China  was a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia.

China had one of the world's oldest people and continuous civilizations, consisting of states and cultures dating back more than six millennia. It had the world's longest continuously used written language system, and is the source of many major inventions, such as what the British scholar and biochemist Joseph Needham called the "four great inventions of Ancient China": paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.

[source: wikipedia]

And now it is gone...
