Thanks to China Tours and China Flights you already know everything about the attractions in China and how to reach them. Now, time for some geeky facts about China you won’t find in any guidebook!
1. Beibei the fish, Jingjing the panda, Huanhuan the Olympic flame, Yingying the Tibetan antelope, and Nini the swallow are the official Mascot of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. If the first syllables of their names were removed, it would become “BeiJing HuanYing Ni”, meaning: “Beijing Welcomes You”.
2. Flights between Hong Kong and mainland China are classified as international flights
3. With over 870 million speakers, Mandarin Chinese is the world’s most spoken language.
4. 34 children are born every minute in China.
5. 20% of China’s plants are used in medicine.
6. Despite its size, all of China is in only one time zone.
7. In Ancient China, people believed that swinging your arms could cure a headache.
8. Rice flour was used to strengthen many bricks during the construction of the Great Wall.
9. China is the second largest fast food market in the world.
10. Ice cream was invented in China around 2000BC. The first ice cream was soft milk and rice mixture packed in the snow.
11. Silk making was a closely guarded secret, discovered over 2 thousand years ago. Anyone who gave the secret away could be killed. According to a Chinese legend, silk was discovered by Lady Xi Ling Sui, wife of the Emperor Huang Di. When a silk worm cocoon accidentally dropped into her hot tea, fine threads from the cocoon unravelled in the hot water.
12. Paper was first invented in China in 105 AD. Kept as a closely guarded secret, it didn’t reach Europe until the 8th century.
13. Fingerprinting was used in China as early as 700 A.D.
14. Ketchup originated in China as a pickled fish sauce called ke-tsiap.
15. Many historians believe football originated in China around 1000 BC.
16. Chopsticks originated in China almost 4,000 years ago. It is believed that using chopsticks instead of knives increased respect for the scholar over the warrior in Chinese society.
17. By the fourth century BC., natural gas was drilled and used as a heat source in China, preceding Western natural gas drilling by about 2,300 years
18. By the second century B.C., the Chinese discovered that blood circulated throughout the body and that the heart pumped the blood. In Europe, circulation wasn’t discovered until the early seventeenth century by William Harvey (1578-1657).
19. There are about 40000 characters in Chinese language. On average, an adult knows only around 5000 of them.
20. Tian’anmen Square is the largest public plaza in the world.
21. The modern word “China” most likely derives from the name of the Qin (pronounced “chin”) dynasty. First Emperor Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty first unified China in 221 B.C., beginning an Imperial period lasting until A.D. 1912.
22. China is considered the longest continuous civilization, having originated in 6000 B.C. It also has the world’s longest continuously used written language.
23. Fortune cookies are not a traditional Chinese custom – they were invented in 1920 by a worker in a noodle factory in San Francisco.
24. Giant Pandas date back two to three million years. The early Chinese emperors kept pandas as a protection from evil spirits and natural disasters. Pandas also were considered symbols of might and bravery.
25. In the Tang dynasty, every educated person was expected to greet as well as say goodbye to another person in poetic verse composed on the spot.
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