Sorry Texas, but you’ve lost claim to the “everything is bigger here” line. For years now I’ve tried and failed miserably to explain China to people, and while I certainly haven’t gotten it all down yet, I finally have figured out how to adequately explain the size of China.
For starters, China is roughly the size of America by total land mass, but remember that China is all together, whereas much of our acreage comes from Alaska. Despite having just one official time zone, there are parts of China, some of which I will be visiting in a few weeks, that are closer to Berlin than to Beijing. If you took Chicago and put it in China, it would barely crack the top 100.
Now for the people. Take the population of America and multiply it by 5, and that’s China. Now take the population of America and multiply it by ~4.7 and then move all of those people east of the Mississippi, and you get China. That’s how crowded it is here on the coastal regions. Beijing as a city, due to its history and geographic location, has grown out rather than up. If you go to google maps (yes China, I used the word google; please don’t smite my blog and internet access oh overlords of the internet, I promise not to do it again) and look at Beijing, then zoom out until you can see the entire circumference of the sixth ring road, that is, roughly, Beijing. Now take that same depth of zoom and center it on Wofford or Charlotte or any other place you’re familiar with the area around. My home in rural Chester, SC, is an apartmented suburb of Charlotte if Charlotte were Beijing, and by suburb I mean not that far out there.
Talk to any Chinese person and they’ll all say the same thing. There are just too many Chinese. Next time you criticize the one child policy, think twice before speaking. And the next time you have to get on a crowded bus or subway or are stuck in rush hour traffic, trust me, you ain’t seen nothing.
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Kunming, China |
