I'm coming off a binge of information on China, where I devoured books, articles and audio lectures on it's history, politics, and economics. All I can say is it's really, really big, and it's incredibly hard to wrap your mind around the sheer volume of everything in this country. Take chopsticks for example. There are currently 1.3 billion people in China and they use 45 BILLION pairs of disposable chopsticks each year, which amounts to about 25 MILLION grown trees being cut down annually (Peter Navarro - Coming China Wars). Boy, will this make the Carrboro treehuggers mad.

The Chinese Minister of Religious Affairs recently put the newest estimates on the number of Christians in China at 130 million, that's nearly half the population of the US. It's hard to keep up with China. Things are changing very quickly. By the time I finished my last book, which was published in late 2006, it was already old news. The 2008 Olympics in Beijing will be an interesting time when the whole world will turn it's gaze to China. What will the world see and how will they respond?