Hebei Province, << huh bay, >> is an important mining, agricultural, and industrial province in northeastern China. It has an area of 78,300 square miles (202,700 square kilometers). Shijiazhuang is the capital city. The province surrounds two of China’s largest cities, Beijing and Tianjin. Both cities are politically separate from Hebei, however.
Hebei has a varied landscape. About half of its area is a flatland called the North China Plain. The rest of the province is mountainous or hilly. Several rivers cross Hebei. So does an artificial waterway called the Grand Canal. The province has 303 miles (487 kilometers) of coastline on the Bo Hai gulf, an arm of the Yellow Sea. Hebei has large deposits of coal and iron ore. Wheat and cotton are among its main agricultural crops. Hebei’s industries include chemicals, iron and steel, and textiles.
Prehistoric human beings known as Homo erectus lived in the Hebei area about 500,000 years ago. Anthropologists discovered the remains of these people, called the Peking fossils, in the village of Zhoukoudian in Hebei during the 1920’s.
Over the centuries, various dynasties (families of rulers) and kingdoms ruled what is now Hebei. Many Chinese rulers used Hebei as a barrier to protect their northern borders against invaders. In the 200’s B.C., the Qin dynasty built a Great Wall across northern Hebei to block such invaders.
From 1644 to 1912, the Manchus ruled the province. They called it Chihli. The province returned to the name Hebei in 1928. The name is also spelled Hopeh or Hopei.
See also Grand Canal .
