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the Middle Kingdom the red dragon the
sleeping giant steeped in history
legends and mystery for many it's
everything you never knew about China
starting with that nickname the Middle
Kingdom Zhang Guo it's China's most
traditional name and it goes way back to
the very beginning ancient people didn't
know what lies beyond their lands just
that they were surrounded by natural
barriers on all sides so they assumed
they must be the center of the world
actually China is the only remaining
ancient civilization it traces back over
40 centuries the earliest form of ice
cream comes from ancient China King Tang
of Shang had 94 of his men go to the
mountains for fresh eyes they'd mix it
with other ingredients like buffalo milk
and flour to make an ice cream treat fit
for a king what do you think Buffalo
Chip ice cream No
some believe that pasta comes from China
and Marco Polo brought it to Italy much
later in the 13th century chopsticks
have been around for 4,000 years but
they were originally made for cooking
not as eating utensils they came in
handy when grabbing hot things out of
pots of course the musical version of
chopsticks had to wait until somebody
invented the piano the Chinese use 45
billion chopsticks a year also Chinese
chopsticks are longer thicker and blunt
at the end compared to the thinner
pointy Japanese kind you use thousands
of nerves and over 50 muscles in your
fingers wrists arm and shoulders while
using chopsticks Wow
the chopsticks workout Mandarin is
spoken by more people as their first
language than any other language or
dialect in the world there are over 800
million native Mandarin speakers while
there are 1.2 billion people who speak
other Chinese dialects Qin Shi Huang was
the first emperor of China and the
country is named after him in one of the
most significant archaeological
discoveries of all time his tomb was
accidently found in
1874 when farmers were digging a well
it's full of life-sized clay statues of
warriors chariots and horses it dates
back to 208 BCE a long time ago there
was Pangu he broke the egg he was
sleeping in thus the yang was born it's
the sky and a symbol of light forces in
the world yin the dark forces fell down
and created the earth
Pangu turned into five sacred mountains
his eyes became the moon and the Sun his
blood turned into earthly waters and his
hair into grass and trees this is the
Chinese legend about the creation of the
universe sunglasses were invented here
in the 12th century but for an entirely
different purpose
Chinese judges wore them to hide their
facial expressions during trials China
is home to the Stone Forest it looks
exactly what it sounds like there are
giant limestone formations estimated to
be over 270 million years old that's
back when the supercontinent Pangea was
still together
the leshan giant buddha is a humongous
230 foot tall statue in the Szechuan
province it took almost 100 years to
complete and his feet can fit 100 people
talk about giant steps hey don't get in
his way
Chinese emperors thought that their
ancestors were dragons which is why this
creature is sacred here the Great Wall
isn't just one single wall it's a
collection of them and all its 13,000
miles weren't built all at once it
involved about 20 dynasties over a span
of 2,000 years
13,000 miles that's longer than the
distance from the north to the South
Pole the great wall is the largest
human-made structure ever built the
Chinese call it Wang Lee Chong Chong
which translates as the endless wall
yeah ketchup is a Chinese word for
pickled fish sauce there originally
wasn't any tomato in it it was made from
anchovies mushrooms and garlic in
salted fish brine a salted fish brine on
your next burger went fries with that
the game choo-choo was invented around
the second or third century BCE and it's
considered the earliest form of soccer
the name translates as kickball yet the
sport in which China has more olympic
gold medals than any other country ping
pong started in Victorian England
fortune cookies don't come from China
either they were invented by an employee
at a noodle factory in San Francisco the
mirror had mystic significance in
ancient China they believed that by
looking in a mirror a person can make
hidden spirits visible and protect
themselves
Chinese Brides wear red wedding dresses
because it's the color of luck white is
for grieving if you can't find the
fourth floor in a Chinese building don't
worry it's probably missing the number 4
is considered unlucky people will even
avoid it when renting an apartment with
4 in the number or address it's like 13
in many other countries we think of Fung
Shui in the West as a way to balance
your furniture but it's so much more
than that material the natural elements
nature color and even the sphere of your
life career knowledge family etc come
into play here and yes function a is
thousands of years old of course Chinese
is one of the two oldest surviving
languages in the world
along with Tamil it's more than three
thousand years old there are over fifty
thousand characters in this language a
large dictionary lists twenty thousand
and a typical educated person only knows
about eight thousand The Legend of the
Chinese New Year tells the story of a
fierce creature called nian that would
terrify villages every New Year's Eve
until one day when one man realized that
nian can be scared away by loud noises
and the color red
since then the Chinese decorate their
houses in red and set off fireworks so
that's how to train your dragon I guess
it's believed that on new year every
person turns one year
older so it's like everyone's birthday
it's a huge celebration in this country
and the festivities last 15 days chinese
scientist zhang heng invented the first
sized muskoka in the second century the
vase looking contraption might seem
archaic a bronze ball would fall from
one of eight tube-like dragons and into
the mouths of a toad below but it worked
perfectly fine and could detect an
earthquake hundreds of miles away some
other inventions that come from this
country are the first mechanical clock
the crossbow toilet paper oh thank you
regular paper block printing and the
compass when you've been around for over
4000 years you have lots of time to
create new things paper money was first
used in China in the 7th century there
was a copper shortage for coin
production so they decided to solve the
problem with cash according to legend
the first emperor in ancient China
Shandong accidentally discovered tea
when boiling water in his garden that's
how he liked to drink it a leaf from a
tea tree fell into his pot yet bagged
tea came about on the other side of the
planet in 1908 tea merchant Thomas
Sullivan gave his customers samples of
his product in small silk bags you were
supposed to Spore the sample out of the
bag and into your cup but people
immediately assume the bag work like the
traditional metal infusers back to china
educated people in the Tang Dynasty used
to say hello and goodbye to their
acquaintances with poems thought right
on the spot the beginnings of rap may be
the world's tallest mountain Mount
Everest is on the border between China
and Nepal it's 29,029 foot peak gets
even taller every year by about two
inches because of the tectonic plate
movement over the last 26,000 years it's
grown by a mile all giant pandas belong
to China even those who live outside
China are just being borrowed every time
a baby panda is born it's sent to China
to help expand the gene pool
China is home to the oldest species of
tree it's called the ginkgo and it's
remained unchanged for 200 million years
it's actually a living fossil there's a
legend behind the Chinese zodiac one day
there was a race between all the animals
the rat was asked to wake up the cat but
forgot
then it rode on the back of the Ox the
whole time and cunningly jumped off
right at the finish line that's why the
rat is first in the zodiac having
overslept the race cats still can't
forget this treachery and that's why
they don't like the rodents well now it
all makes sense
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