China


Researched by Gator N.
2007-08

Introduction

China is a very old and ancient country.  China has a large landscape with many people.  They eat many different foods-some that you may think are disgusting.  China has many sports and festivals like Chinese New Year.  China also has the Great Wall of China.  The history of China is very interesting.  

Geography

How big do you think China is?  It is about 3.7 million square miles.  China’s capital is Beijing but other big cities include Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Harbin, and Chengdu.  Some major rivers are, the Yangtze (or Chiangjang) river, Huanghe (or Yellow) river, and the Si (or Zhujiang) river.  The terrain in China includes plains and hills in the east and mountains, deserts, and deltas in the west.  The highest point of China is 29,022 feet tall which is Mt. Everest (Mt.  Jumulangma). People and the Language There are a lot of people in China.  There are about 1.2 billion people in China.  In China most people speak mandarin.  In fact about 70% of people in China speak mandarin.  The rest speak the six other Chinese dialects.  2/3 of the natives speak mandarin.  Putonghua means mandarin in mandarin.  Fan (“fun”) means rice in mandarin.  In mandarin noodles means mien (“me-an”).  China is so populated that you can only have one child in China.  You can only have two children for certain reasons and/or places. History
China is the oldest major civilization.  It records back about 3, 500 ago.  The Chinese civilization was developed by nomad tribes called the Mongols in the 13th century.  The ruler developed a government that gave them a chance of over neighboring nomadic cultures.     

  
Chinese New Year    

Chinese New Year is also called Spring Festival in China.  Most people in China celebrate the Chinese New Year.  It takes place between January 21 and February 20.  The date changes each year, according to the book Fiesta.  Poems are written on long sheets of paper and are put on doorways to wish good luck to the New Year.  The Chinese do lots of cleaning and get ready days before the Chinese New Year.  They clean their kitchen because they think the kitchen god will tell the other gods about their family behavior.  The Chinese think the kitchen god’s lips are rubbed with honey so he’ll say sweet things.  The Chinese also put large pictures of fierce gods on doors and set off firecrackers to scare away evil spirits (they now use tape recorders because firecrackers are dangerous).  They use mainly red for decorations.  Flowers and plants like small peach and kumquat trees are purchased.  All the family members gather at home to ring in the New Year.  They have a special dinner.  Children are encouraged to stay up to midnight or they’ll say that they will have a short life.  On New Year day the Chinese take baths and wear their new clothrs.  They greet each other with the words “Gong Xi and Fa Lai” which means may prosperity be with you.  In order to encourage this idea of prosperity, children are given red and gold envelopes which contain money.  

The Great Wall of China

The Chinese call the Great Wall of China the Wall of Ten thousand Li.  The Li is a Chinese measurement equal to one third of a mile.  The Great Wall of China is a long structure built by hand by slaves.  The Great Wall is about 4,000 miles long but the main part is only about 2,150 miles.  For centuries rulers used the wall to protect China from invaders.  One of the highest sections of the Great Wall is 35 feet tall and 25 feet wide.  The sides are made of earth, brick, and stone.  The roadway on the top is paved from bricks for horsemen.  The Great Wall took hundreds of years to complete.  The first China emperor was credited for making the Great Wall join shorter walls.  The wall was built before the Ch’in period (221 B.C. to 206 B.C.).  The Great Wall was expanded from 589 A.D. to 618 A.D.  Even more work was done from 1368 A.D. to 1644 A.D. but later it was against the rules.  The communist government rebuilt parts. China Sports In China, lots of sports are played.  Badminton is a popular sport in china.  Some famous badminton players in China are Lin Dan, Zhang Ning, Goa Ling, and Uang Sui.  Badminton must be popular.  It exists across the country.  Baseball in China started in 1863.  Organized baseball games were established between the St. John University and Shnghai MCK baseball club in1905.  In 1959 Mao Zedong disbanded all the baseball teams.  Soon baseball started again.  That must have been crazy.  Baseball isn’t a popular sport in China.  Basketball wasn’t a popular sport in China.  China is the third oldest country to play basketball.  The first countries to play basketball are the U.S.A and Canada.  Now basketball is a popular sport in China.  About 300 million people in China play basketball.  

Cricket is a very popular sport in China.  Cricket is so popular that they have goals like this: They want to have a certain number of teams and players in a certain year (for example lets say they want to have 200 teams and 1,500 players in 2009, just for example this is not true).  Dragon boat racing is also a sport first played in China.  A dragon boat is a human powered boat used in dragon boat racing.  Football was first played in China since 50 B.C.  Chinese women play and are good at soccer.  Chess was approved graphically at the 2006 37th Chess Olympiad in Turin.  The mens team got second and the womens got third.  Chinese progress was underpinned by a large government.  The government also was testing the competitions in lots of hard events.  China has 7 top hundred players 2nd only to Russia.  China is currently the top nations figure skaters.  Pains events in China dominants field the gold and silver medals in the championship 2007 in Toleyo.  China is weak in men, women, and ice dance which is won by France, Russia, and the U.S.A. 
Golf is a good sport for business people in China.  Chinese sockets are usually the only people to access golf in mainland of China.  They are building a golf course.  The Mission Hills Golf Club is said to have the worlds largest golf course which is at Gualan in Shenzhen.  The Chinese womens national ice hockey team is in comparisin better than the boys.  China’s one team in the Asia League Ice hockey is called the China Sharks.  Grand Prix (a type of racing) Formula event one was held at Snavy hai International Circuit.  

