Facts On China And The Chinese People
In third-century China, kites were used as games, ritual objects, musical instruments, transmitters of messages, distance-measuring devices, weapons and parachutes.
In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Peking, one took revenge against one's enemies by placing finely chopped tiger's whiskers in their food. The numerous infinitesimal whisker barbs would get caught in the victim's digestion tract and cause hundreds of painful sores and infections.
The men who served as guards along the Great Wall of China in the Middle Ages were often born on the wall, grew up there, married there, died there, and were buried within it. Many of these guards never left the wall in their entire lives.
In Tales from Early Histories, the Chinese historian Ssu-ma relates that the Yin dynasty king, Chou-Hsin (1154-1122 B.C.) used the following mixtures as aphrodisiacs:
- The Hunting Lion—The paws of bears simmered over a slow fire, and flavored with the horn of a rhinoceros and distilled human urine.
- Celestial Thunder—The tongues of a hundred peacocks spiced with chili powder from the western provinces and flavored with the sperm of pubescent boys.
- Three-Day Glory—soy beans mixed with fresh gin-seng, the penis of an ox, and dried human placenta.
In ancient China, towns were often arranged in specific patterns so that if seen from the air the whole community resembled an animal or symbolic design. The city of Tsuenchen-fu was built in the shape of a carp. Wung-Chun was laid out in a shape of a fish net. Other towns were arranged to resemble snakes, stars, sunbursts and dragons.
The famous Boxer Rebellion in China received its name from its association with an ancient Chinese martial art Kung-Fu. During this bloody uprising in northern China in ch'uan (“Harmonious and Righteous Fists”) set out to destroy all foreign influences in China, including schools, churches, and places of commerce and trade. The numbers of this society were well trained in the ancient fighting art of Kung-fu, which, because there was no equivalent word in English to describe it, became known to westerners simply as “boxing.” Hence the uprising was termed the “Boxers' Rebellion.”
In ancient China people committed suicide by eating a pound of salt.
The willow-leaf pattern commonly found on Chinese plates and cookware is descended from a series of signs and emblems used by ancient Chinese secret societies. The original pattern, designed in the fifteenth century and used as a means of communication among members of these societies, was discovered by the Manchu government, which ordered all the plates destroyed. The pattern turned up again in Europe in the eighteenth century. It has been copied by a western merchant who had managed to smuggle a few of the original plates out of China.
In the early fifteenth century, scholars in China compiled an encyclopedia consisting of 11,095 volumes.
Chang Hsien-chung, a Chinese bandit, is credited with having killed 40 million people between 1643 and 1648. He completely wiped out the population of Szechwan province.
At funerals in ancient China, when the lid of a coffin was closed, mourners took a few steps backward lest their shadows get caught in the box.
There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.
Some Chinese typewriters have 5,700 characters. The keyboard is almost 3 feet wide on some models, and the fastest one can type on these machines is 11 words per minute.
Until the modernization of China, and to some extent still today, the Chinese did the following things:
- When they met a friend they shook their own hand, not his.
- When serving tea they placed the saucer over the cup (to keep it warm), not under it.
- They drank hot beverages to cool themselves.
- After bathing they dried themselves with a wet towel.
- When building a house they constructed the roof first.
- Their compasses pointed south, not north.
- They said “westsouth”, not “southwest.”
- Their surnames came first, not last.
- They addressed letters in the following manner: New York City, Street Blank, 50, Jones, John Mr.
- They read books from back to front and put footnotes at the top of the page.
- Noon was any time between 12:00 and 2:00 pm, midnight any hour before dawn.
- They used paper in their windows instead of glass.
Centuries before Christ, the Chinese were using natural gas for lighting. Gas was brought to the surface from beds of rock salt 1,600 feet beneath the ground, conveyed through bamboo pipes, and used for illuminating home interiors in Szechwan province.
Confucius is not a Chinese name. In China the sage's name is K'ung Fu-tzu. Further, the words “mandarin,” “junk,” “coolie,” and “pagoda” are all english. None of them is Chinese in origin.
The abacus was not invented in China. It originated in Egypt in 2000 B.C., almost a millennium before it reached the Asia.
The Chinese invented eyeglasses. Marco Polo reported seeing many pairs worn by the Chinese as early as 1275, 500 years before lens griding became an art in the West.
In the Chinese written language, the ideograph that stands for “trouble” represents two women under one roof.