Interesting Facts About China

                                              Interesting Facts About China

The modern word China most likely derives from the name of the Qin (pronounced china) dynasty. First Emperor Qin Shi Huang (260-210 B.C.) of the Qin dynasty first unified China in 221 B.C., beginning an Imperial period which would last until A.D. 1912.k

China is often thought about the longest continuous civilization, with some historians marking 6000 B.C. as the dawn of Chinese civilization. It also has the world's longest continuously used written language. 
 
China is the fourth largest country in the world (after Russia, Canada, & the U.S.). It's an area of three,719,275 square miles (slightly smaller than the U.S.) & its borders with other countries total over 117,445 miles. About five,000 islands lie off the Chinese coast. 
 
One  in every people in the world is Chinese. China's population is estimated to reach a whopping one,338,612,968 by July 2009. Chinas population is times that of the United States. 
 

Fortune cookies are not a traditional Chinese custom. They were invented in 1920 by a worker in the Key Heong Noodle Factory in San Francisco.
 

China is also called the Flowery Kingdom & lots of of the fruits & flowers (such as the orange & orchid) are now grown all over the world.   
                                                                                                                                                                    
Toilet paper was Invented in China, toilet paper was initially only for emperors
Toilet paper was invented in China in the late 1300s. It was for emperors only.
The Chinese invented paper, the compass, gunpowder, & printing.

The Chinese invented kites (paper birds or Aeolian harps) about three,000 years ago. They were used to frighten the enemies in battle, & Marco Polo (1254-1324) noted that kites were also used to foretell the success of a voyage. It was thought about bad luck to intentionally let a kite go.
 

Cricket fighting is a well-liked amusement in China. Lots of Chinese children keep crickets as pets.m

Despite its size, all of China is in time zone.h
 

Plenty of historians think soccer originated in China around 1000 B.C.f
 

Ping-pong is of the most popular games in China, but it was not invented in China. It originated in Britain, where it is called table tennis.m
   

stamp collecting Viewed as a status symbol, stamp collecting is China's number hobby
The number hobby in China is stamp collecting.

 

Giant Pandas (ear cat) date back to million years. The early Chinese emperors kept pandas to ward off nasty spirits and natural disasters. Pandas also were thought about symbols of might and bravery.i
 

White, than black, is the Chinese color for mourning and funerals.
 

Though Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is credited with designing the first parachute, Chinese alchemists successfully used man-carrying tethered kites by the fourth century A.D. Parachutes were not used safely and effectively in Europe until the late 1700s.
 

The custom of binding feet (euphemistically called golden lilies) began among female entertainers and members of the Chinese court in the coursework of the Song dynasty (A.D. 960-1279). Tightly wrapped bandages gradually broke the arch of the foot and caused the woman's toes and heel to grow inward toward another. Her leg muscles would also atrophy and become narrow. Bound feet were seen as highly sexual.m
Historians speculate that as the Chinese population grew, people had to preserve cooking fuel by chopping food in to small pieces so that it could cook faster. These bite-sized foods eliminated the necessity for knives and, hence, chopsticks were invented.
 

In A.D. 130, Zhang Heng, an astronomer and literary scholar, invented the first device for monitoring earthquakes. The machine could detect and indicate the direction of an earthquake.
   

 

The Chinese invented ice cream by packing a milk mixture and rice in to snow
 

China invented ice cream, and Marco Polo is rumored to have taken the recipe (along with the recipe for noodles) back with him to Europe.

 

A civil servant named Su Song built the first mechanical clock between A.D 1088 and 1092. It could tell the time of day and also track the constellations so that correct horoscopes could be determined.
 

On September 27, 2008, Zhai Zhigang made the first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut.
 

The Chinese were the first to invent the waterwheel to harness water in A.D. 311,200 years before the Europeans. China was also the first country in the world to make use of an iron plow. Europe didn't start using the iron plow until the seventeenth century.
 

The name of China's capital has changed over the centuries. At time or another it's been known as Yanjing, Dadu, and Beiping. Peking or Beijing means Northern Capital. Beijing is the officially sanctioned pinyin spelling based on the Mandarin dialect. Beijing is the second largest city after Shanghai.
 

It was customary for rich men and females in the late empire to grow the nails of their small fingers very long as a sign of their rank. They often wore decorative gold and silver nail guards to protect their nails.