Reconstruction of 18th century summer precipitation of Nanjing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou, China, based on the Clear and Rain Records

Of all the nations in the world, China is one of the few that is blessed with a long and continuous history. In addition, thanks to the relatively early development of a writing system and numerous antiquary scholars in the past, historical studies have played a central role in classical Chinese literature. One of the more extreme of these scholars even stated that, “Although a country can be eliminated, the history should not be erased”. While such a philosophy did not necessarily help the survival of the political systems at the time, it did help to create a lot of documents related to history.