Remembering all of China's provinces/areas and capitals

[tooironic]

Hey all.

I've been long wanting to remember/memorise all of the PRC's administrative divisions, including its provinces (省), autonomous regions (自治区), municipalities (直辖市) and special administrative regions (特别行政区), along with their capitals. I've tried to create Anki flashcards, complete with map images, but I find it quite difficult to connect the regions with the capitals unless I've been there before or the names are similar in both cases (e.g. 貴州, 貴陽; 福建, 福州, etc).

Does anyone have any tips? I would especially love to be able to remember the position of each region on the map, though this may be a bit ambitious since China is so huge. One of my friends recommended listening to the weather over and over again, which does help, but not as much as I would like.

Cheers.

[roddy]

Break it down by military command? Don't forget to include the abbreviation - ie, 北京 is 京，etc.

A blank and wipeable map of China might help. Perhaps you can draw one on your fridge.

[Gleaves]

I would love an anki deck like that, so if you get it working, or if others have something similar, please share. I had meant to make an anki deck of countries - map location on the front of the card and the Chinese name on the back - but I never got very far.

[tooironic]

@roddy Yeah, the data is easy enough to obtain, but finding a way to make it memorable is proving difficult for me.

@Gleaves I created an Anki deck with the maps, provinces, capitals, etc, but it's quite difficult to make it memorable, so you just end up getting lots of "leechers" as they call them.

[anonymoose]

Knowing the provinces and capitals is not very useful. I suggest instead you memorise all the roads and road names in Beijing. That way, if you go to Beijing, you won't get lost.

[abcdefg]

I used this to learn the location of the provinces:

http://www.yourchildlearns.com/mappuzzle/China-puzzle.html

[gougou]

I learned the provinces and most of the capitals pretty much without trying while I was researching companies for work - and especially when putting together interview itineraries. Also got to know a lot when preparing travels, just by thumbing through the Lonely Planet.

[Gleaves]

Leechers in SRS are the worst.

Thanks for the game, abcdefg.

[tooironic]

@anonymoose Actually for my work and future travel plans, this kind of knowledge will really come in handy. Especially when I meet new people, I like knowing exactly where they are from and the characteristics of their hometowns and provinces.

[gougou]

In that case, I probably wouldn't spend too much time in advance. Just let the first couple of people you meet tell you where about that province is - or even carry a map specifically for that purpose. After having met a couple of people, things will gradually fall into place.

[jbradfor]

Back in undergrad, when taking Chinese history, the teacher would give us a map that had the outlines of all the provinces, but was otherwise blank, and we had to fill in each province name (in pinyin). Maybe not the fastest, but it worked. Well, for a while, I've forgotten them all now...

Recently I add the names to my ZDT flashcard list. But I too find remembering the location difficult. Thanks, abcdefg, I think the combination of flashcards plus that game will work.

[anonymoose]

I concur with gougou. After you have been in China a while, you will just get to know them anyway without having to go to any special length to memorise them. Especially if you travel around quite a lot.

[gato]

The capital of each province is usually the largest city in that province (like Lanzhou for Gansu, Hangzhou for Zhejiang). Remembering them is much easier than remembering the capital of the US states. Those not from the US might never have heard of Olympia, Washington and Lansing, Michigan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_in_the_United_States

In 33 of the 50 U.S. states, the state capital is not the state's most populous city.

[Don_Horhe]

Traveling is the easiest way to remember things like that. If you also want to know a bit about the province itself, then I suggest getting something like this. Mine's got detailed maps of all the administrative regions, be they provinces, municipalities, SARs or whatever, their capitals and bigger cities within them, and a brief summary of their characteristics - industry, agriculture, climate, tourist spots, natural environment and resources, transport... you get the picture. I'm sure you could find all this online, but if like me you dread reading off a monitor, you won't go wrong with this atlas.

[Sarevok]

I had meant to make an anki deck of countries - map location on the front of the card and the Chinese name on the back - but I never got very far.

I have a similar deck, which contains countries (supplemented with flags), capitals and occasionally other important cities (no map locations, only names). I am willing to share (actually it's my friend's work, but I am sure he won't object), but I am not sure how useful that will be for you, as it is Chinese-Czech. You would have to rewrite the Czech part, which would surely be time consuming... but not as much as creating a new deck from scratch...

[JenniferW]

I agree completely with Don, that 'Traveling is the easiest way to remember things like that.'

Are you in China? If you are, then I'd suggest focusing first on the provinces around the one you're in - and the easiest to visit. If you're not in China, then focus first on where you do want to go to.

Then look at which ones you DO know - what do you know about them? Tucked away in your brain there's probably more information and knowledge than you probably give yourself credit for, and if you can build on and expand on that, you'll fill in the gaps quicker and more effectively.

And a map on the wall really does help. Low tec but effective.

[tooironic]

I'm in Melbourne, though I'll be touring China in mid-Feb next year. Of course that is one way to get to know places very well, however that is not the point of this thread - the point is to figure out how to memorise them the most effectively. Which I think might be that I need to make sure each city and province is memorable to me in some kind of way. This can be done by locking into my brain the most distinguishing characteristic of each place - and if I can link that with the actual name itself, even better. Thanks guys.

[JenniferW]

In which case, think about why you're trying to do this. You need to structure the information or contextualise it - unless you just get your kicks out of memorising random lists of words / place names. You can use all or any of the standard memorisation tried and tested methods (described in detail on many specialist websites). A variation of the 'rooms' might work well, given that you're mentally dealing with geographical space. But thinking also about what you already know is still key in all this, to build on links, connections and extensions of those.

[Gleaves]

@Sarevok - I woudn't mind having a look. There might be some sort of anki plug-in that could fill in the English for me. Thanks.

[jatufin]

I wrote this little software a few years ago:

http://jannetuukkanen.net/WIC2_free/index.html

If the program is not what you need (there's Chinese cities, but no

especially province capitals) you might find the data usefull as base

for your own flash cards. Just browse CVS files in the directories,

and feel free to use them as you wish.