Ten Things about China
China is obviously known in the west as the large country where chopsticks and McDonald’s toys come from. While both of those associations are totally true, here are ten things about China that you will know after you read them!
China’s population (as of 2016, three years ago) was 1,380,000,000. That’s 1.38 billion, with a ‘b’. Roughly one in every five people on planet earth reside in China.
China’s official written language (Simplified Chinese) is less than 100 years old. In fact, Simplified Chinese was constructed and standardized in the 1960s by the government to increase literacy in rural areas and standardize some emerging variations of Traditional Chinese writing.
The written Chinese and the spoken Chinese have virtually no explicit connection. This means that a character and a pronunciation are only linked by association and not by a central phonetic understanding. However, to enable typing and other digital entry methods, an intermediate langue is used to bridge the gap. Let me give you an example.
ENGLISH: water is pronounced ‘water’ because of a standard phonetic understanding. If you know ‘water’ and ‘snuggle’ you will be able to guess how to say ‘wiggle’.
CHINESE (中文): 水 is pronounced similar to ‘sh-way’ and means ‘water’. However, there is no indication in the structure of the symbol that indicates the pronunciation. You must memorize it. If you wish to type 水, you must type shuǐ in your keyboard. ‘Shuǐ’ is pinyin for 水.Chines is basically the same size as the continental United States, but only has one time zone. It’s actually pretty nice and avoids confusion!
Half of all pigs in the world live in China! (I can’t really find a source to support this, but it sounds good!)
The Chinese currency has four names! The official long-from name is ‘Renminbi’ which is often shortened to the three-letter code form ‘RMB’. The less formal name for the currency is ‘Yuan’ or ‘元’ and slang is ‘quai’.
The first official organization of China began under the Qin Dynasty in 221BC. The last emperor was overthrown in 1912 which means Imperial China lasted for over 2,100 years. China converted from a socialist republic to a communist republic in 1949.
The Chinese were the original inventors of many technologies including silk, bronze, paper, calligraphy, magnetic compass, printing press, porcelain, silk, gunpowder, and the toilet!
Fortune cookies were not invented in China. They were invented in 1920 by a worker in the Key Heong Noodle Factory in San Francisco, California.
The Chinese were the first to invent the waterwheel in AD31 - 1,200 years before it was invented in Europe. Similarly, the iron plow was not used in Europe until the 17th century; hundreds of years after its invention in China.
I hope you enjoyed this trivia about China! If there’s something you’d like to know more about, please like the post and leave a comment!
