原文
第一章 中国文化的历史地理环境
从世界范围看，人类文化是千姿百态、丰富多彩的，单就作为世界文化主体的东西方文化而言，也存在着很大的不同。之所以如此，从一定意义上讲，是由于不同的地理环境所决定的。因此，了解中国历史地理环境的特征，对于理解中国传统文化是必不可少的。
中国文化产生和发展的历史地理生态环境，包括两个方面：自然地理环境和人文地理环境（又分为经济地理环境和社会文化地理环境）。 一般说来，自然地理环境，如气候、地形、地貌、水文、植被、海陆分布等， 发展变化的速度比较缓慢，有时需要相当长的时间才能为人们所觉察。但在某些阶段和某些局部地区，自然地理环境的变化也可能发生得非常迅速、非常剧烈，造成巨大的影响。人文地理环境，如疆域、政区、民族、人口、文化、城市、交通、农业、牧业等方面，发展变化的速度比自然地理因素发展变化的速度要快得多。当然，这两方面也是相互作用、不能截然分开的。关于这一点，在第二节中还要专门讨论。但无论如何，地理环境是在发展变化的，历史上的地理环境不同于现在的地理环境，因此我们在考察中国的传统文化时，必须将它们放在当时的地理环境条件下，注意研究地理环境对文化发展的影响，才能了解中国文化为什么会是这样的。
参考译文
Chapter One: The Historical Geographical Environment of Chinese Culture
Viewed from a global perspective, human culture is diverse and multifaceted, and even within the major cultures of East and West, there are considerable differences. This diversity, to a certain extent, is determined by different geographical environments. Therefore, understanding the characteristics of China's historical geographical environment is essential for comprehending traditional Chinese culture.
The historical geographical ecological environment in which Chinese culture originated and developed includes two aspects: natural geographical environment and human geographical environment (further divided into economic geographical environment and socio-cultural geographical environment). Generally speaking, natural geographical elements such as climate, terrain, topography, hydrology, vegetation, and land and sea distribution change slowly and may not be noticeable to people for quite some time. However, in some stages and regions, changes in the natural geographical environment can occur rapidly and intensely, causing significant impacts. The human geographical environment, encompassing areas such as national boundaries, administrative divisions, ethnic groups, population, culture, cities, transportation, agriculture, and animal husbandry, evolves at a much faster rate than natural geographical factors. Of course, these two aspects interact with and cannot be completely separated from each other. This point will be discussed further in Section Two. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the geographical environment is constantly developing and changing; historical geographical conditions differ from those of today. Therefore, when examining traditional Chinese culture, we must place it within the context of the geographical environment of that era, pay attention to the influence of the geographical environment on cultural development, and understand why Chinese culture is the way it is.