8 February: Chinese New Year

Today is Chinese New Year - the year of the Red fire monkey. So here are ten things you may not know about China:

1. The name China probably comes from the Qin dynasty - Qin is pronounced "Chin". First Emperor Qin Shi Huang (260-210 B.C.) of this dynasty first unified China in 221 B.C.
2. The capital is Beijing, which means "Northern Capital". The city has gone by a number of other names throughout history - Yanjing, Dadu, Peking and Beiping. The largest city in China is Shanghai.
3. China is considered to be the oldest civilization in the world today, having existed since 6000 BC. It also has the world’s longest continuously used written language.
4. China is famous for Tea and silk, both of which, according to legend, were discovered by accidentally dropping things into boiling Water. Tea was discovered by the Chinese emperor Shennong when a tea leaf fell into his boiling water, and silk 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. The Chinese were so protective of their silk making that smuggling silkworm eggs or cocoons out of China was a crime punishable by death.
5. There is a long list of things China is said to have invented or discovered, often thousands of years before Western civilization. These include: Paper, Toilet paper, printing, the Compass, gunpowder, Kites, soccer, Ice cream, the first instrument for monitoring Earthquakes, the circulatory system of Blood, the decimal system, chemical weapons, the crossbow, suspension bridges, natural gas, the Iron plough and the waterwheel.
6. In 2015 the population of China was estimated to be 1,376,049,000 - that's four times as high as the US. One in every five people in the world is Chinese. The population growth prompted the Chinese government to bring in their controversial one child policy. While it may have done the trick in slowing down population growth, because people valued sons more highly than daughters, it led to female babies being aborted or killed, and now there are 32 million more boys than girls in China. So girls are going to be at a premium when they all want to get married. There is also a law in China which forbids couples from having a baby until they have been granted a Family Planning Certificate from the government. Any babies born to parents without one are not considered legal.
7. The population explosion is also thought by some to be responsible for the invention of chopsticks. Cooking food for all these people took a lot of fuel, so food was chopped into small pieces so it would cook faster, using less fuel. Knives weren't needed to cut food, so people used chopsticks.
8. China is home to the world's biggest dam (The Three Gorges Hydroelectric Dam which spans the Yangtze River), the oldest and longest canal in the world (China’s Grand Canal is 1,114 miles (1,795 km) long and has 24 locks and around 60 bridges) and the world's largest artificial forest (made to stop the Gobi desert from expanding).
9. China owns all the Pandas in the world. Any pandas seen in zoos anywhere else are merely on loan. Baby pandas born abroad have to be sent back to China (by Fed Ex) to help expand the gene pool. The early Chinese emperors kept pandas to ward off evil spirits and natural disasters. Pandas represented might and bravery.
10. Rich people in some parts of China can hire body doubles to serve their prison sentences for them.