Numerous sites dealing with China have sprung up on the Internet; many provide useful information, especially on contemporary affairs.

Three particularly worthwhile indexes that consider historical issues, personalities and events are listed below -- great sites at which to begin your "surfing" experiences!  

• The Fairbank Chinese Virtual Library
  
  
• The Chinese Studies World Wide Web Virtual Library at the University of Melbourne in Australia
  
  
• The Internet Guide for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
  

Columbia University's Project on Asia in the Core Curriculum has an especially useful site, Asia for Educators, for those planning teaching units on China or Japan for classroom use. 

Many instructors begin their exploration of a new culture with a discussion of geography, using maps and charts to illustrate a host of facts about a particular location and its inhabitants. As knowledge of geography in general has become more of a specific priority at the elementary and secondary level, some well-done Internet web sites have begun to appear that make this task an easier one to assay.

One of the best, simply titled GEOGRAPHY, has been developed by Ronald G. Knapp (PhD, University of Pittsburgh, 1968), chairman of the Department of Geography at SUNY New Paltz.

Professor Knapp teaches Understanding China, Physical Geography, and Contemporary China. His field-based research, too, focuses on China and involves a study of Chinese vernacular architecture. His two newest books-- China's Living Houses: Folk Beliefs, Symbols and Household Ornamentation and China's Old Dwellings--were published by the University of Hawaii Press in 1999 and 2000. Professor Knapp is a member of the Asian Studies Program and is the Executive Secretary of the New York Conference on Asian Studies/NYCAS.

The National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C., maintains an educational web site, EdSITEment, which incorporates a wide assortment of recommended links to online resources assessed as especially useful for their educationally - oriented content in the humanities.

Among those sites is my "Teaching (and Learning) About Japan" web site, one of thirty honored by NEH during 1999. I am especially proud to be able to recommend it to you as well -- it, too, is a great place to begin your exploration of Japan - related cyberspace ...

A number of my other Internet teaching materials on Japanese civilization are available at my web site Visual Resources for the Investigation of Japanese History and Culture.

Paul Halsall's Internet East Asian History Sourcebook provides access to both visual and primary source materials of incalcuable value for classroom instructors seeking materials for student use available on the Internet. (Halsall, by the way, is editor of the Internet History Sourcebooks Project which includes guides to all manner of source material in a wide variety of subject matter areas available out there in cyberspace -- his other sourcebooks are well worth checking out as well.)