China Fact- Counterfeits

Over 50% of counterfeit goods in the EU come from China

In Europe, China was the main source country for intellectual property rights infringing articles with 54% of the total amount.CD/DVD was the top category of articles detained with a total amount of 79 million, which accounted for 44% of the entire amount, followed by cigarettes (23%) and clothing and accessories (10%)

China Fact- Chopsticks

from here

China uses 45 billion chopsticks per year

In China, an estimated 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks are used and thrown away annually. This adds up to 1.7 million cubic metres of timber or 25 million fully grown trees every year.

Great List

from here

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
· A snail can sleep for three years.
· Babies are born without kneecaps. They don’t appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
· Butterflies taste with their feet.
· Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.
· February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
· If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
· In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
· Leonardo DiVinci invented the scissors.
· No word in the English language rhymes with month.
· Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
· Shakespeare invented the words ‘assassination’ and ‘bump’.
· “Stewardesses” is the longest word typed with only the left hand, “lollipop” with your right.
· The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
· The name of all of the continents end with the same letter that they start with.
· The words ‘racecar’ and ‘kayak’ are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left.
· TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
· Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
· If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at a red light.
· In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch face is 10:10.
· The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
· Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.
· There’s no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables.
· There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: “abstemious” and “facetious.”
· There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs five times: “indivisibility.”
· The Bible does not say there were three wise men; it only says there were three gifts.
· Did you know that crocodiles never outgrow the pool in which they live?
· That means that if you put a baby croc in an aquarium, it would be little for the rest of its life.
· A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle; a group of geese in the air is a skein.
· A “jiffy” is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
· Pinocchio is Italian for “pine eye”.
· The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every letter of the alphabet.
· The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is “uncopyrightable”.
· It’s impossible to lick your elbow.
· More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
· Rats and horses can’t vomit.
· The “sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language
· Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
· In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
· The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
· A duck’s quack doesn’t echo anywhere, and no one knows why.
· In the course of an average lifetime you will, while sleeping, eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders.
· Most lipstick contains fish scales.
· Cat’s urine glows under a black light.
· Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different.

Busy Beijing- Chinese Traffic

Xue Feng- Spying on China or Just a Tool To Make a Point? Part 1

China is proud to have caught alleged spy Xue Feng ‘spying ‘ on China. Proud, I claim, for one principal reason. The reason is that Xue Feng, to China is a Chinese and will aways be a Chinese person. Yes he holds an American passport and got out of China during Tianenman, and thus is a lucky man, but that only serves to anger the chinese and communists more.

There is a big push in China to keep the locals in China. They are frustrated by the vast numbers of educated and wealthy who are flocking from China like rats from a skinkning ship. Each day the news laudits those ‘overseas Chinese’ who return to their’mother’ or China.The chicoms don’t want more people to leave, it is a face saving thing, it hurts their pride.

Thus, it is interesting to take note of this case in those terms. The man who is caught is a well eduated Chinese man who has dared to work overseas and share his intelligence with a country ohter than his ‘motherland’. Thus, irrepespective of if he was spying or not, as to me, that is just a detail for this piece, the Chinese are using him to make a poiont.

The point is, that if you are a Chinese, or were a Chinese and return to the ‘motherland’ and are caught doing something that may even be marginal, you will receive the full punishment of the law. The Rio Tinto case is similar, but in it there was supposedly outright bribery. But it runs parallel in terms of the people in that case were also Chinese who had changed citizenship. The chicoms seem to be sending a strong message. At least imho…

Chinese Lady Pole Dances in the Street

From Chinasmack.com

Corruption in China- Living and Working in China

I was working wtih a company that is trying to set up and online purchasing and sales platform. The managers were convinced that it was great, but it met with fierce resistance. I could not figure out why, it was more efficient and more transparent, but the manager level employees fought us the entire way, they continually attempted to undermine the success of the system. I inquired as to why this was so, and my Chinese friend was astonished. He said that it all revolved around bribes and kickbacks. I was shocked, I asked what he meant. He stated that in this system it is more efficient and transparent and thus it would be harder to cheat. I asked if cheating or bribes were common, he was too embarrassed to give a number, as in percent of people who partake in such things, but let me know that it is par for the course. When you are in China and work in purchasing, you will get gifts or kickbacks, that is how China works. We never did implement the new system.

Eating Kaca in China

Marriable Age in China

The sign painted on a building in a village in Hubei, China, informs of the marriageable age in the country (22 for men, 20 for women) from wiki

Hazy Days in China

This shot give you a sense of the ever-present pollution problem in China. On days like this, visibility is limited to one-half of a mile due to pollution.