50 times 50 First Dates

2. The King of Big Talking Liar, Liar

3. The Politics of a Beautiful Woman Relating to the Law Legally Blonde

4. Rough-looking Queen Miss Congeniality (difficult, I know)

5. Carribean Sea Thieves Pirates of the Carribean

6. Scary Creature Company Monsters Inc.

7. The Man-made Public Enemy iRobot (the key is "man-made")

8. Searching the Seabed Finding Nemo

9. The Fake God Bruce Almighty

10. Man Now Understands 100% What Women Want

Movie Fun: Translation Game

We've been focusing so much on the earthquake lately that we thought we'd take a moment in between blogs to have some fun. We had a friend and his family over last night and had a very nice dinner followed by much conversation. My conversation with the husband was centered on the topic of movies and it was quite an adventure in translation. While talking about some of our favorite movies he told me about one he called "Sky Prisoner", a movie he was convinced was popular in the US. I couldn't for the life of me figure out which movie he was talking about. After a lengthy discussion of the the main actors (Nicolas Cage) and the plot premise (a group of convicts is transported by airplane which eventually crashes in Las Vegas) we realized that the movie he was describing was actually "Con Air". Con, short for convict, was translated as "prisoner" and "air" was translated to "sky". Now I've never seen the movie personally, but it did get me to thinking about how movie titles are translated here in Chinese.

Upon further research I found the translated titles to be quite funny and thought we'd share some of them. Here's the game: I'll put the direct translations of the movies below and you can submit your answers as comments or e-mails. We'll publish the answer later along with the name of the person who guessed the most correctly. Some will be quite easy to get, others not so much. All of the movies are big-budget films that can be from any genre, but will at least be recognizable to anyone over the age of 15. (Remember: these are direct translations and don't sound as silly to the Chinese people)

1. Love at 1st Sight - 50 times

2. The King of Big Talking

3. The Politics of a Beautiful Woman Relating to the Law

4. Rough-looking Queen

5. Carribean Sea Thieves

6. Scary Creature Company

7. The Man-made Public Enemy

8. Searching the Seabed

9. The Fake God

10. Man Now Understands 100%


Find the answers to all of these on the answers page!