China
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| This article is about China, the dick country. For the non-Wilson member of washed-up vocal trio Wilson-Philips, see Chynna. For the 180-lb. “female” wrestler with the fake boobs, five o’clock shadow, George Clooney jaw line, and, most disturbingly, naked photo spread in Playboy, see Chyna. |
It is important to note that not everyone who lives in China is a dick. However, even if the dick to non-dick ratio was a very conservative 1 in 1,000, that’s still a million dicks, which is a whole lot of dick.
China is one of the world’s oldest civilizations, dating back more than six millennia. It also boasts several of the world’s tallest humans, both historically and living, including the 7 ft. 9 in. Sun Ming Ming, whose Discovery Channel special Anatomy of a Giant is just the type of crap that passes for educational television these days.
Not only did the Chinese devise the world’s first written language, they also developed what scholars refer to as the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China: paper, the compass, gunpowder, and P.F. Chang’s.
Like all great nations, China loves warfare, almost as much as it enjoys holding a grudge. In fact, the last in a series of Chinese Civil Wars, which began in the 1930s and dragged out for some 20 years—with WWII and the Sino-Japanese War thrown in for good measure—still remains officially unresolved.
This stalemate has resulted in two political entities claiming the name China: the People’s Republic of China, which—encompassing the mainland, Hong Kong, and Macau—is communist; and the Republic of China (ROC)—a small island chain in the South China Sea—which is not. Regardless of political ideology, both manufacture a ton of plastic tctotchkes.
Since the 1970s, the ROC has gone by the name “Taiwan,” while “China” usually refers to the People’s Republic. However, there are also those who use China as a catchall to describe the Far East as a whole, labeling all its inhabitants “Chinese” or “Chinamen” or “gooks,” in embarrassingly blatant ignorance of any geographic, ethnic, and/or religious differences. These people are called “grandfathers,” and they usually do it in crowded places, like a Thai restaurant or your graduation from M.I.T., and really loudly, too, because they’re kind of hard of hearing.
Despite the fact that Taiwan has been around for quite some time, China refuses to grant it independent legitimacy. In this way, they are a lot like the Bacon Brothers, the band consisting of actor Kevin and his older brother Michael. Except without the acoustic guitars. And the snakeskin boots. And with much greater bearing on the balance of world peace. Also, China doesn’t have an endorsement deal from Hanes. Okay, maybe the Bacon Brothers are a poor analogy.
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Etymology
Interestingly enough, the Chinese name for China is not “China,” but Zhongguo, which, broken down into individual characters literally translates as “Middle Kingdom” or “Central Kingdom.” As a concept, however, Zhongguo can be interpreted to mean “Center of the World,” “Center of Civilization” or “Center for Disease Control Still Recommends Americans Get Vaccinated for Typhoid Before Teaching English or Taking Group Tours Here.”
Population
China is the world’s most heavily inhabited country, with a population in excess of one billion. In fact, it is said that one in every six people on earth lives there, thus making China the Kevin Bacon of the global census. See, now that analogy works a whole lot better.
Of course, this incredible population, combined with the government’s “soft”-Stalinistic push toward industrialization, makes China a growing consumer of natural resources, a prime force in the world’s economy, and an emerging superpower. As such, China exists largely to assuage American guilt about its own planetary impact. This allows the U.S. to think of itself as something like the Dunkin’ Donuts to China’s Starbucks, which, incidentally, had the wantons to open a franchise at Beijing’s Forbidden City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in 2000. Protestors forced its closure in 2007, claiming, for some reason, that its presence “trampled on Chinese culture.” Don’t worry—you can still get a skinny grande half-caff Frappuccino ® at The Great Wall location.
History
Not only was China an early center of civilization, it was home to one of the oldest ancestors of modern humans. Archaeologists have discovered fossils dating from 2.24 million to 250,000 years ago. This particular breed of Homo erectus is known as “Peking Man,” which is a lot like regular man, except it’s served family style, extra-crispy, with pancakes, onions, and hoisin sauce.
