So, what does the middle kingdom consider its top ten bragging points? 

1. The Giant Panda of China is one of the rarest animals in the world. Giant pandas live in remote high mountains in Sichuan,Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces and eat bamboo. They are a surviving species of the Fourth Ice Age and are known as a "living fossil". They are regarded as China's "national treasure".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. The oldest tree in the world is China's Ginkgo,which first appeared during the Jurassic Age some 160 million years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. The greatest canyon in the world is China's Brahmaputra Canyon, 504.6 kilometers long and 6,009 meters deep at its deepest spot. Its average depth is 2,268 meters.

 

 

 

 

 

4. The highest plateau in the world is China's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with an average height of 4,500 meters above sea level. The Himalayan Mountain is located in southern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its highest peak,Mount Qomolangma(or Mount Everest) is 8,848.13 meters above sea level. It is the highest peak in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. The Chinese language is the language that has the largest number of speakers, more than 1.2 billion, throughout world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. The biggest and earliest encyclopedia in the world is the Yongle Encyclopedia complied between 1403-1408 in the Ming Dynasty by more than 2,000 scholars. It consists of 22,937 volumes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. The largest public square in the world is Tian'anmen Square in Beijing. It covers an area of 40 hectares.   

                                                                                                                           

8. The earliest and longest man-made canal in the world is the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. The canal was first built in the 5th century BC and was substantially extended twice during the Sui and Yuan dynasties. The canal begins at Tongxian County in Beijing in the north and ends in Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province in the south and is 1,801 kilometers in length.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. The biggest and most complete ancient building complex is the former Imperial Palace (also known as the Forbidden City) in Beijing. It was imperial palace of both the Ming and Qing dynasties. It was first completed in 1420 and covers an area of 720,000 square meters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10. The longest man-made architecture in the world is the Great Wall in China. It climbs and descends on the ridges of mountains in northern China and has a total length of more than 6,700 kilometers. It was first started during the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods.

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