10 Facts About China

One of the largest countries on Earth, home to Panda’s and Feng Shui: today we’re talking facts about China!

As always, we hope you will enjoy these facts, and possibly even contribute with your own.

Contents

10 interesting facts about China

Here are some interesting and special facts about China that would make you wonder and gaze if this is the same China that is often criticized for deficiency of innovation.

Well, china does have its wonderful past where important inventions were made and amazingly shared with the rest of the world.

1. Education

Fourth graders are estimated to know around 2,000 of over 40,000 Chinese characters.

Before saying goodbye to college they should ideally know approximately 4,000 to 5,000 characters through memorization.

2. Cricket fighting

Cricket fighting is a famous amusement in China. Many Chinese kids keep crickets as pets.

This year more than twenty teams from across the country participated in a 2 day National Cricket Fighting tournament.

Crickets are trusted by the Chinese to never accept defeat and have a real fighting spirit.

3. Sign of their rank

It was normal for rich women and men in the late empire to grow the nails of their pretty fingers very long as a sign of their reputation.

They often wore decorative silver and gold nails guards to save their nails.

4. Chopsticks

Historians think that as the population of China grew, people had to save cooking energy by chopping food into little portions so that it could cook quicker.

These bite-sized foods get rid of the need for knives and thus, chopsticks were invented.

5. The bat is a good luck symbol

The bat is a very old good luck symbol in China that is frequently showed in designs for textiles, porcelain and other crafts.

6. Fish and Chinese culture

The carp is a symbol of perseverance and strength. The whiskers and scales of the fish make it resemble a dragon, the biggest symbol of power in China.

Fish in general play a big role in Chinese culture and the words for “wealth” and “fish” are pronounced the equal in Chinese.

7. Pigtails

In some parts of China “pigtails” were linked with a girl marital status. An adult girl would wear 2 pigtails, and when she married, she would wear only one.

This may have contributed to the European view that pigtails are linked with young girls and children.

8. Mirror protect from hidden spirits

In old china, mirrors were trusted to save their owners from evil, making secret spirits visible and exposing the secrets of the future.

A person who had been afraid by a ghost could be cured by looking in the mirror. Mirrors were generally placed on the ceilings of funeral chambers.

9. Katydid chosen for it’s long life span

Because the katydid (cicada) has the biggest life period of any inspect (up to seventeen years) and sheds its skin, it has long been a symbol of rebirth and regeneration for the Chinese.

In very old china, the Chinese would place jade katydid in the mounts of the dead for the reason that they were thought to slow down the decay process and quick up the rebirth in another globe.