USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Chinese hit list (corrected and expanded )

Ice cream, ketchup, noodles, matches, toilet paper, paper money, paper cups, playing cards, 

 golf, dominoes, checkers, collapsible umbrellas, the first printed book ( the diamond sutra), 

oil drilling, rockets, parachutes, silk, kites, cannons, machine guns around 950 CE- and the Leonardo da Vinci

drawings, as discussed earlier (according to Menzies). Main stream textbooks usually talk about

paper and the wheel barrow but leave out a lot of the above.

I have second thoughts on paper.  A lot of scholars give the Chinese credit for that one,

 but by 3000 BC, Africans were using papyrus to make an item to write on. 

(The Mesopotamians and other West Asians used clay tablets).

Cai Lun, three thousand years later, simply diversified the raw material  for making this, by 

adding cloth to the  plant - based mix. Even so the paper industry was born, hence the

paper cup, paper money, paper dolls and paper dresses.

One interesting quote I found,  while cross -checking Menzies, really stands out for me.

This is a statement by Abu Zad al- Sirafi in the 10th century:

"The Chinese are unhygienic and do not wash their backsides with water 

after defecating but merely wipe themselves with Chinese paper."

Ha Ha!

I  absolutely  ❤️ history.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries

2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies

 University of Texas at Austin

2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   

New York African Studies Association