25 Interesting facts YOU DID NOT KNOW about China!

1. In ancient China, the lotus was seen as a symbol of purity and was sacred to both the Buddhists and Daoists. The peony (“King of Flowers”) symbolized spring, the chrysanthemum symbolized long life, and the narcissus was thought to bring good luck. (I took the picture of this Lotus Flower in a nearby pond in a garden outside restaurant where weddings usually have their receptions at).
2. China is often considered 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.
3. China is the fourth largest country in the world (after Russia, Canada, and the U.S.). It has an area of 3,719,275 square miles (slightly smaller than the U.S.) and its borders with other countries total more than 117,445 miles. Approximately 5,000 islands lie off the Chinese coast.
4. 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.
5. Toilet paper was invented in China in the late 1300s. It was for emperors only.
6. Cricket fighting is a popular amusement in China. Many Chinese children keep crickets as pets.
7. The number one hobby in China is stamp collecting.
8. Giant Pandas (“bear cat”) date back two to three million years. The early Chinese emperors kept pandas to ward off evil spirits and natural disasters. Pandas also were considered symbols of might and bravery.
9. ^{The name of China’s capital has changed over the centuries. At one time or another it has 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.}
10. ^{Martial arts are practiced throughout China and were largely developed from ancient farming and hunting methods.}
11. ^{Red symbolizes happiness for the Chinese and is commonly used at Chinese festivals and other happy occasions such as birthdays and weddings.}
12. ^{Chinese is spoken by 92% of China’s population. There are at least seven major families of the Chinese language, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Hakka, Gan, Xiang, and Min.}
13. ^{According to popular legend, tea was discovered by the Chinese emperor Shennong in 2737 B.C. when a tea leaf fell into his boiling water. The Chinese consider tea to be a necessity of life.}
14. According to a Chinese legend, silk was discovered in 3000 B.C. 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 unraveled in the hot water and silk was born.
15. The oldest piece of paper in the world was found in China and dates back to the second or first century B.C. Paper was so durable, it was sometimes used for clothing and even light body armor.
16. The bicycle was introduced into China around 1891 by two American travelers named Allen and Sachtleben. The bicycle is now the primary transportation for millions of Chinese. The last Qing emperor (Puyi) rode a bicycle around the Forbidden City in Beijing. China is currently the leading bicycle manufacturer.
17. Suspension bridges were invented in China in 25 B.C, 1,800 years before such bridges were known in the West.
18. In some parts of China, “pigtails” were associated with a girl’s marital status. A young girl would wear two pigtails, and when she married, she would wear just one. This may have contributed to the Western view that pigtails are associated with children and young girls. 
19. In ancient China, mirrors were believed to protect their owners from evil, making hidden spirits visible and revealing the secrets of the future. A person who had been scared by a ghost could be healed by looking in the mirror. Mirrors were often hung on the ceilings of burial chambers.
20. The phoenix is the most important bird in Chinese legend and represents the feminine power of the empress. The graceful crane, which is a symbol of long life, is the second most important bird in Chinese legend. Ducks are also important symbols and represent happiness and marital faithfulness.
21. Famous Chinese and Chinese-American actors include Jackie Chan (Hong Kong), Chow Yun Fat (Hong Kong), Bruce Lee (San Francisco), Jet Li (Beijing), Zhang Ziyi (Beijing), and Lucy Lui (New York).
22. The number of birth defects in China continues to rise. Environmentalist and officials blame China’s severe pollution.
23. China has the world’s oldest calendar. This lunar calendar originated in 2600 B.C. and has 12 zodiac signs. It takes 60 years to complete. 
24. The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing were the most expensive games in history.^bWhile the 2004 Athens Games were estimated to cost around $15 billion, the Beijing Games were estimated to cost a whopping $40 billion.
25. While the dragon is typically seen as an evil creature in Western culture, it holds first place among the four greatest creatures in Chinese mythology, including the phoenix, tiger, and tortoise. It is typically associated with the emperor.

Rewards for One Child and Punishments for Extra Children

Marry Late poster Parents who have only one child get a "one-child glory certificate," which entitles them to economic benefits such as an extra month's salary every year until the child is 14. Among the other benefits for one child families are higher wages, interest-free loans, retirement funds, cheap fertilizer, better housing, better health care, and priority in school enrollment. Women who delay marriage until after they are 25 receive benefits such as an extended maternity leave when they finally get pregnant. These privileges are taken away if the couple decides to have an extra child. Promises for new housing often are not kept because of housing shortages.

 The one-child program theoretically is voluntary, but the government imposes punishments and heavy fines on people who don't follow the rules. Parents with extra children can be fined, depending on the region, from $370 to $12,800 (many times the average annual income for many ordinary Chinese). If the fine is not paid sometimes the couples land is taken away, their house is destroyed, they lose their jobs or the child is not allowed to attend school.

