2. On the top level, the People’s Republic of
China administers:
• 22 provinces 省
• 4 municipalities 直辖市
• 5 Autonomous Regions 自治区
• 2 Special Administrative Regions 特别行政区
3. These top-level divisions are then further
subdivided into different types of
prefectural-level divisions:
• sub-provincial cities 副省级市
• prefecture-level cities 地级市
• prefectures 地区
• autonomous prefectures 自治州
• leagues 盟 (Inner Mongolia 内蒙古)
4. In this course, you can learn their
locations within their respective
provinces.
5. On the third level of administration,
there are nearly 3000 county-level
divisions. A few of these do not belong
to any particular prefecture-level
division, so you can learn their locations
as well.
6. The county level divisions are:
• sub-prefecture-level cities 富地级市*
• county-level cities 县级市
• counties 县
• autonomous counties 自治县
• forestry district 林区
• economic development zone 经济开发区
• districts 区
*These enjoy more administrative powers than
counties, but less than prefectures.
7. The most common type of subdivision,
by far, is the prefecture-level city. So by
completing this course, you will know
the location and pronunciation of almost
every city in China.
8. In this course, you can write the name of
the division in:
• English
• Hanyu pinyin 汉语拼音 (diacritics)
• Hanyu pinyin 汉语拼音 (numbers)
• Simplified Chinese 简体字
9. The type of division (e.g. prefecture-level
city, etc.) is shown as a text attribute.
10. You can write either the official name or
just the normal name, in English or
pinyin. See example on the next page.
11. For Garzê, Sichuan, you can answer with
the following:
• Gānzī Zàngzú Zìzhìzhōu
• gan1 zi1 zang4 zu2 zi4 zhi4 zhou1
• Gānzī
• gan1 zi1
• Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture
• Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture
• Garzê
• Ganzi
• 甘孜藏族自治州
• 甘孜
12. However, there are hundreds of cities
and therefore it would take me hours to
add shì to each one, so the official names
are not accepted for cities of any kind.
See example on the next page.
13. For Shijiazhuang, or for any other city, be
it prefecture-level or county-level, you
can answer with the following:
• Shíjiāzhuāng
• shi2 jia1 zhuang1
• Shijiazhuang
• 石家庄
14. Don’t worry - you won’t have to
remember all that! The accepted
alternate answers are shown for every
division when you click ‘more’.
15. When you see a word in brackets beside
an autonomous prefecture, this is the
name of the ethnic group to which the
prefecture is designated, for example:
• Yánbiān (Korean)
• Dêqên / Díqìng (Tibetan)
16. The different types of provincial-level
division are subdivided slightly differently,
but you’ll find out more about that in
each multimedia level.
17. All in all, this course teaches the
locations of 474 divisions.
