ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Yuanhai Ziping

Yuanhai Ziping is the name of a special document that was created a long, long time ago in China. It was used to keep track of important information about all the different parts of China.

Imagine you have a big toy box with lots of toys in it. You want to make sure you keep all your toys in the right places, so you make a list of all the toys and where they go in the box. That's kind of what the Yuanhai Ziping was for China, but instead of toys, it was for cities, towns, and villages.

The document had different sections for different parts of the country, and it included information on things like the size of each place, how many people lived there, and what the important landmarks were.

This document was very important because it helped the rulers of China keep track of what was going on in the different parts of the country and make important decisions. Just like you need to know what toys you have in your toy box to decide which one you want to play with, the rulers needed to know what was going on in different parts of China to make decisions about things like taxes, laws, and trade.

So, the Yuanhai Ziping was basically a really big list of all the important places in China and all the important information about them.