Monday, October 31, 2011

facts about rice who eats the most???

so as stated in my post i had to know who eats the most rice bc china did not have it at every meal cambodia is on the top 10 list but i know you are dyeing to know some random facts about rice so here you go.


Facts
Rice is the staple food for more than half of the world's population.
There are possible tens of thousands of varieties of rice grown on every continent of the world except Antarctica.
91% of the world's rice is grown in an Asian country, and about 55% accounted for by China, Taiwan and India alone.
In many places around the world rice can be the difference between life and death.
An average person eats about 300 to 400 pounds (130-180kg) of rice per year.
The average person in Asia eats rice 2 to 3 times a day.
The average person in Myanmar eats 195 kg of rice each year.
The average person in Lao PDR and Cambodia eats about 160 kg of rice each year.
The average European eats 3 kg per year and the average American eats 7 kg.
Only 5% of the world's rice is exported, therefore 95% is consumed in the country where it is grown.
It takes 5000 litres of water to produce 1kg of rice.

The Great Wall of China pictures

Me on top of a mt off the great wall it was really windy.
yea me and helen the hair is proof of how high up we got.
the hike was no joke up i hit my knee a few time of the steps i felt very midget like climbing up.
all around few of the wall
our picnic on the wall...nothing like a eating exactly what you did when you were 10!
so they the great wall is a stair way to heaven this is proof.
the mts with the leave changing color so pretty and i though i would not see fall this year. 
scared of hight's?  haha the wall and how you go feels never ending.

Beijing Pics

Tiger Fur but no pedia to be found whats with that? 
Ghost street but no where to give the ghost food or money this made me nervous... you know you have lived to long in cambodia when you fear the ghost will be mad. 
scorpions on a stick 
helen forbidden city rub the knobs for good luck
Forbidden City


decoration of the buildings. 



so across the street from the forbidden city is this other place a king or someone hung him self from the top you can over few the city which is cool... although very smoggy 
Panda Bear