Rugby union is also popular.  China is ahead of Madagascar but is behind Sweden.  They failed to qualify in the 1999 and 2007 Rugby World Cup.  Rugby is popular in the Chinese military.  Ping Pong is so popular in China that it is estimated that about 300 million people play it there.  

Before People's Republic China was founded in 1949, people that participated in the Olympic games won zero games.  Since 1949 China participated in six summer and seven winter Olympic games winning 112 gold medals in the summer Olympics.  In July 2001 Beijing succeeded to bid bring 2008 Olympic games.  Since December 2003 they began to build designs.  At the end of 2001 the theme was the “Green Olympics”.  It costed the U.S. about 2 billion dollars and Beijing at least 180 billion yuan (the Chinese word for dollar).  

The Food

Do you like Chinese food?  This might change your mind.  Snake is made in thick soups in China, while iguanas are suspended in wine and eaten in small amounts.  Iguanas are hard to find though.  The Chinese believe the more exotic, the better that person’s health.  For example, dried crocodile meat put in soup is said to stop a child’s cough.  Bear paws are braised and served to important guests.  Braised camel hooves are said to have no particular taste while braised camel humps look and taste like lumps of fat.  They even eat the camel nose.   The Cantonese are famous for their taste in exotic meats.  Dog is roasted or stewed.  Bird nests are dried and served in soups.  Shark fins are made into thick soups while jellyfish and sea slugs are served in many different ways.  Century eggs are served as an appetizer with vinegar and pickled ginger.  The century egg starts as a regular egg covered in alkaline ash.  They keep it in a cool dark place for a month or longer.  By then the egg white turns to black jelly, and the yolk is ringed with gray.      

Money 

The Chinese use the Yuan for money (Yuan means dollar in mandarin).  The Yuan is divided in to ten chiao, which is each worth ten fen.  In 1914 China established the Yuan as a silver coin with 33.4934 grams of pure silver.  Yuan is now paper money with  little silver buck on it.

Conclusion

China is a very awesome country with still a lot to learn.  The food you might think is gross and you may not like all those sports but still I think China is awesome.  I would like to go there.  Would you want to China sometime? 
 

Who I Interviewed And What I Learned

I interviewed Mr. Bennett.  He was in China for six weeks in 2001.  Mr. Bennett taught English to school teachers in China.  He got involved by a lady in his church that worked at an English language institute in China.  Mr. Bennett’s uncle was in China a few years ago which made Mr. Bennett interested. He has also had not traveled far away for a while and also wanted to see the Great Wall of China.  He had to be a collage gradwate and do a two week training in California to be accepted.  What Mr. Bennett liked was that the people are different and it was part of a different culture. He also visited the Great Wall of China.  He said that it was uneven, steep, and flat on the top.  Each side was different.  One side looked like it defended China and one was inside China, so didn’t look like a defending side.  Mr. Bennett also said that the top of the wall was wide enough to drive a car on.  Mr. Bennett visited a forbidden city the emperor use to live.  The Emperor had a lot of wives.  He also said that the U.S.A helped China a lot. Mr. Bennett knows a little mandarin like (these might be spelled wrong) like Ni hoa (which means hi) and shwa (which means water).  He added extra that soon China will speak more English than the U.S.A.  Mr. Bennett taught more English to teachers (the teachers already know some English).  He said when he went through the park or something like that, that people would gather around him to learn or see him speak English.  He said the food was weird.  He got sick seven times in the six weeks he was there.  They serve course after course.  Once Mr. Bennett went to a buffet with his friends.  The waiter(s) brought out this huge 16 inch lobster with raw meat on its back/tail.  Mr. Bennett didn’t really eat much but his friends did.  When the meat was gone the lobster lifted up its pinchers.  The lobster was still alive.  Then the waiter(s) took it away.  
 

The Products I Created
One of the products I created was a buzzer board that was shaped like and looked like a Chinese flag.  It had questions including What is the highest point of China and What does fan mean in mandarin.  The answers were Mt. Everest and rice.  Another product I did was a pamphlet which had multiple choice questions, some pictures with captions, and a summary of my report. 
 

 Bibliography
Bennett, Roger.  Personal interview.  2/21/08   Bureau of East of Pacific Affairs.  “History” Background Note: China.  3/4/08        <http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bng/18902.htm>   Ferroa, Peggy.  Cultures of the World China.  Tarrytown: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1997.      All  Field Enterprises Educational Corporation.  “The Great Wall of China.” The World Book
Encyclopedia.
 Grolier Educational.  Fiesta.  Don’t know: Times Editions, 1999.  All  No Author.  “The Great Wall of China.” The World Book Encyclopedia   No Author.  “Sports in China”  Wikipedia.  3/4/08
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_in_China>
 

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