Hello and welcome to ‘Map Monday’. This was inspired by the current pandemic and lockdowns and the inability to travel. I will share one book each week with you that is set somewhere different to where I live. I’ll chat a bit about the book and throw some interesting facts out there about the place. I hope you enjoy travelling through books with me…
This week I’ve picked ‘Women of the Silk’ by Gail Gail Tsukiyama
Book Synopsis:
Sent by her family to work in a silk factory just prior to World War II, young Pei grows to womanhood, working fifteen-hour days and sending her pay to the family who abandoned her.
Gail Tsukiyama takes her readers back to rural China in 1926, where a group of women forge a sisterhood amidst the reeling machines that reverberate and clamor in a vast silk factory from dawn to dusk. Leading the first strike the village has ever seen, the young women use the strength of their ambition, dreams, and friendship to achieve the freedom they could never have hoped for on their own. Tsukiyama’s graceful prose weaves the details of “the silk work” and Chinese village life into a story of courage and strength.
Interesting Facts about China:
- China is the fourth largest country in the world, after Russia, Canada and the US.
- It is however, the most populated country in the world.
- Hong Kong has more skyscrapers than any other city in the world.
- China is roughly the same size as the continental US but has one official time zone; whereas continental USA has four.
- China’s Bailong Elevator carries visitors more than 300m up a cliff’s edge.
- You can buy green-bean-flavoured ice pops in China!
- Put together, all of China’s railways lines could loop around earth twice!
- Half of all pigs on earth live in China. On an average day, Chinese people consume 1.7 million pigs.
- It took around 37 years to make the Terracotta Army, a set of around 8,000 clay soldiers built in Xi’an to guard an Emperor’s tomb. Take a look at these super-impressive statues in the video, below!
- Due to the huge population of China, almost every religion of the world has adhered there. The most popular are Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. There are actually more Christians in China than there are in Italy!
- More people speak Mandarin, a Chinese Dialect, as their first language than any other language in the world.
- China is the only country in the world where reproduction is limited. Until 2015 Chinese couples could have only 1 child. Now they are allowed to have a maximum of 2 kids.
- China has 55 UNESCO sites, with the Great Wall of China being one of the ‘Seven Wonders of The World’.
- Facebook, Google, YouTube, and many other world’s biggest websites are blocked in China.
- China invented Ice Cream – It is believed that they first made it more than 4000 years ago by mixing milk, rice mixture with the snow.
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