Ask most Americans what they know about China and the response would probably be fairly simple: “Biggest population…run by a Communist Party…the Great Wall…China creates products we use…we owe them a ton of money.”

But as China appears in more and more newspaper headlines, there is a new interest in learning more about the growing superpower across the Pacific. If you’re one of those wanting to study deeper, here are 9 incredible facts about our Chinese friends to get you started.

1. CHINA WAS THE MOST ADVANCED SOCIETY FOR ALMOST ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY.

Chinese emperors ruled over more people than the Roman Empire, and constructed a larger road system as well, according to historian Chris Harman (A People’s History of the World). Building the Great Wall was a feat unparalleled in the ancient world, a structure at least 6,000 miles long, possibly 13,000 miles at its prime…that’s half the circumference of the Earth!

The Chinese were the first to invent iron in early 5th century B.C., then steel during the Northern Wei Dynasty (A.D. 386-557), modern paper during the Western Han Dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 9), the mechanical clock and moveable-type printing during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the compass during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), and gunpowder in the 9th century. They were the first society to use gunpowder-based weapons.

2. FAMOUS CHINESE EXPLORERS PUT EUROPEAN EXPLORERS TO SHAME.

True, in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, to cross the Atlantic and make it to Asia. His first journey was with three ships and fewer than 90 men. But Zheng He set sail to explore the Pacific in 1405 with 62 ships and 27,800 men. Over several voyages, he explored the waters of Southeast Asia, India, east Africa, the Persian Gulf, and made it all the way to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Zheng He came from a Muslim family.

3. CHINA ONLY HAS ABOUT 7 MORE YEARS AS THE WORLD’S MOST POPULOUS NATION.

China currently has a population of 1.4 billion, yet since the 1951 the population growth rate fell from 2.8% to 0.6% today. India, which currently has 1.3 billion people, is estimated to pass China in population in 2022.

4. CHINA’S ECONOMY WILL SURPASS THE U.S. ECONOMY AS THE LARGEST IN THE WORLD IN 11 YEARS.

China already has the largest economy in terms of purchasing power (it has more people spending more money than the U.S. does, adjusting for currency value and cost of living). But by 2026, Chinese productive output will surpass that of the U.S. as well.

5. ISLAM IS THE MOST POPULAR RELIGION AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE IN CHINA.

According to research at Renmin University in Beijing, Islam has the largest proportion of followers (22.4%) under 30 than any other religion. Currently, China has some 23 million Muslims, more than some nations in the Middle East.

6. CHINA HAS HIGHWAYS THAT ARE 50 LANES ACROSS. 50!

And yet traffic jams are still a problem. On Wednesday, October 7, 2015, thousands of cars were delayed for hours on the G4 Beijing-Hong-Kong-Macau Expressway. Drivers were forced to merge from 50 lanes down to 20. Still not as bad as a traffic jam in 2010, which lasted 11 days and stretched back 60 miles.

7. AN ESTIMATED 1.6 MILLION CHINESE DIE EACH YEAR FROM POLLUTED AIR.

That’s about 4,400 people a day. As pollution from Chinese industry and energy use poisons and clouds their cities, China serves as an example of what will happen globally if carbon dioxide emissions go unchecked.

8. CHINA BUILDS MASSIVE CITIES WHERE NO ONE LIVES.

China constructs huge “ghost cities,” to meet the needs and interests of construction companies and keep their economy surging, but also to prepare for the 300 million Chinese expected to move from rural areas into cities by 2030.

9. YET CHINA HAS SOME OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES ON EARTH.

Not only is the northern slope of Mount Everest in China, and the Great Wall and Forbidden City as stunning as they are famous, this massive nation is home to many incredible lesser-known landscapes, such as the Yangshou region.

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On Sunday afternoon, December 13, 2015, Bernie Sanders posted on Facebook:

At the end of the day, providing a path to go to college is a helluva lot cheaper than putting people on a path to jail.

