For many, it's everything you never knew about China, starting with that nickname The Middle Kingdom.

John.

Whoa!

It's China's most traditional name, and it goes way back to the very beginning.

Ancient people didn't know what lies beyond their lands, just that they were surrounded by natural barriers on all sides, so they assume they must be the center of the world.

Actually, China is the only remaining ancient civilization it traces back over 40 centuries.

The earliest form of ice cream comes from ancient China.

King Tang of Xiang had 94 of his men go to the mountains for fresh eyes.

They'd mix it with other ingredients, like buffalo milk and flour to make an ice cream treat fit for a king.

What do you think?

Buffalo chip Ice cream?

No.

Some believe that pasta comes from China, and Marco Polo brought it to Italy much later in the 13th century.

Chopsticks have been around for 4000 years, but they were originally made for cooking, not as eating utensils.

They came in handy when grabbing hot things out of pots of course, the musical version of chopsticks had to wait until somebody invented the piano.

The Chinese use 45 billion chopsticks a year.

Also, Chinese chopsticks are longer, thicker and blunt at the end.

Compared to the thinner, pointy Japanese kind, you use thousands of nerves and over 50 muscles in your fingers, wrist, arm and shoulders while using chopsticks.

Wow, the chopsticks work out.

Mandarin is spoken by more people as their first language than any other language or dialect in the world.

There are over 800 million native Mandarin speakers, while there are 1.2 billion people who speak other Chinese dialects.

Chen Xi Wang was the first emperor of China, and the country is named after him in one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of all time.

His tomb was accidentally found in 1974 when farmers were digging a well.

It's full of life size clay statues of warriors, chariots and horses.

It dates back to 208 BC a long time ago, there was Pangu.

He broke the egg.

He was sleeping in this.

The yang was born.

It's the sky and a symbol of light forces in the world yen.

The dark forces fell down and created the earth.

Pang Go turned into five sacred mountains.

His eyes became the moon and the sun.

His blood turned into earthly waters and his hair into grass and trees.

This is the Chinese legend about the creation of the universe.

Sunglasses were invented here in the 12th century, but for an entirely different purpose.

Chinese judges wore them to hide their facial expressions during trials.

China is home to the stone forest.

It looks exactly what it sounds like.

There are giant limestone formations estimated to be over 270 million years old.

That's back when the supercontinent pen geo was still together.

The list Sean Giant Buddha is a humongous 230 foot tall statue in the session One province.

It took almost 100 years to complete, and his feet can fit.

100 people talk about giant steps.

Hey, don't get in his way.

Chinese emperors thought that their ancestors were dragons, which is why this creature is sacred here.

The Great Wall isn't just one single wall.

It's a collection of, um and all its 13,000 miles weren't built all at once.

It involved about 20 dynasties over a span of 2000 years.

13,000 miles.

That's longer than the distance from the north to the South Pole.

The Great Wall is the largest human made structure ever built.

The Chinese call it Wan Li Chong Chong, which translates as the endless wall.

Yeah, ketchup is a Chinese word for pickled fish sauce.

They're originally wasn't any tomato in it.

It was made from anchovies, mushrooms and garlic in assaulted fish.

Brian, a salted fish.

Brian on your next burger, want fries.

With that, the game shoo choo was invented around the second or third century BC, and it's considered the earliest form of soccer.

The name translates as kickball, yet the sport in which China has more Olympic gold medals than any other country ping Pong started in Victorian England.

Fortune cookies don't come from China, either.

They were invented by an employee at a noodle factory in San Francisco.

The mirror had mystic significance in ancient China.

They believe that by looking in a mirror, a person can make hidden spirits visible and protect themselves.

Chinese brides wear red wedding dresses because it's the color of luck.

White is for grieving If you can't find the fourth floor in a Chinese building, don't worry.

It's probably missing.

The number four is considered unlucky.

People will even avoid it when renting an apartment with four in the number or address.

It's like 13.

In many other countries, we think of Fung shway in the West as a way to balance your furniture.

But it's so much more than that material.

The natural elements nature, color and even the sphere of your life career knowledge, family, et cetera come into play here.

And, yes, Fung Shui is thousands of years old.

Of course, Chinese is one of the two oldest surviving languages in the world alone.

With Tamil.

It's more than 3000 years old.

There are over 50,000 characters in this language.

A large dictionary lists 20,000 and a typical educated person on Lee knows about 8000.

The Legend of the Chinese New Year tells the story of a fierce creature called Nia that would terrify villages every New Year's Eve until one day when one man realized that knee and can't be scared away by loud noises and the color red.

Since then, the Chinese decorate their houses in red and set off fireworks.

So that's how to train your dragon.

I guess it's believed that on New Year, every person turns one year older, so it's like everyone's birthday.

It's a huge celebration in this country, and the festivities last 15 days.

Chinese scientists, young hang, invented the first size mus cope way back in the second century.

The vase looking contraption might seem archaic.

A bronze ball would fall from one of a tube like dragons and into the mouth of a toad below.

But it worked perfectly fine and could detect an earthquake hundreds of miles away.

Some other inventions that come from this country are the first mechanical clock, the crossbow toilet paper.

Oh, thank you.

Regular paper block printing and the compass.

When you've been around for over 4000 years, you have lots of time to create new things.

Paper money was first used in China in the seventh century.

There was a copper shortage for coin production, so they decided to solve the problem with cash.

According to legend, the first emperor in ancient China, Shannon accidentally discovered T when boiling water in his garden.

That's how we like to drink it.

A leaf from a tea tree fell into his pot.

Yet banked T came about on the other side of the planet.

In 19 0 80 merchant Thomas Sullivan gave his customers samples of his product in small silk bangs.

You were supposed to support the sample out of the bag and into your cup, but people immediately assume the bag work.

Like the traditional metal infuser Sze back to China, Educated people in the Tang Dynasty used to say hello and goodbye to their acquaintances, with poems thought right on the spot.

The beginnings of rap, maybe the world's tallest mountain, Mount Everest, is on the border between China and Nepal.

It's 29,029 foot P, gets even taller every year by about two inches.

Because of the tectonic plate movement.

Over the last 26,000 years, it's grown by a mile.

All giant pandas belong to China.

Even those who live outside China are just being borrowed.

Every time a baby panda is born, it's sent to China help expand the gene pool.

China is home to the oldest species of tree.

It's called the gingko, and it's remained unchanged for 200 million years.

It's actually a living fossil.

There's a legend behind the Chinese Zodiac.

One day there was a race between all the animals.

The rat was asked to wake up the cat, but for God.

Then it rode on the back of the ox the whole time and cunningly jumped off right at the finish line.

That's why the rat is first in the Zodiac, Having overslept the race.

Cat's still can't forget this treachery, and that's why they don't like the rodents.

Well, now it all makes sense.

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