Think you “know” China or Chinese culture, but eating Chinese food one night a week does not qualify you to be a Chinese culture aficionado. Here are facts that may have some scratching their heads.
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1 While training new soldiers to always keep their chins up, a small, but very sharp pin is placed facing upwards through their collars
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2 In order to ensure uniform arm height while marching, soldiers learn to march with their arms wired and attached to poles
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3 There are more than 100 million Chinese citizens that scrape to live off what amounts to one U.S. dollar a day
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4 Ketchup is actually a Chinese invention. It was originally a pickled fish sauce called ke-tsiap
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5 Instead of driving away with their food from the drive-thru, Chinese people actually park their cars and bring the food back into the restaurant to eat it
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6 There are more than 54 million Christians in China
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7 Chinese death rates by execution are four times higher than anywhere else in the world
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8 These eggs boiled in the urine of young virgin boys is considered a delicacy in certain areas of China
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9 In China, some of the largest record labels are freely downloadable via Google
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10 Because of their aggressive nature and keen vision, geese are used as police animals instead of dogs
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11 As China has a one-child policy, tens of thousands of girl babies are abandoned and more than a million aborted each year in favor of potentially raising a boy
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12 These cave dwellings are called yaodongs. 30,000,000 cave-dwellers live in these dwellings which is more than the entire population of Australia.
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13 China’s air pollution is so terrible that it travels across the Pacific and pollutes San Francisco, contributing to more than a third of the city’s air pollution
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14 Certain Chinese food companies were charged for marinating meat in goat urine and making tofu out of raw sewage image014
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15 Because virginity is highly prized among females, they can pay upwards of $700 to have their hymens restored
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16 If you breathed freely in Beijing for one day, it would be the equivalent of smoking 21 cigarettes
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17 Playstations and other foreign gaming consoles are illegal in China
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18 19 million cats are eaten every year in China
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19 The longest traffic jam in history, which lasted 12 days over 62 miles was in Shanghai image019
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20 Smart phone addicts have been given their own walking lane so as not to bump into normal walking pedestrians
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21 The World’s Biggest Mall, located in China, is 99% empty