He included a graphic reading, “$80 billion: the amount we spend every year to lock up 2.2 million fellow Americans. Share if you support investing in education rather than incarceration.”

When Sanders tweeted a similar statement, without the graphic, on Sunday evening, it caught the eye of television host Mike Rowe, who criticized Sanders on Facebook.

Rowe perceived that Sanders sought to “imply that a path to prison is the most likely alternative to a path to college.” He questions “the increasingly dangerous idea that a college education is the best path for the most people,” lambasting “misguided parents” and others who perpetuate the idea that work that doesn’t require a college degree is inferior.

As if the fear of falling into an inferior career wasn’t bad enough, Rowe writes,

…it seems the proponents of “college for all” need something even more frightening than the prospect of a career in the trades to frighten the next class into signing on the dotted line. According to Senator Sanders, that “something,” is a path to jail.

Rowe implies Sanders is a “knucklehead” showcasing “arrogance and elitism,” reminds Sanders of “the number of college graduates with criminal records” and people in vocational careers without a degree who do not go to jail, insists Sanders’ post implies there is “no hope” for you if you don’t go to college, and that it

…will encourage more kids who are better suited for an alternative path to borrow vast sums of money they’ll never be able to pay back in order to pay for a degree that won’t get them a job.

To his credit, Rowe shares his thoughts in a mostly respectful, thoughtful manner, even acknowledging that “Maybe the 140 character limit has doomed [Sanders] to be misunderstood or taken out of context. Certainly, it’s happened to me.”

He speaks rightly of the need to dispel the idea that vocational, physical, or trade work is somehow inferior, a “consolation prize.” Further, there is truth in his claim that a college degree is not a surefire way to gainful employment.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, unemployment for young college graduates is 7.2% (14.9% work part-time but want full-time work) and their wages have fallen 2.5% since 2000. In 2014, a massive 46% of employed college graduates under 27 were working in a job that did not require a college degree. Further, a “non college” job is more likely, compared to 2000, to be cashier, server, or bartender than electrician, dental hygienist, or mechanic, a reflection of “a decline in the demand for ‘cognitive skills.’”

This is something Rowe should keep in mind: while the demand for “college jobs” may weaken, so can the demand for jobs he favors that require vocational training, leaving an army of young people in fast food or otherwise unskilled jobs they neither desire nor enjoy.

Sadly, Rowe doesn’t seem to understand what Bernie Sanders means when he writes about “providing a path to college.” Sanders wants to make public colleges and universities tuition free, saying elsewhere:

It is a national disgrace that hundreds of thousands of young Americans today do not go to college, not because they are unqualified, but because they cannot afford it… We have got to make sure that every qualified American in this country who wants to go to college can go to college—regardless of income.

Either Rowe didn’t know this, which is surely the case, or his post is full of contradictions. Remember, he writes that Sanders and others should not encourage young people to take on vast sums of debt; he rightly calls the $1.3 trillion in student loans an “obscenity.”

But of course, where Sanders is concerned, “college for all” is not a call for everyone to go to college because any alternative is inferior. It is a call to use the vast wealth of the nation to end the massive waste of human talent, potential, and freedom inherent in a system where Americans who want to go to college cannot because of finances or the fear of the huge loans Rowe condemns. Hence, college as a right offered free of cost, like K-12 public school education. In other words, it should be available for those who desire it.

Though the graphic Sanders included on Facebook was not on the Twitter post Rowe saw, it clarifies his point: the U.S. spends huge sums to lock people up, which could be used to cover the cost of college, which implies Sanders sees a need for prison reform. Anyone who knows anything about Sanders, for example, knows he opposes the mass imprisonment of nonviolent offenders, supporting the legalization of marijuana. He says:

Too many Americans have seen their lives destroyed because they have criminal records as a result of marijuana use. That’s wrong. That has got to change.

