China is the world's most populous nation. There are currently seventy thousand cities in China with a population of one million or more and five hundred cities with a population in excess of ten million. The government's "one family, one child" policy notwithstanding, 87,000 people are born every minute in China. The preference for male children has led to a demographic discrepancy of 3,936,600,008 males to 1,471,312,023 females (add 63,000 to the male total and 24,000 to the female total for every minute after the publication of this piece while subtracting 16,000 per minute for the country's mortality rate).
China is vast, encompassing 22 time zones. When dawn is breaking in Harbin, the sun is setting in Kashgar. In between the two are icy tundra and yak. In summer, broiling tundra and broiling yak. The National Planning Board has recently laid 652,000 kilometers of railroad track to Tibet. Six hundred fifty-two thousand trains (each .75 kilometers in length) depart the Central Station each morning en route to Lhasa. Travellers carry predominantly fireworks, transistor radios, and melons.
Chinese love melons, consuming an average of 1,430 kilos per person per annum. Unripe melons are opened using fireworks. If all the fireworks employed annually to open unripe Chinese melons in even one of the country's 7,310 regions or 812 autonomous zones were laid end to end, they could reach the sun and explode it.
Rice is a staple. Seven hundred billion eight hundred million six hundred nineteen thousand four hundred two grains of rice are consumed every minute in China (excluding major hotels).
Shanghai is China's New York. Beijing is its Washington, D.C. Guangzhou is Los Angeles. Shenzen is like Atlanta. Tianjin calls to mind Philadelphia (in the fall). Chongqing is the St. Louis of China; Dongguan the Dallas (or rather, Fort Worth); and gracious Wuhan its San Francisco. Nanjing is reminiscent of Milwaukee and Chengdu, Tacoma.
Entire Chinese cities are devoted to to the production of specific consumer goods. Hefei is known for its optical lenses. Jinan manufactures microchips and potato chips; Zhengzhou, bras and girdles; Shenjang, pancakes; Guiyang, the blue aprons worn by Wal-Mart employees. Dalian is renowned for its neurosurgeons, producing the equivalent of a Hopkins-trained brain surgeon every eleven minutes.
The number of flat-screen televisions China supplies annually to Wal-Mart exceeds the combined population of all sixteen countries in the euro zone. This figure is projected to increase exponentially in the next eight years and by 2018, China will furnish Wal-Mart with more than 78 billion TVs per annum.
Enormous Wal-Marts (known as Friendship Stores) are being constructed on the outskirts of the 14,000 most populous Chinese metropolitan areas. These mega-superstores will allow consumers to purchase unusually large items such as in-ground swimming pools, backhoes, and Costco franchises.
Ice cream is coming to the People's Republic in a big and powerful way. Forty-five million villagers have been evacuated from the Three Gorges River Plateau in anticipation of the churning of three billion gallons of cream, 316 hectares of ice, 98 tons of salt from the famous mines of South Jiangsu, and 2800 kilos of chocolate chips in anticipation of the August 2010 creation of the world's largest serving of dessert. This event was initially intended to coincide with the opening festivities of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but authorities at that time were unable to make chocolate chip ice cream glow in the dark.
Global hegemony has traditionally been a U.S. specialty, but now China is contesting America. The adoption of near free-market economics as well as an artificially low exchange rate, a lack of emphasis on human and property rights, and a limitless labor base give China a surprisingly competitive edge. China's economy currently grows at an annual rate of 92% as does the number of medals it wins at each successive Olympics.
To win those medals, officials ask those youths who have trained as neurosurgeons in Dalian but do not possess the requisite skills to staff one of the nation's two million hospitals, to consider employing their steady nerves to become archers, marksmen, etc. Prospective athletes are housed in sizable rural compounds (known as Friendship Villages), given a bicycle and athletic stipend, and are informed that they may see their loved ones again once they can strike the center of a target from a distance of nine kilometers while blindfolded.
Blindfold production is up 375% since this initiative was introduced late last year. This fact becomes particularly pertinent when considering that China is now also beginning to challenge the U.S. in per capita contributions to world pollution. Beijing has a long way to go in reducing China's carbon footprint, but government leaders have found that donning blindfolds before attending climate conferences and the like diminishes anxiety. Meanwhile, demand for renewable energy is expected to rise rapidly in China, and scientists in Xian recently announced a promising breakthrough: given sufficient clean coal emissions, chocolate chip ice cream does indeed glow in the dark.
