China, officially the People’s Republic of China is a country in East Asia.
China has a total area of 9,596,960 square km.
Beijing is its capital and Shanghai is its largest city.
Chinese is the official language of China.
Renminbi (yuan; ¥) (CNY) is its official currency.
Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bharat, North Korea, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam are China's land neighbours (thus, China has the most number of neighbours touching its borders).
China has one of the largest populations in the world and is among the most ancient continuous civilizations still in existence.
Some of the earliest known forms of toilet paper were developed in China. At first, it was reserved mainly for imperial use before gradually spreading to wider society.
Cricket fighting has long existed in Chinese culture as a traditional pastime and form of entertainment.
Despite its vast size, China uses a single national time zone, known as Beijing Time.
Historians believe an early form of football called cuju was played in China more than two thousand years ago, making it one of the earliest known ball games involving kicking.
China is credited with several world-changing inventions, including paper, gunpowder, the compass, and printing, often called the “Four Great Inventions.”
The name China is commonly linked to the Qin dynasty, which unified the country in the third century BCE and influenced its name in foreign languages.
Written Chinese is among the oldest continuously used writing systems in the world.
Food in traditional Chinese cuisine was cut into small pieces to reduce cooking time and fuel use, which encouraged the widespread use of chopsticks instead of knives at the table.
The kite was invented in ancient China and was originally used for military signaling before becoming a popular toy and cultural symbol.
Early forms of ice cream can be traced to China, where mixtures of milk and rice were cooled with snow.
In the second century CE, Chinese scientist Zhang Heng invented an early seismoscope capable of detecting distant earthquakes.
China was drilling for natural gas using bamboo pipes centuries before similar methods appeared in Europe.
According to legend, tea was discovered when leaves accidentally fell into boiling water prepared for an emperor, beginning China’s long relationship with tea culture.
Ancient Chinese engineers developed important tools such as the water wheel and the iron plough, advancing agriculture and industry.
The color red symbolizes happiness, good fortune, and celebration in Chinese culture and is widely used in festivals and weddings.
By the eleventh century, Chinese inventors had created mechanical clocks that could measure time accurately.
In imperial China, long fingernails were sometimes grown by wealthy people as a symbol of high social status and freedom from manual labor.
The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world.
Silk production was once a closely guarded secret in China, and smuggling silkworms or revealing the method could result in severe punishment.
Legend says silk was discovered when a silkworm cocoon fell into hot tea prepared for an empress, unraveling into fine threads.
Early Chinese medical thinkers described aspects of blood circulation long before it was fully understood in Europe.
Fossils of Peking Man (Homo erectus) discovered near Beijing show that early human ancestors lived in China hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The Grand Canal, linking northern and southern China, is the world’s longest artificial waterway and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Ancient Chinese paper was strong enough to be used for clothing and even light armor in some periods.
China became the third nation to conduct a spacewalk in 2008, when astronaut Zhai Zhigang walked outside a spacecraft.
Traditional Chinese age-counting once treated everyone as a year older at the Lunar New Year, making Chinese New Year the most important annual celebration.
During World War II, Shanghai served as a rare refuge for thousands of Jewish refugees because it did not require entry visas.
Early Chinese warfare used chemical smokes and toxic gases long before similar weapons appeared in modern conflicts.
The crossbow was invented in ancient China and became a powerful military weapon.
Early forms of suspension bridges were built in China using rope and wooden planks long before similar designs appeared in Europe.
The bat is a symbol of good luck in Chinese culture because the word for bat sounds like the word for happiness.
The traditional Chinese lunar calendar is one of the oldest timekeeping systems in the world and follows a repeating sixty-year cycle.
In 1974, archaeologists uncovered the Terracotta Army near the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China. The site contains thousands of life-sized soldiers, horses, and chariots created to guard him in the afterlife.