States tend to spend more on housing inmates than educating K-12 students, and some spend more on prisons than colleges and universities. In recent decades, expenses on prisons have skyrocketed, largely to make room for drug offenders.

One study found that while 48.8% of the U.S. population had some college credits or a degree, only 12.7% of the incarcerated population had the same. This is largely because high school dropouts are far more likely to end up in prison than high school graduates; the large majority of prisoners tend to have no high school diploma. Factors that lead students to drop out of school, mostly overly harsh punishments and barriers to re-entering school, are called the “school to prison pipeline.”

Rowe is correct that prison isn’t the most likely alternative to college, something Sanders did not say, though we can understand why Rowe thought he implied it. And of course, not graduating high school is a much larger part of the problem than not going to college, to a greater degree perpetuating poverty, which breeds crime. Sanders is likely alluding to the fact so many of our prisoners are poor and uneducated, factors closely bound together.

Still, there is no reason to not seek to widen opportunities and make improvements in both K-12 schools and colleges, and ease social conditions for those who attend both. Despite the fact that there is, as Rowe says, vocational work that can make people happy and financially secure, Americans with college degrees still earn higher incomes, are more likely to have a pension and health insurance provided by an employer, and are less likely to be unemployed.

It might be wise to listen to Sanders for a way to broaden opportunities for lower- and middle-income people and eliminate crippling student debt, by using resources for free college, not to lock up nonviolent people. It might be wise to listen to Rowe to end stigmatization surrounding workers without college degrees: they are not inferior, lazy, foolish, or any other harmful descriptor.

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We all have skeletons in the closet, but some skeletons are scarier than others. Here are 8 weird stories about the 2016 presidential candidates. It’s as they say, the truth is stranger than fiction.

1. WHEN BERNIE SANDERS WROTE BAD SEX FICTION

In his 1972 article “Man — and woman,” Bernie Sanders wrote about men masturbating to thoughts of abused and bound women, and women fantasizing about being gang raped while having sex with their husbands.

A spokesperson for Sanders said it was “a dumb attempt at dark satire…attacking gender stereotypes in the 1970s.”

Sanders himself said, “It was very poorly written and if you read it, what it was dealing with was gender stereotypes, why some men like to oppress women, why other women like to be submissive, you know, something like ‘Fifty Shades of Grey.’”

Gives “Feel the Bern” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?

2. WHEN JOHN KASICH WENT TO WAR WITH BLOCKBUSTER OVER A SINGLE MOVIE

Something went very wrong when John Kasich and his wife made an oopsie at Blockbuster in the late 1990s.

“[We] thought, What the heck are we watching here? It was billed as a comedy, but it wasn’t funny. It was graphic, and brutal, and completely unnecessary, and it rubbed us in so many wrong ways we had to shut the thing off right there in the middle.”

The movie? Fargo.

Finding the infamous “woodchipper” scene disturbing, Kasich had found his crusade. “I got on the phone to Blockbuster and demanded that they take the movie off their shelves.” He apparently worked out a “deal” with the manager, who agreed to label the movie “graphic content.” Kasich “took his business elsewhere.”

But when he caught wind the manager wasn’t keeping his end of the deal, Kasich pulled out the big guns: another phone call. “Karen had to tell me to back off because I was driving everyone crazy,” he said. He later regretted his “rantings of a wild man.”

3. WHEN DONALD TRUMP APPOINTED HIMSELF JUDGE, JURY, AND EXECUTIONER

Donald Trump has referred to African Americans as “the blacks,” said “laziness is a trait in blacks,” worried over “black guys counting my money” (according to the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino), and he was sued by the Justice Department for not renting to blacks, a case that ended in a settlement.

But nothing “trumps” the time in 1989 when he rushed to judgement about the rape of a white female jogger in Central Park. Trump took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the execution of the suspects, who were African American teenagers. Blacks and whites alike were outraged. The suspects were later exonerated.

