Most Americans don’t know everything there is to know about their own country (after all, there is a lot of history there). So it’s not surprising that most people don’t know a lot of facts about one of our biggest rivals, China.
Geopolitical experts call China the “sleeping dragon” because of its rapidly growing economy and influence on the world. But what don’t we know about them? Here some crazy interesting facts about the People’s Republic of China that you probably didn’t know.
1.) To train soldiers to keep their chins up, a pin is precariously hanging in the collars of their uniforms.
2.) The Republic of China Military Police teach their men the proper height to raise their arms while marching using wires attached to poles.
3.) There are 100 million people in China that live off the equivalent of 1 U.S dollar per day.
4.) Ketchup originated in China as a pickled fish sauce called ke-tsiap.
5.) Instead of driving through, they would pick up their food in the drive through, park, and bring the food inside the restaurant to eat.
6.) Although China is officially a secular country, there are more than 54 million Christians.
7.) China executes four times as many convicts as every other country combined.
8.) Eggs boiled in the urine of young virgin boys is a delicacy in Dongyang, China.
9.) Google offers free legal download of music in China in partnership with the largest record labels in the world.
10.) Chinese police increasingly use geese instead of police dogs because of their aggressiveness and superior vision.
11.) Every year in China, nearly a million girl fetuses are aborted and tens of thousands of girl babies are also abandoned because of the country’s one-child policy.
12.) 30,000,000 people in China live in cave homes, called yaodongs. There are more yaodong dwellers than the population of Australia.
13.) China’s air pollution is so bad that it travels across the Pacific to San Francisco, contributing to almost a third of the city’s pollution.
14.) Some Chinese food companies were caught making tofu out of sewage and marinating meat in goat urine.
15.) Women in China can pay $700 for surgery to restore their hymen to fake virginity.
16.) The health effects of breathing the air in Beijing is equal to smoking 21 cigarettes a day.
17.) In 1973, China proposed to give the U.S 10 million Chinese women to boost our population. Uhh, thanks?
18.) Playstations are illegal in China.
19.) Every year four million cats are eaten in China.
20.) Shanghai, China holds the record for the longest traffic jam, stretching over 62 miles and lasting 12 days.
21.) In Chongqing, China, people addicted to their phones get their own lane to keep them safe while walking blindly around the city.
America does some pretty weird things sometimes, but that ban on Playstations just seems arbitrary. Not that a country full of Wii’s would necessarily be a dystopia, but still who doesn’t love a little Crash Bandicoot every now and again?
