{"id":8734,"date":"2005-03-23T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-23T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2005\/03\/23\/i-love-china\/"},"modified":"2005-10-09T00:51:02","modified_gmt":"2005-10-08T21:51:02","slug":"i-love-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2005\/03\/23\/i-love-china\/","title":{"rendered":"I love China"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- google_ad_section_start -->\n<p>I have realized something today.  <b>I love China<\/b>.  I never thought I do.  Actually, I never thought on the subject.  Neither about China, nor about any other country.  (Well, maybe Cyprus, but that doesn&#8217;t count since I am living in this country).<\/p>\n<p>Before you start looking for a different blog to read, let me tell you that I have never been to China.  Nor have I read any books about China.  I have met a few Chinese people, but I haven&#8217;t been really close with anyone of them.  At this point you might be wondering how did I arrive to the conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>Well, I was sitting there doing nothing when this Chinese girl popped up in my ICQ.  Her English was good enough for us to talk so we did.  She asked me if I ever visited her country or if I knew anything about it.  I started thinking.  And here is what came to my mind.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I am one of the greatest fans of Chinese martial arts movies.  There is a special place in my heart for all of them collectively and few of them individually.<\/li>\n<li>I really enjoy Chinese cuisine.  Of course, all those places that I have tried might have nothing in common with the real meal in China, but as far as I went and as far as my imagination can take me, I really like Chinese food.<\/li>\n<li>I like Chinese art.  Especially paintings, but anything works.  Some of the best decorations that I have seen were embroideries on Chinese silk.  And, of course, the china porcelain dishes.  Those are really cool, though I haven&#8217;t seen many of them.  But I liked those that I have seen.<\/li>\n<li>I like Chinese dragons.  Dragons have a special place in Chinese culture and I totally dig them.  Dragon dances, pictures, fairy tales and all the other dragonware &#8211; I like it.<\/li>\n<li>I like Chinese architecture.  I haven&#8217;t seen any in real life, but those that come on pictures and in the movies look really cool.  If you can&#8217;t think of any, I&#8217;ll remind you of Imperial palaces, Great Wall of China, and monasteries.<\/li>\n<li>I like Chinese people.  I met a few.  I didn&#8217;t get very close to any of them, as I have already mentioned above.  But all of them seemed like decent people.  What I liked about them was that they knew how to have some real fun without crossing too many of cultural borders.  This is a rare quality, if you ask me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I was surprised by myself.  First of all, I never knew that I knew so much about China.  Secondly, I couldn&#8217;t believe that with all these positive emtions towards China I never thought about the country or culture separately.  Strange.  I am really glad I discovered all those feelings.  Now that I&#8217;ve done that, I put a visit to China on my todo list.  It is one of the first things to do after I fix my financial situation.<\/p>\n<!-- google_ad_section_end -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<!-- google_ad_section_start -->\n<p>I have realized something today. I love China. I never thought I do. Actually, I never thought on the subject. Neither about China, nor about any other country. (Well, maybe Cyprus, but that doesn&#8217;t count since I am living in this country). Before you start looking for a different blog to read, let me tell &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2005\/03\/23\/i-love-china\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">I love China<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<!-- google_ad_section_end -->\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[1971,429,2416],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-8734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-personal","tag-china","tag-culture","tag-thoughts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9376,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2005\/08\/26\/daily-del-icio-us-bookmarks\/","url_meta":{"origin":8734,"position":0},"title":"Daily del.icio.us bookmarks","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"August 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I was reading up on the subject of kung fu. History of Shaolin monastery makes a good part of it. As does Beijing Opera which created lots of kung fu movie stars (Jackie Chan as an example). Yang Style Tai Chi Homepage Tagged as: art china chinese health kung-fu kungfu\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15093,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2011\/06\/11\/china-is-coming\/","url_meta":{"origin":8734,"position":1},"title":"China is coming","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"June 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"These days, when discussing globalization with my friends, the discussion often touches upon China. \u00a0And more often than not I hear skepticism when suggesting that China's role is becoming more important and more\u00a0influential. \u00a0While I am of the opinion that China is in its early stages of being a global\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15192,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2011\/06\/20\/the-end-of-cheap-labor-in-china\/","url_meta":{"origin":8734,"position":2},"title":"The End of Cheap Labor in China","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"June 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Slashdot links to this article, that goes inline with this recent forecast. In what is supposed to be a land of unlimited cheap labor \u2014 a nation of 1.3 billion people, whose extraordinary 20-year economic rise has been built first and foremost on the backs of low-priced workers \u2014 the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16078,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2012\/02\/06\/chinese-new-year\/","url_meta":{"origin":8734,"position":3},"title":"Chinese New Year","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"February 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I've mentioned a few times on this blog that I'm a big fan of Chinese culture. \u00a0Today, at the office, we had Chinese New Year celebrations will plenty of home-made food (cooked by our Chinese colleagues) and red decorations all around. \u00a0That inspired me to read some more about China\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/chinese_new_year-500x280.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10062,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2006\/04\/20\/daily-del-icio-us-bookmarks\/","url_meta":{"origin":8734,"position":4},"title":"Daily del.icio.us bookmarks","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"April 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user tvset on 2006-04-19 China. Pictures -- Once again I have to say that I am in love with China. Maybe that's because I've never been there. Or maybe just because it is a beautiful country. Tagged as: china chinese gallery images photos pictures","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18604,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2013\/09\/13\/learn-to-read-chinese-in-eight-minutes\/","url_meta":{"origin":8734,"position":5},"title":"Learn To Read Chinese In Eight Minutes","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"September 13, 2013","format":"link","excerpt":"Learn To Read Chinese In Eight Minutes","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8734"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyring_services?post=8734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}