What’s up, Homechildren! I’m back with a whole new article that is gonna be da bomb! Today we’re going to talk about China, the world’s most populous country and yet one that is still kind of a mystery for much of the world. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to do some really deep research and discover some crazy facts about the country that will blow your socks off. So here goes.
1. China Datang Corporation makes 8 billion socks a year
Located in a district in Beijing known as “Sock City” that’s around 4 pairs of socks for each person on the planet, Dawg.
2. Every Panda in the world is technically on loan from China
Back in the 1980s, China began supplying the zoos of the world with pandas as a sign of goodwill. Under the agreement, every panda born abroad is to be shipped back to the Panda Motherland in order to diversify the gene pool.
3. Around 35 million Chinese live in caves
The majority of these cave homes are concentrated in the northwestern Shaanxi province and while the idea of living in a cave might sound super old school in a caveman sort of way, a lot of these cave homes are tricked out. Even cave dwellers gotta live large, know what I’m saying?
4. The Chinese go through 80 billion chopsticks a year
Dayam! That’s 20 million trees that have to be chopped down. The average tree is around 20 years old when it’s cut down, or one year before it could legally drink, Homeslice.
5. The 20 richest Chinese have more wealth than all of Hungary
Their combined wealth is more than $145 billion while the GDP of Hungary is around $120 billion. Wow.
6. 30 million men between the ages of 25 and 40 will be forever alone
Due to the decades-old One Child Policy, parents would engage in sex selection in which mothers would abort daughters in order to have sons. Today, this huge surplus of males is a sad legacy of this policy.
7. Breathing the Beijing air is like smoking 21 cigarettes a day.
If you’ve ever wanted to know why everybody in the city walks around wearing those surgeon masks, there you go. The smog is so bad that you can actually see it from space, obstructing the view of the Great Wall in the process.
8. The Chinese finish smoking 100,000 cigarettes a second
Well, if you’re going to live in a country with air dirty enough to mimic the health effects of smoking, you might as well actually smoke while you’re at it, right son?
9. The Chinese annual consumption of instant noodles would be enough to feed everybody in Algeria three meals a day
The Chinese love their noodles. In 2011 they consumed 42.5 billion packs of instant noodles and the population of Algeria is 38.7 million. So if you do some of that math magic, you’ll see where we came up with this piece of trivia, Boss.
10. There’s a stigma associated with eating cheese
Are you familiar with the expression, “Cheese is for barbarians!” Okay, me neither. But in China dairy products have traditionally been perceived as such because at one time only the fearsome, barbaric nomads who lived in the country’s outskirts consumed them.
11. China managed to produce more cement over a two-year period than the US did in the entire 20th century
We’re talking about a stretch from 2011 through 2013. Given that China consumes 60% of the world’s cement, this probably isn’t much of a surprise.
12. Half of the world’s entire pig population lives in China
That’s around 700 million Peppas and Peps or whatever. Hmm. I wonder why they would need so many pigs…
13. The Chinese consumed 52 million tons of pork in 2012
Oh, that’s why. That’s the same weight as 5,200 Eiffel Towers, if you care to know.
14. The Chinese railway tracks would be long enough to encircle the Earth twice.
The length of the railway tracks in China is a combined 57,800 miles while the Earth is a bit less than 25,000 miles in circumference. Fo’ shizzle.
15. From east to west the length of China is equal to the distance between England and Nigeria
That’s around 3,000 miles. What’s really kind of silly is that the country only observes one time zone (Beijing time, obviously) when, geographically speaking, it ought to have five.