Chinese history is full of all kinds of stuff you probably should have been paying attention to in eighth-grade social studies class instead of devising how to get your teacher to let you bring in a copy of “Genghis Khan,” that totally bitchin’ instrumental off the Iron Maiden Killers album, to play on Mongolia day.
Basically, though, several thousand years of events can be summed up thusly: China's history consists of many different dynasties, one after the other, who sponsored the invention of pretty much every important piece of technology, such as movable print, parachutes, spaghetti, and any DVD sold on any blanket on any sidewalk on earth. Several ages of enlightenment were disrupted by several periods of rape and pillage by various foreign occupiers—including master dicks the British, who addicted the entire country to the opium it produced there. This explains China’s trademark distrust of outsiders, as evinced by the building of a giant wall, the flooding of world markets with cheap goods for export, and the subsequent “accidental” poisoning of most of those goods.
Then came yet another revolution, led by Mao Zedong, possibly the biggest dick ever to come out of the Asian continent, and that’s saying a lot, considering Asia has been home to the likes of Atila the Hun, Pol Pot, and the Pizzicato Five.
Government and Economy
General Mao’s dick legacy to China is communism, one of the last remaining places to still consider it a good way to rule. Of course, Chinese communism is not the same as the type of communism made infamous by places like Albania. Rather, it is more of a puu puu platter of political ideologies: a few spare ribs of free-market style capitalism, some cold sesame noodles of socialist propaganda, and a few nuggets of sweet and sour military authoritarianism, topped off with a big egg roll of good, old-fashioned subjugation of freedom.
While some Chinese citizens are certainly prospering these days, enjoying new luxuries like electricity and even toilet paper, the government still reserves the right to place limits on family size, purposely flood entire regions that have existed for thousands of years in the name of progress, turn tanks against its own people, and perhaps most horrifically, ban Google.
2008 Summer Olympics
In September 2008, Beijing will host the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, in which the world’s greatest athletes will gather to compete to see who can get their hands on the least detectable performance-enhancing substances.
Like anything else that occurs on the international stage, this has sparked several different forms of protest. Some outcry stems from purported human rights violations, such as the forceful relocation of some 1.5 million people out of Beijing, most of them political activists, beggars, and/or the mentally ill, all of whom the Chinese government can detain without trial and “re-educate” through four years of hard labor.
There has also been a fair amount of complaining about horrible air and water pollution, especially in Beijing. Despite the severity of the situation, China promises that Beijing’s air and water will be totally clean by the start of the Olympics. It plans to accomplish this by hanging up a ton of posters proclaiming that Beijing’s air and water will be totally clean by the start of the Olympics.
Most of the flap stems from the torch relay, which has been, by all accounts, a PR nightmare for China. Despite the tireless efforts of the Beastie Boys, Richard Gere, and the type of college student who doesn’t shave her pits, China continues to occupy Tibet and apparently has no intentions of leaving. And apparently Tibetans don’t like that, using many torch relay events to stage protests. And apparently the Chinese government doesn’t like that.
In sympathy, several world leaders have even threatened to threaten to “boycott” the opening ceremonies of the Summer Games, but, because China kind of has everyone by the balls—it’s also got the world’s largest military, by the way—those leaders are now changing their story, claiming they aren’t “boycotting,” per se, but rather, just need to wash their hair that night.
Tainted Goods
In a practice eerily reminiscent of George Orwell’s feel-good summer beach read 1984, the United States media has attempted to curb China’s surging economic power by creating several scares related to the safety of Chinese goods. First, it was poultry. Then, it was traces of lead paint found in children’s toys, leading many U.S. consumers to boycott any plaything made in China, painted or not, in favor of those made in places like Vietnam and Indonesia, countries whose very names are synonymous with non-shady business practices.
Most recently, 81 deaths have been attributed to tainted supplies of Chinese-manufactured Heparin, a blood-thinning pharmaceutical. This is approximately 81 more than the total number of U.S. citizens who died of SARS, which was, like, the biggest freaking deal for, like, ten whole months between 2002 and 2003, and no Americans even died.