Beijing I can almost use chopsticks

I have started my vacation in china the first week has been spent in the city of Beijing China and its been interesting and exciting. Well most of you have asked me about how is the culture of china was it was you expected. So before going into what I did in china I will try to give you the reader a brief over view of my feelings about the culture and people of china. This is also a quick disclaimer I hate to pidgin hold a group of people as one so this is all very generalized aka not every person can be the same.  The few conversations I had about the gov was like it was this mystical thing that no one really felt apart of just knew it was there and kept you in line. Its like people didn’t exactly agree or disagree with the way things where just more excepting that it is. I don’t know why you call colonialism when its not the west but the Chinese people seem to be pretty on board with countries that have large Chinese people in them should sort of just be part of china.  In America we see people in the news etc but in china you really never see the high up people instead you have cameras as stand in on the street and soldiers who stand by x ray machines as you enter subways. This next part is what really threw me for a loop okay so to an extent I really feel the form of government any country practices to a large extent becomes part of that culture ex look at America we take democracy in all forms work family etc we never wanted to be limited bc we are free we have the right to express what we want its in stilled in our culture and politics. One would think china would be the same but not so much on top of that as far back as I can remember I was taught that places like china are all about the group which from being their I can say I disagree with for instances I guess you can say china has instilled an idealism behind communism in fact many of the books stores in front of the stores have communist manifesto by Karl Marks. However in day-to-day life does communisms seep into their lives their culture and it does not it is a very cutthroat individual culture. People do not go out of the way to make sure the group around them is happy or doing okay which I would think would be something that communist education would instill upon its people. This made me think of something else that happened a few months ago to me when I was trying to figure out something else for my host mom to sell bc I was asking her basically why do you all sell the same stuff you know my cap list mind went right to supply and demand and I could not wrap my head around why she would not want to drive out her competition to make lots of money.  Then she simply explains to me that we all sell the same fruit (based on the season) so more taxi drivers know this is where you can get it and then they all can make lots of money. So this left me in china reviewing this conversation and I thought hum I never once got that vibe from people in china despite what their ideals should be based on a culture of communism. Well enough about my crazy thoughts on to the adventure of Beijing the subway system served me and Helen well  we were able to go most places for 2 dollar is was an interesting place to see. Most other tourist who were America were older a lot of tour groups I was lucky to have Helen with me who speaks Chinese pretty much fluently though a lot of things are color coded and hard to mess up so even if you go with out a native speaker. Taxi are way cheaper then ny and they cant really rip u off either bc they have to print u a recite off and I am pretty sure there is laws to protect people from that stuff. I was able to see most of the tourist stuff forbid city lots of temples. I got to see some pandas in china kick the bucket list although I really wanted to see them in the wild however I was not in that part of china o well. We stayed with Helens friend from college it was really on the go type of trip walked around for 10 hours a day had some good food though most of my money went to coffee its hard to get coffee when the country as a whole loves tea man. Another news flash about food is rice is not eaten at every meal I was like what I had to ask for rice with food and when they came out with it is really small bowl. This has lead me on a research path of which country eats the most rice ill post that for you in another post just so you can see how much more rice per capita Cambodia eats then china despite the huge population of china. Once someone told me Chinese people eat everything except for pandas and I think now I can attest to that they have on the food karts start fish sea horses and everything in between. O yes be for I forget one of the biggest downers with food THERE IS NO SESMIE CHICKEN like that is not real Chinese food only American Chinese food take out imagine having your heart set of having ur favorite American Chinese dish in china to discover it’s a lie there is not such thing.  I guess I cant say I dug the total vibe of the old city but its worth the trip for sure to see what all the old kings and queens have created by far my favorite part I think of my entire trip to china was the great wall. By the way I did not see any dead bodies in the wall I did look so I could report back to you on that jk okay anyways there are many part to the wall however when you want to go off roading the wall where less people are in other words it takes a lot of work. I can say one of the benefits to having native Beijing people to talk with allowed us to not be stuck in a crowd of tourist and tour groups. So we had to take a bus to this spot and then get a taxi now if I didt have Helen with me I don’t know how well this would have worked out and the taxi driver did rip us off so we did not take a taxi on the way back we found this other bus which ill go more into later. Well we get their and they have options of what you can buy such as taking a type of ski lift thing up if you don’t want to walk and on the way down you can take a toboggan so we opted for that package. We decided the hike is what we needed and any time we came to a Y and had to decided on a direction e flipped a coin in the end the coin was right just fyi but it did take us on a harder climb I guess you can say.  The further up you go to the less the wall is fixed or restored so it gets a bit harder but one of the benefits of that is maybe there is 20 other people climbing it with you vs 100s on the part of the wall that has been finished. The wall it self was cool to see but the few is what had me being that high up in the mts we went on one of the few clear days yea that’s something to note for you all china has massive smog unless its windy out pretty much u cant see I think the pictures I have from the forbidden city can show you the difference between the two days. Hiking up this wall that is so old into nature was just so freeing it really just made me feel this is where I should be to top it off me and Helen pre planed to have a picnic on the great wall so we went out the grocery store and bought some bread and peanut butter and jelly and Oreos a really elementary school kids lunch and sat on the wall and had lunch. The whole day was just such an experience it makes me wish I could be one of the backpackers I saw that I think sleep on the wall and r going to every spot you can get to. On that ironic not at the same time you see these dressed up pretty Chinese girls in high heals about to fall over it is a funny mix of people. Once we reached the top and started to go off the wall we found some cool little hidden treasure and caves and what have you we started to head back down to where we could catch the toboggan. Now this looked like it could be lots of fun it was deff the longest one I have ever seen I think I rode one has a kid in pa but that was mad short this really did go all the way down. What went wrong well when there are 5 Asian girls in front of you who keep stopping the ride sucks and guys on megaphones r screaming at them to keep going not to stop this did not help any.  Me and Helen were both kind of bumped about how slow we had to go and im not even a ride type of person so that should tell you how slow they really did go haha. Well we then went to go wait in line for the bus wait the line we though existed but its china so no line really existed once that bus came… okay so how to explain how much I understand we need those ropes in America to keep people in line u know when you go to the bank you think hum are these ropes necessary well after china yes apparently. Okay so these two girls that came from behind us kept trying to cut us except im fatter and bigger so I was stopping them for the time being but as soon as the bus came it was seriously a stampede like people pushed other people down just to get a seat on this bus! Being a new york you think u can handle the crowds however in china its taken up a notch seriously so despite being on what was a line we did not get seats and had to stand for an 3 hours it sucked!!! I wanted to punch those to girls cuz they did get to cut the whole line though I don’t know how it drove me crazy. The next morning we took a train and head to Shanghai more about that next post till next time peace out from the other side of the world.