Global - Technology - Review

China, the World’s most populous country, is also its oldest civilization, and its culture has had an incalculable influence on the wider world. While its language and calligraphy, and music and dance influenced Japan and other countries of South Asia, its art and poetry, its porcelain and the philosophies of Confucianism and Taoism have influenced every other culture. Chinese scientists and philosophers gave the world acupuncture, martial arts, medicine, papermaking, the compass, astronomy, gunpowder, and the rocket. Chinese cuisine, as well as the practice of tea drinking, is found in every corner of the globe. Few countries have such a rich array of attractions for the tourist: the palaces and temples of Beijing, the sophisticated metropolis of Shanghai, the cosmopolitan allure of Hong Kong, the Great Wall of China, and the Terracotta Army, relics of the dynasties that have ruled China during its millennia of recorded history. Then there are the wonders of the natural world: the endangered Giant Panda, the great alluvial plains of China’s mighty rivers, the Yangtze and Hwang He, where the rice that feeds millions is grown, and finally the remote mountains and plateaus of Tibet, culminating in Mount Everest, roof of the world.