, the capital of
Shandong province The geography of the North China Plain has had profound cultural and political implications. Unlike areas to the south of the Yangtze, the plain generally runs uninterrupted by mountains and has far fewer rivers. As a result, communication by horse is rapid within the plain, and the spoken language of the plain is relatively uniform, in contrast to the plethora of languages and dialects in
southern China. In addition the possibility of rapid communication has meant that the political center of China has tended to be located here. Because the fertile soil of the North China Plain gradually merges with the
steppes and
deserts of
Dzungaria,
Inner Mongolia, and
Northeast China, the plain has been prone to invasion from nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes originating from those regions, prompting the construction of the
Great Wall of China. Although the soil of the North China Plain is fertile, the weather is unpredictable, being at the intersection of humid winds from the Pacific and dry winds from the interior of the Asian continent. This makes the plain prone to both floods and drought. Moreover, the flatness of the plain promotes massive flooding when river works are damaged. Many historians have proposed that these factors have encouraged the development of a centralized Chinese state to manage
granaries, maintain
hydraulic works, and administer
fortifications against the steppe peoples. (The "
hydraulic society" school holds that early states developed in the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Indus and Yellow Rivers due to the need to supervise large numbers of laborers to build irrigation canals and control floods.) Philosophically, the North China Plain was also the birthplace of
Confucius, the traditional patriarch of East Asian philosophy. Confucius lived and taught in the
State of Lu from 551 to 479
BCE. His teachings, recorded in
The Analects, eventually became the school of thought known as
Confucianism. Tied to the
Classical Chinese writing system, Confucianism swept throughout China and onto
Korea,
Japan, and
Vietnam, heavily influencing their respective political, legal, and educational bureaucracies.
Modern history The initial project of the
Great Leap Forward was accelerating the construction of waterworks on the North China Plain during the 1957–1958 winter. == Climate change ==