Free Republic

Instead of blasting the astronauts to the moon in a huge cannon, the following article in the website http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2003/10/15/china_puts_its_first_man_in_space/ reveals that a more modern method had been attempted long ago — literally rocketing to the moon! Excerpts follow:

(Begin excerpts)
.....President Hu Jintao was at the launch center to watch China’s bid to realize a dream that has a long history. A crater on the moon is named after a mythical Chinese explorer, Wan Hu, who, according to legend, died after strapping 47 rockets to a chair in an ill-fated attempt to reach the heavens. China’s program to reach the moon is code-named Chang’e, after a mythical fairy who traveled to the moon after mistakenly eating medicine that made her fly..... (End excerpts)

Made in Taiwan or made on the Chinese mainland? The Chinese character for “guo”(nation)is not the simplified form of Chinese used on the mainland.

Some of the rubbish posted here reminds me of a joke. After working many years as a journalist in Beijing, a Chinese man returned to his home village to visit his relatives. He showed them a photograph of the late U.S. President Nixon who visited China in 1972. All the relatives of the Chinese journalist claimed that the photo was a fake because Nixon did not look like Mao Zedong, or rather, Nixon did not look like a Chinese.

The journalist’s home village was situated in a remote part of western China where the people had never seen a white foreigner in their lives. To them, Nixon was an alien from the outer space.

In order to convince them, the Chinese journalist took out a Beijing newspaper that published the news of Nixon’s China visit. He pointed to a photo of Nixon in the newspaper and asked them to compare it with his photo. However, the villagers accused him of trying to hoodwink them by publishing a fake photo in the newspaper. They argued that both photos were created by him because they looked alike even though the photo in the newspaper showed a smiling face while the journalist’s photo showed a solemn-looking face.

By now, most of those villagers should have gone to heaven or hell. If you happen to pass by their graves at night, you may still hear them arguing about the fake photos.