General Introduction
　　
　　Anhui Province in east China is situated in the middle and lower valleys of the Yangtze and Huaihe rivers. It was named after the first character of the names of its two cities, Anqing and Huizhou. It has an area of more than 130,000 square kilometers and a population of 48.92 million, of which 6.63 million live in the cities and the rest in the countryside.
　　
　　Topography
　　
　　Anhui consists mainly of plains and hills. It is divided into four topographical zones from north to south:
　　
　　1) The Huaibei Plain, an alluvial plain on both banks of the Huaihe, is part of the North China Plain, and makes up half the province‘s farmland.
　　
　　2) The Jianghuai Hills between the Huaibei and Central Anhui plains are the watershed of the Huaihe and Yangtze River valleys. The terrain here is high in the west and low in the east, The Dabie range in the west extends east to join the Huoshan Mountains.
　　
　　3) The Central Anhui Plain, part of the Middle-Lower Yangtze River Plain, includes the flatlands along the Yangtze River and in the Chaohu Lake basin. It is the best-developed region in Zhejiang.
　　
　　4) The Southern Anhui Hills are located south of the Yangtze River side plains. With its main peak rising 1,841 meters above sea level, Huangshan Mountain is a tourist center known for its majestic terrain. Jiuhua and Tianmu mountains are its offshoots.
　　
　　The waterways in Anhui belong mainly to the Yangtze and Huaihe river systems, their catchment area each making up about 47 percent of the province‘s total area. The tributaries of the Yangtze River include the Wanhe, Qiupu, Yuncao, Qingyi and Chuhe, and the main tributaries of the Huaihe are the Yinghe, Xifei, Guohe, Kuaihe and Pihe. The Huaihe basin, notorious for frequent floods and drought in the past, has taken on a new look, thanks to efforts made in the last three decades or more to harness the Huaihe River. Chaohu is the largest of the numerous lakes in Anhui.
　　
　　Climate
　　
　　The part of Anhui north of the Huaihe River has a warm-temperate, semi-humid monsoonal climate while the part south of the river has a sub-tropical, humid monsoonal climate. The mean annual temperature is 14℃.to 16℃. or more from north to south, and the mean annual precipitation is 750-1,700 mm., more in the south than in the north and in the hilly regions than in the plains.
　　
　　Communications
　　
　　Anhui has a rail mileage of 1,501 kilometers and the trunk lines of the Beijing-Shanghai, Huainan (from Bengfu to Yuxikou), Qinglongshan-Fu-yang, and Nanjing-Tongling railways. Its highways total 24,262 kilometers and its inland shipping waterways 10,200 kilometers, of which the section of the Yangtze River in Anhui is navigable by large ships in all four seasons and the Huaihe River by steamboats.