 Sometimes the punishments seem more than a little over the top. In the 1980s a woman from Shanghai named Mao Hengfeng, who got pregnant with her second child, was fired from her job, forced to undergo an abortion and was sent to a psychiatric hospital and was still in a labor camp the early 2000s, There were reports that she had been tortured.

Undocumented Children in China

 Additional children born to parents that have reached their one-child limit often have a rough ride. Some are denied a birth certificate and proper documentation. This effects them for the rest of their life. Without proper papers these children can not enter school, find work as adults or do most of anything legally.

 Undocumented children (also called "black permit" children) are children who are born and raised in secret and never registered with the government. To avoid detection by the Family Planning Association the children are shuffled around among uncles, aunts and siblings. Pregnant women who chose to hide in the countryside until they give birth are sometimes called "birth guerrillas."

• Life as a second child is often a great struggle! In society, you are looked down upon and often called a "mistake" or "a niece or nephew" of your actual parents.
• China's population continues to decrease  as less and less amounts of children are born.
• In Canada, we pay people who have just had children baby bonus to help provide for their new family while China prevents its people from having more than one child- often promoting infertility. 

ONE-CHILD POLICY IN CHINA

In China...

 In 1979, three years after Mao’s death, a one-child policy was introduced to reduce China’s burgeoning population. According to the policy as it was most commonly enforced, a couple was allowed to have one child. If that child turned out be a girl, they were allowed to have a second child. After the second child, they were not allowed to have any more children. In some places though couples were only allowed to have one child regardless of whether it is a boy or a girl. This policy is still in effect today. It is unusual for a family to have two sons.

 Posters promoting China's one-child policy can be seen all over China. One, with the slogan "China Needs Family Planning" shows a Communist official praising the proud parents of one baby girl. Another one, with the slogan "Late Marriage and Childbirth Are Worthy," shows an old gray-haired woman with a newborn baby. Another reads: “Have Fewer, Better Children to Create Prosperity for the Next Generation.”

 Slogans such as “Have Fewer Children Live Better Lives” and "Stabilize Family Planning and Create a Brighter Future” are painted on roadside buildings in rural areas. Some crude family planning slogans such “Raise Fewer Babies, But More Piggies” and “One More Baby Means One More Tomb” and "If you give birth to extra children, your family will be ruined" were banned in August 2007 because of rural anger about the slogans and the policy behind them.

 About 63 percent of China’s’ population is subject to the one-policy rule. The conventional wisdom in China has been that controlling China's population serves the interest of the whole society and that sacrificing individual interests for those of the masses is justifiable. The one-child policy was introduced around the same time as the Deng economic reforms. An unexpected result of these reforms has been the creation of demand for more children to supply labor to increase food production and make more profit.

Under Pressure to Rethink Tibet Policy By Antoaneta Bezlova

As I was researching recent world issues in China, I came across this article from IPS News Agency discussing the "Tibet Dilemma" in China. During my trip to China, my tour group and I came across posters that had to do with this issue at hand (don't worry it was written in English too!). Many people within this country are struggling with this major development occurring. Here is the best parts of the article below: 

Sites where Tibetans are known to have mounted protests and demonstrations in March

BEIJING, Mar 21, 2008 (IPS) - As continuing Tibetan protests testify to the failure of China’s policy of accelerated economic development with harsh political controls in the Himalayan region, pressure on Beijing to begin dialogue with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, is growing. This article discusses that Tibet is protesting to be removed from China due to the facts that they share different values and have far different opinions. 

Large swaths of sparsely populated Tibetan areas have been swarmed with a huge number of Chinese troops while embers of unrest continue to smoulder in the wake of the biggest protests by the Tibetan minority in twenty years.

Beijing has denounced the "splittist" Dalai Lama for masterminding the violent riots in hopes of sabotaging this summer’s Beijing Olympics and promoting Tibetan independence. But even as rhetoric against the Tibetan spiritual leader heats up, there are calls from all sides for China to recognise his undying significance to the Tibetan population and make breakthrough on a problem that does not seem to go away.

"We protest the unwarranted campaign waged by the Chinese government against our fellow Nobel laureate, His Holiness the Dalai Lama," the group said in a statement released by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel on Thursday.

The Dalai Lama won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for his determined commitment to non-violence in pursuing the Tibetan cause. He has repeatedly said he is not asking for a sovereign independent Tibet but for a genuine autonomy, pledged to his people by Chinese communist leaders in 1951 but never delivered.

That religious and cultural autonomy, the statement said, "is fundamental to the preservation of the ancient Tibetan heritage."

China has rejected the appeals for dialogue, calling instead for an international investigation of the riots that Beijing says have caused mass destruction in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and claimed the lives of 16 people, most of them "innocent civilians".

The Tibetan government-in-exile however, has offered a starkly different account of the events, saying more than 90 people have died in the unrest and that troops had been allowed to open fire on protesters.

