Abstract: Recent studies show that the "Little Ice Age" is not of uniformly cold conditions throughout the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, it experienced both the warm and cold episodes. In a view of the vast geographical range in China, the climate change during this period might be different from the various regions.
Based on the proxy data, such as the ice cores, tree rings and documentary records, a cluster analysis is firstly applied in this paper. Climate change in China can been divided into two patterns. The first climate pattern covers the south and west parts of Tibet Plateau, northeast China and Ming-Tai region (Fujian and Taiwan Province) ; the second one covers consists of the southwest, south, central, east north and northwest parts of China. Then, temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of the temperature series of the three different time scales (the last 600 a, 500 a and 400 a) in China are discussed. The results show that the first three eigenvectors account for 70% of the total variance. Therefore, they can be used to describe the temporal and spatial features of the temperature series in China. The conclusions are as following：
(1) The temperature values in east China are higher than those in west China;
(2) The temperature distribution pattern of the south and northeast parts of Tibet Plateau to that of west Tibet Plateau, that of the southwest and south China to that of north and east China are opposite.
(3) These decadal temperature distribution patterns occurred among the interannual temperature variations during the last 40 years, too.
(4) The little Ice Age was conspicuous in temporal influence coefficient of EOF 1.The first temporal coefficients of the three different time scales are characterized by the colder 19 th century, the coldest 1650 s, 1830 s and 1860 s as well as the warmer 18 th century.
(5) Warming in 20 th century was abnormally marked in the past few centuries.
(6) Comparison of temperature variations between China and the Northern Hemisphere and the Arctic region shows that the temperature variations in China were similar to that of the two regions mentioned above. Also, the coefficient is greatest when the temperature series of the Northern Hemisphere and the Arctic region time-lagged by 20 a than that of China.
However, there exist such deficiencies as coverage and representation of data in this work.

Key words: the Little Ice Age, temporal and spatial distribution, temperature