Apparently, Trump dislikes the idea of “innocent until proven guilty.”

Also, black people.

4. WHEN HILLARY CLINTON TALKED TO IMAGINARY FRIENDS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

While she was the first lady, Hillary Clinton used to pretend to talk to Eleanor Roosevelt. Apparently, when Clinton told her about times getting tough, Eleanor would “usually respond by telling me to buck up or at least to grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros.”

Clinton was encouraged to do this “reflective meditation” by a New Age spiritual counselor named Jean Houston in 1996.

According to Bob Woodward (The Choice), she also talked to Gandhi.

Bill Clinton said in 2012, during the dedication of Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park:

A special thanks to the members of the Roosevelt family who are here. And the one who is not, Eleanor, who made sure that the four freedoms were included in the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. I know that because, as all of you famously learned when I served as president, my wife, now the secretary of state, was known to commune with Eleanor on a regular basis. And so she called me last night on her way home from Peru to remind me to say that. That Eleanor had talked to her and reminded her that I should say that.

5. WHEN TED CRUZ WANTED TO GET BIG GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR TOILETS

Say what you will about Ted Cruz, he is the only politician brave enough to take a stand for toilet freedom.

In 2012, he said on Glenn Beck’s radio show:

The federal government’s already shown that they believe they can control every aspect of our life. I mean, right now Congress is trying to tell us what kind of light bulbs to buy and what kind of toilets. Right now you are prevented from buying a toilet that actually flushes because the bureaucrats in Washington know better than you do.

In 2013, he condemned the “federal government that thinks they have the authority to regulate our toilet seats.”

The regulations have to do with sanitation and common courtesy for disabled people in public facilities: toilets must have a hinged lid and an adequate supply of toilet paper, there must be one toilet seat and one urinal per 40 workers, and most restrooms must have one toilet that is accessible for disabled persons.

Thank God Ted Cruz is around to stand up for justice.

6. WHEN BEN CARSON INSISTED THAT JOSEPH, NOT THE EGYPTIAN PHARAOHS, BUILT THE PYRAMIDS

In his quest to convince the American people one doesn’t actually have to be that smart to be a brain surgeon, Ben Carson confirmed in November 2015 that he still believes the ancient pyramids were built to store grain, not as tombs for Egyptian rulers.

In a 1998 speech that included, of all things, ignorance, history, and science, Carson said:

My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.

And when you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for various reasons. And various of scientists have said, “Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how — ” you know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you.

In other words, no need to trust decades of archaeological discoveries. If the Bible said Joseph had to store grain, well, why not assume, without a shred of evidence, it was in the pyramids? Just don’t go too far with your superstition. That alien stuff is cray.

7. WHEN MIKE HUCKABEE’S SON BUTCHERED A DOG AND HUCKABEE COVERED FOR HIM

In 1998, 17 year old David Huckabee participated in the torture and hanging of a stray dog at a Boy Scout camp in Arkansas, a misdemeanor but not a felony. Animal rights groups were enraged. A local prosecuting attorney requested the Arkansas state police help in the investigation.

But Mike Huckabee, the governor of Arkansas, worked to keep that from happening.

John Bailey, then the director of Arkansas’s state police, tells NEWSWEEK that Governor Huckabee’s chief of staff and personal lawyer both leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the local prosecutor’s request. Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed chief by Huckabee’s Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer’s intervention as improper and terminated the conversation. Seven months later, he was called into Huckabee’s office and fired. “I’ve lost confidence in your ability to do your job,” Bailey says Huckabee told him. One reason Huckabee cited was “I couldn’t get you to help me with my son when I had that problem,” according to Bailey. “Without question, [Huckabee] was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son,” says I. C. Smith, the former FBI chief in Little Rock…

The state police did not grant the request. No charges were ever filed against David Huckabee.

8. WHEN LINDSEY GRAHAM DIDN’T SEND AN EMAIL…EVER

Lindsey Graham spent 8 years as a representative and 12 years as a senator, yet somehow he’s found a way to grandma his way out of the 21st century.