European politicians have sent mixed signals about their willingness to consider measures to punish China for its harsh crackdown in Tibet. Nevertheless they aligned behind calls to Beijing to resume direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who spoke with his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao about the riots and appealed for a restraint last week, has said he plans to meet the Dalai Lama during his visit to the UK in May.

The Dalai Lama has said in the past that he was ready to meet Chinese leaders. His envoys met with Chinese officials in 2002, re-opening channels for dialogue that had been put on hold since the 1989 crackdown on protests in Lhasa. While negotiators have met six times since, most recently in June 2007, observers say little genuine progress has been made.

Speaking with Gordon Brown, premier Wen Jiabao repeated Beijing’s well-entrenched position that the Dalai Lama must abandon the "proposition of independence" of Tibet and cease his "separatist activities".

"It is only under these preconditions that the Chinese central government will talk to him (the Dalai Lama)," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters in Beijing this week. "It is only on that basis that the doors of the dialogue will be open".

But calls for rethinking Beijing’s policy on the Dalai Lama have come not only from the international community but also from the wider Chinese public.

Wang Lixiong, a Beijing-based writer whose research works on Tibet have been circulated within the communist party, says the current crisis should serve as a "wake up" call for Chinese leaders that their rapid economic development policy in Tibet is a failure.

"The last major unrest in Tibet in 1987 and the riots of 1989 when a martial law was imposed were limited to the capital of Lhasa and involved only monks, intellectuals and students," Wang told IPS in an interview. "But today’s unrest has spread over all Tibetan areas and there are people from all walks, including peasants and workers."

In his major work ‘Celestial Burial: The destiny of Tibet’, which was published outside of China in 1998, Wang reflected that Beijing’s politically-motivated investment in Tibet is fuelling economic growth that widens social inequality and creates discontent.

Calling the visible signs of development in Tibet a "pretence of modernisation", Wang describes how the dramatic rise in living standards among the Tibetan elite is in a stark contrast with the impoverishment of the overwhelming majority of Tibetans who remain rural, illiterate and poor.

"If the current leadership doesn’t reconsider its Tibet policy, in ten or twenty years time, the Tibetan fight will become even uglier," he reckons. "They must now recognise that imposed economic prosperity would not erase the significance of the Dalai Lama in Tibetan hearts. The Dalai Lama is the key to the Tibetan problem because he is their ultimate spiritual leader and also an international symbol of the Tibetan identity." 

China’s Lack Of Political Freedoms

Since the Communist Party gained power in China and established the People’s Republic of China in 1949, authoritarian rule has been the norm. Around the late 1970s, as the first generation of Communist Party leaders were replaced by a second, some reforms provided a foundation of rapid economic development (it is now an economic superpower). The political reforms away from authoritarian rule has remained elusive.

For example, the government continues to exert its absolute control over politics, and is often looks to eradicate domestic “threats” to stability of the country through excessive use of force and authority. Imprisonment of political opponents and journalists has become a critical and common condition within the government. The press is tightly regulated as is religion. Suppression of independence/secessionist movements is often heavy-handed, to say the least.

This is a picture of Tiananmen Square and entrance over the bridge and through the doors shown leads visitors to the Forbidden City where the emperor's home was located.

An example of this would be the amount of campaigning, by students and others for more democratic rights and freedom of speech, that has culminated in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, a violent crackdown by the Chinese military with 15 days of martial law. The after-effects also resulted in government crackdown of sympathizers. Foreign media was banned for a while, while local media was strictly monitored and controlled; therefore, Communist Party members, who sympathized with the protesters, were placed under house arrest.

2008 Summer Olympics in China

Challenge and opportunity is what characterizes the privilege of China hosting the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. China's rapid economic development, with GDP growing at more than 11% per year, has generated a widespread concern about the environmental suggestions for China and the world, both within China and throughout the international community. In response, the Government of China has introduced a growing number of environmental initiatives and legislation designed to promote environmental sustainability as part of the country's ambitious growth strategy. With world attention increasingly on China, the staging of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing has given China an opportunity to display its commitment and ability to grow in an environmentally sustainable manner.

The challenge, unfortunately lies in the fact that Beijing's successful bid not only raised the city's profile internationally, but highlighted a number of environmental issues, not to mention the city's poor air quality. This issue is still in progress of being demolished today.

Post #1- Why I chose China?

Usually when people choose to go on vacation, they pick a tropical island like Aruba or Barbados to simply relax or a witness beautiful, breath taking view; for example, the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the scenic landscape of Austria. In case you were wondering, my family loves to travel. Always looking for a new adventure, which is one of the many reasons why we choose to visit the mysterious country of China. Let's just say it's a "vacation" I'll never forget. But we'll leave that story for another time.


My sole purpose of this blog is to share with readers my interesting adventure in visiting China all while incorporating the history, values, traditions, and present lifestyle/economy of this nation. From this blogging experience, I hope to educate others, as well as learn a thing or two myself about the world of China. Sharing my time in China will help give my peers and viewers a new understanding of China's lifestyle and how this country interacts and operates as a whole.