Should I use "the" here?

Cleveland   Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:50 pm GMT
In Chinese culture area, I have considerable knowledge in all over China due to my travel/life experience, I can offer culture knowledge from extremely north "Donbei" (old Manchuria) and Korean municipality, to extremely south "Yunnan" "GuangXi" Minorities area, from extremely west "Tibet" "Xinjiang(Uyghur or eastern Turkestan sometime)municipality", to eastern developed China.


should I use "the" before "extremely north" and "korean municipality" and "extremely south" etc.?

whatever how many years I learnt English I am still confused about the usage of "the" shit!
Cleveland   Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:52 pm GMT
should this chunk be

In Chinese culture area, I have considerable knowledge in all over China due to my travel/life experience, I can offer the culture knowledge from the extremely north "Donbei" (old Manchuria) and the Korean municipality, to the extremely south "Yunnan" "GuangXi" Minorities area, from the extremely west "Tibet" "Xinjiang(Uyghur or eastern Turkestan sometime)municipality", to the eastern developed China.

?
furrykef   Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:16 pm GMT
Yes, "the" is required. It might be a bit better to reword it as "from Donbei in the extreme north," etc., but it still works the way you wrote it. I'm not sure about "the eastern developed China", though. I'd probably either omit the article on that one (since we're not talking about a very specific region) or reword it.

"In all over China" doesn't sound that good to me... I'd rephrase it to something like, "I have considerable knowledge of all parts of China".

Finally, you need to put "and" before the second "from" ("from the extremely west..."), because you're connecting two related but independent ideas and need a conjunction. Also, always put spaces around parentheses.

Other than that, I think it looks good, though. :)

- Kef
Jaxon   Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:30 am GMT
Edited for correctness and clarity:

Due to my travel and life experiences, I am well versed in Chinese culture. My knowledge spans all regions of the country: from Donbei in the north to Yunnan in the south, and from Tibet in the west to the developed areas in the east.

In my opinion, this reads a lot more naturally.
Guest   Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:32 am GMT
<Yes, "the" is required.>

But not here:

from, extremely north, Donbei