In 2015 he said to Chuck Todd on NBC, “I don’t email. No, you can have every email I’ve ever sent. I’ve never sent one.”

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On January 13, 2016, the Bernie Sanders campaign launched its Prove Them Wrong website, which calls on young people, especially any 17 year old Iowan who will turn 18 by November 8, to pledge to “caucus” (vote) for Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucus on February 1.

To participate in the Iowa Democratic caucus, students and Iowans in general must register as a Democrat and determine their voting location.

Prove Them Wrong declares:

They say you don’t care

They say you won’t caucus

They say Bernie can’t win

Prove them wrong

“They” refers to Americans who believe youth are apathetic about politics and voting. In a video to Iowa students, Sanders said the caucus

…gives you a unique opportunity to play a very big role in national politics… What your job is about is to raise the issues that are on your mind… Are we doing enough in terms of social justice in this country, combating racism and sexism and homophobia? How do we move forward to make sure the United States leads the world in combating climate change? What do we do about the high rate of childhood poverty in this country?

Sanders has a knack for attracting young potential voters, who support his progressive liberal platform that includes higher taxes on the extremely wealthy to pay for free college tuition, jobs programs, and universal health care; he also favors a higher minimum wage and fewer wars overseas.

The senator from Vermont is most popular among 18-29 year olds, according to The Guardian, amassing an enormous following of passionate supporters that flood the Internet with hashtags like #FeelTheBern and #BabesForBernie. In fact,

Of all those running for president, Sanders has the highest-level engagement on his individual Facebook posts, according to social media monitor CrowdTangle. He has the largest number of people liking his messages, sharing his thoughts, and commenting on his plans.

Sanders has 2.3 million likes on his presidential campaign Facebook page (2.8 million on his U.S. senator page), more than his closest rival Hillary Clinton. He is consistently the most-searched-for candidate on the web during the Democratic debates.

Sanders reached 2.5 million campaign donations faster than any presidential candidate in U.S. history, raised a fortune from ordinary Americans while refusing money from corporations and billionaires, and has attracted far more enormous crowds than Clinton and other candidates. He was voted the most popular senator in the nation.

Yesterday Sanders pulled ahead of Clinton in Iowa polls. As Barack Obama did in 2008, Sanders may garner a huge youth turnout that could help him win the state and propel him toward the White House.

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The U.S. Supreme Court will determine in 2016 the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s recent executive action on immigration.

Obama’s 2014 Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program would allow up to 5 million illegal immigrants, parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents here for five years, to remain in the U.S. on work permits. They would not have legal status, but they would be exempt from deportation (thus the “deferred action” status).

26 states, all with Republican governors, have challenged the executive order on legal grounds. So far, a district court in Texas and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth District sided with the Republicans, and Obama’s Justice Department filed with the Supreme Court to reverse the decisions of the lower courts.

Texas not only argues the executive action violated federal law and the Constitution, it opposes having to spend millions to issue drivers licenses to half a million Texas parents that would be eligible. The Obama administration declared Texas would not be forced to do this.

The decisions of the lower court halted Obama’s plan. The president would have the remaining months of his term to implement the program if the Supreme Court sides with him in June.

Obama’s earlier and similar executive action on immigration has not been challenged. The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals protected children brought illegally to the U.S. Over 720,000 have thus far been shielded from deportation through the order. Obama’s 2016 order would also expand this program.

Obama wants to give the undocumented immigrants the opportunity to “come out of the shadows” and have access to legal work. The conservative states have successfully argued in the lower courts that access to legal work also gives illegal immigrants access to “Social Security, Medicare, tax credits, and unemployment benefits,” though of course through legal work the undocumented would also be paying into those systems.

The summer decision will arrive in the middle of the 2016 presidential race, which has already generated fierce debate over the solution to illegal immigration.

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