This other China has many mountain ranges, thousand kilometre long chains stretching from west to east dividing the land into enclosed plateaus and basins whose rivers never reach any sea. It has many deserts; more than a million square kilometres of deserts-almost 15 per cent of her total area of nine million six hundred thousand square kilometres. It has immense grasslands and steppes, oases and salt lakes, jungles and troughs lower than the Dead Seam Palestine.

This China we must know in order really to know China. It is this conglomerate of many nations, mosaic of peoples, languages and customs, which shaped Chinese culture as we know it today and it is in developing and modernising this area that her future lies.

中国的这一部分有许多山脉，一座又一座绵亘千里，由西向东伸展，把土地分隔成一个个山峦环抱的高原和盆地，其中河流一向不通大海。这里有许多沙漠，沙漠面积有一百多万平方公里——几乎占国土总面积960万平方公里的15%。还有一望无际的草地和大草原，有绿洲和盐湖，有丛林和比巴勒斯坦死海还低的地槽。

我们要真正了解中国，就必须了解中国的这一地区。正是这个不同民族、语言、风俗荟萃的多民族聚集体，才形成了今天我们所知道的中国文化。中国的未来就在于这一地区的发展和现代化。

North, Northwest, Southwest...for administraave purposes, this other China,nearly seven million out of the nearly ten million square kilometres of the land,is conveniently divided into regions, each one holding several provinces. I have walked, ridden,jeeped, explored this China several times in the course of the last three decades. I have leamt the local names of mountains, rivers,deserts; for everything here has two names, the Han Chinese name, and the name (or names) given by the national minorities which inhabit the area.

Mountains: the majestic Altai, whence came thudding on thick-legged Mongol ponies so many nomad hordes. The Bogden or Heaven's mountain, sitting in vast skirts of their own crumbled stone. From their slopes flow streams feeding the oases strung along the rim of inland deserts. The Kunlun and the Karakoram, the Pamir and the Himalayas-here Mount Everest is iknown as Chomolungma.

中国的这一地区在将近1，000万平方公里的国土中占了近700万平方公里，为了行政管理方便划分为华北、西北、西南……等几个区域，每个区域各拥有若干省份。在过去30年中，我曾数次徒步、骑马或乘吉普车考察过中国的这个地区。我学到了不少山脉、河流、沙漠的本地名称，因为这里所有的东西都有两个名称，一个是汉名，，另一个是居住在当地的少数民族给起的名称。

山脉：有巍峨的阿尔泰山，当初不知有多少游牧部落在那边登上腿脚粗壮的蒙古马，轰隆隆一路奔来；有博格多山，又称天山，坐落在山崩地裂造成的广阔地段，从山坡上淌下条条溪流，源源注入内地沙漠边缘上的一连串绿洲之中；还有昆仑山脉和喀喇昆仑山脉、帕米承山脉和喜马拉雅山脉——这里把埃非尔士峰叫做珠穆朗玛峰。

Deserts: the stone deserts of the Gobi and the Ordos, the Tanguli and Kurban Tungu and the dreadful Taklamakan.

Plateaus and basins: Dzungaria and Tarim and Tsaidam, and the Roof of the World, the immense plateau of Tibet.

沙漠：有戈壁滩和鄂尔多斯沙石滩，有腾格里沙漠和古尔班通古特沙漠，还有那令人生畏的塔克拉玛干沙漠。

高原和盆地：有准噶尔盆地和塔里木盆地，有柴达木盆地，还有“世界屋脊”——辽阔的西藏高原。

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