Stunning Facts About Chengdu

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  • #9734
    Avatar photoCharlie
    Keymaster

    I read this article the other day which was incredible to me: Hi-Tech Expansion Drives China’s Second Boom in the Hinterland

    It struck me because it touched on so many remarkable things happening in Chengdu right now, which are often overlooked or just not observed often:

    – A fifth of all computers are manufactured in Chengdu

    – the world’s largest cloud-computing base is Tianfu Software Park

    – Chengdu, located in the Sichuan basin near 25,000+ foot high mountains, has been an aerospace center for 60+ years

    – Chengdu’s mayor pushed for a gigantic, tennis court-sized detailed 3D model of the city (which appeared here in this thread recently)

    – 80% of the world’s iPads come from Chengdu

    – Chengdu will open the world’s largest building in a few weeks (the New Century Global Center near the Fuhua Yuan tech park)

    – Chengdu is building more space than perhaps any city in the world, with 30 skyscrapers above 60 floors currently under construction

    – Chengdu competes with Rome “for primacy as the world’s oldest metropolis” and “competes with Tuscany for food”

    One thing they didn’t mention, which was surprising, is that Chengdu was the first place where paper money was widely used, over 1,000 years ago in the Song dynasty.

    #24008
    Avatar photoFederico
    Participant

    Shit, I’m really surprised too!

    #24011
    Avatar photoMichael M
    Participant

    I wonder if in 10 years time we’ll say we were in the right place at the right time? 🙂

    #24012
    Avatar photoBrendan
    Moderator
    Quote:
    I wonder if in 10 years time we’ll say we were in the right place at the right time? 🙂

    I think we are in the right place at the right time, it’s just a little tough to see it sometimes the way things tend to stack up here. There are some alarming things happening too, one being the air pollution index regularly surpassing 200. Ironically that’s being fueled by the very factors that make Chengdu the developmental juggernaut it is.

    Any of you smoking cigarettes who plan to stick around for a while might want to quit! 😉

    #24026
    Avatar photoIan
    Participant

    In 1279 the Mongols sacked Chengdu, killing 1.4 million inhabitants in the process.

    Sichuanese is spoken by about 120 million people, so if it were counted as a separate language, it would be the 10th largest language by number of speakers, just behind Japanese.

    #24074
    Avatar photoCharlie
    Keymaster
    Quote:
    Sichuanese is spoken by about 120 million people, so if it were counted as a separate language, it would be the 10th largest language by number of speakers, just behind Japanese.

    That’s a good one. I hadn’t heard that. I had heard that Sichuanese was very close to becoming the national language of China in 1949, though.

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