Jiangxi is wedge-shaped, standing on its narrow side and tilting slightly right as if to topple. Its west is guarded by several mountain ranges, but their crests often do not follow the provincial border; many are oriented southwest to northeast across it. The eastern border is more consistently delimited by the Wuyi Mountains(3), and sets of mountain ranges are also found in the south, northwest and northeast. The very top center is, in contrast, flat, low land, centered on Poyang Lake. This receives many rivers and it in turn empties into the Yangtze(4). Along its northwest is Lu Mountain(5), a famous tourist spot. South of the lake basin the land rises into hilly country, interspersed with farm valleys.
About two in three speak Gan Chinese, the rest, Putonghua. Of course, while these two are distinct spoken languages, they share the written Chinese language. Religion follows the majoritarian pattern for the nation: a syncretic blend of Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and folk religious practices for those who are religious. Given the government's strong-armed aetheism, it is difficult to say how many non-observors would remain in a free society, but probably they would be a substantial minority.
Nanchang, the provincial capital, is the largest metropolis, situated south of Poyang Lake on the Gan River. It became famous during the 1927 communist uprising in which 30,000 peasants briefly took over the city. Pingxiang is one of the other ten metropolitan areas with more than one million people.
While traditional maps draw China's heart far to the north, linguists speculate that Chinese developed to Jiangxi's east, not so far away. So perhaps the lacustrine lowlands spoke a Chinese language at about the same time written Chinese developed elsewhere. In any case, by the Han dynasty most of the province was permanently integrated into the larger state and culture and immigration ensured that--whatever was originally spoken--Chinese became the provincial language.
Religion followed the national pattern from Han times on. From a base on Confucianism and folk practices, Taoism was added in the first millenium(5). Buddhism also showed up before 1000 C.E. but was received cooly by the state, so its integration proceded slowly. Aetheism arrived with the 20th century revolution.
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northwest
(1) Chiang-hsi in an alternate transliteration from Chinese; also called Kiangsi; translates literally as River West.
(2) Zhongguo or Chung-hua in transliteration from Chinese; can be translated as Middle Kingdom or Middle Land.
(3) Shan is the transliteration for the Chinese word for mountain or mountains.
(4) Changjiang is its more proper name in transliterated Chinese. It is the world's fourth longest. Jiang is the transliteration for one of the Chinese words for river.
(5) It had earlier, purely literary roots.