Course Sample for Our Asia: Trade Route Safari Homeschool Geography Course
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Asia: Trade Route Safari
Week One: China
City of Guangzhou, Province of Guangdong
The People
Welcome to Guangzhou! Good morning, Safari Saeed here. Are you ready to get started on our safari? Our first stop is Guangzhou, a city that used to be called Canton or Kwangchow. Guangzhou is the capital of the Guangdong province of China.
Most of the people of the province are Han Chinese. The Han are the largest ethnic group in China. Most speak the Chinese dialect we call Mandarin. Very few people in this province have accepted Jesus as God, even though it was the very first to hear about Jesus from a Protestant missionary. Robert Morrison worked in the region in 1807, but today, most of the Han people of the area believe in the traditional religions of China. People practice Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Some people practice all three along with superstitions they have learned.
Guangzhou is in the southeastern part of China. Because of its location on the Pearl River, it has been a popular spot for foreign trade for many years. Remember, when you can’t haul something overland on a trade route, it makes a lot of sense to try to move your goods by ship along the water. European traders have been traveling to Guangzhou ever since the third century A.D. Today, the city is home to more than six million people.
The climate is subtropical monsoon, which means that the summers are usually hot and humid with quite a bit of rain, while winters are pretty dry and without much snow. One of the biggest weather-related problems Guangzhou has is typhoons.
In historic times, Guangzhou was a trade center that exported things like sugar, fruits, silk, tea, timber, and herbs. Today, they export more mechanical and technological machines. Guangzhou was the eastern beginning of the Spice Route; ships left from the port and traveled close to land on their way to Singapore.
