Fun fact#199
Svalbard stores the world's seeds
The Global Seed Vault inside an Arctic mountain holds over a million seed samples as a backup for the planet's food crops.
506 fun facts, part 2
100 fun facts on this page. It covers Norway, Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Macau and 49 other places. Page 2 of 6.
Page 2 of 6
100 fun facts on this page. It covers Norway, Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Macau and 49 other places. Page 2 of 6.
Countries on this page
Every country page collects its entries in one place, with a fact sheet and the guides for going there.
Entries on this page
Fun fact#201
Japan has more than 6,800 islands
Japan is an archipelago of over 6,800 islands, though four of them hold nearly all of the population.
Fun fact#203
Tokyo's rush hour has pushers
Station staff known as oshiya are still employed on the busiest Tokyo lines to help commuters fit inside the doors.
Fun fact#205
Japan's vending machines outnumber people in some towns
With roughly one machine for every 30 people, Japan sells everything from hot corn soup to fresh eggs on the street, day and night.
Fun fact#207
Kyoto was spared the bomb
Kyoto was removed from the atomic target list partly because of its cultural importance, which is why 1,600 temples still stand.
Fun fact#209
Cherry blossom has an official forecast
Japanese weather services publish a sakura front each spring, tracking the bloom as it sweeps north from Okinawa to Hokkaido.
Fun fact#211
Mount Fuji is privately owned above 3,360 m
The upper slopes of Fuji legally belong to a Shinto shrine, a claim confirmed by Japan's courts.
Fun fact#213
Japan has a rabbit island
Okunoshima was once a secret poison gas factory. Today hundreds of feral rabbits hop across the ruins.
Fun fact#215
South Korea is mostly mountains
About 70 percent of South Korea is mountainous, which is why its cities build upward and its hiking culture is enormous.
Fun fact#217
Seoul's subway has free wifi everywhere
Seoul's metro offers signal in every tunnel, so commuters stream video hundreds of metres underground without a drop.
Fun fact#219
Korea counts age differently
Koreans traditionally counted everyone a year old at birth and added a year each New Year, a system officially retired in 2023.
Fun fact#221
China's high-speed rail is the longest
China has built more high-speed track than the rest of the world combined, linking most major cities at 300 km/h.
Fun fact#223
The Great Wall is not one wall
The Great Wall is a network of walls built by different dynasties over 2,000 years, and long stretches are earth rather than stone.
Fun fact#225
China uses one time zone
Despite spanning the width of five, all of China officially runs on Beijing time, so the sun rises after 10 am in western Xinjiang.
Fun fact#227
Shanghai's maglev hits 431 km/h
The airport maglev covers 30 kilometres in about seven and a half minutes without touching the track.
Fun fact#229
Terracotta soldiers were once painted
The 8,000 terracotta warriors were originally brightly coloured. Most pigment flakes away within minutes of exposure to dry air.
Fun fact#231
Hong Kong has the most skyscrapers
Hong Kong has more buildings over 150 metres than any other city, squeezed onto a narrow strip between mountains and sea.
Fun fact#233
Macau's economy runs on casinos
Macau's gaming revenue has repeatedly exceeded that of Las Vegas several times over, on a peninsula smaller than most airports.
Fun fact#235
Taiwan's tallest tower has a giant ball
Taipei 101 hangs a 660-tonne steel pendulum near the top to counteract typhoon sway, and visitors can watch it move.
Fun fact#236
Mongolia is the emptiest country
With around two people per square kilometre, Mongolia has the lowest population density of any sovereign nation.
Fun fact#239
Ulaanbaatar is the coldest capital
Average annual temperatures near freezing make Ulaanbaatar the coldest capital city on Earth.
Fun fact#241
Nepal's flag is not rectangular
Nepal is the only country with a non-quadrilateral flag, made of two stacked pennants representing the Himalayas.
Fun fact#242
Everest grows and shifts
Everest rises a few millimetres a year and drifts northeast as the Indian plate pushes under Asia. Its official height was revised to 8,848.86 m in 2020.
Fun fact#245
Nepal's clock is 45 minutes off
Nepal runs on UTC+5:45, one of only a handful of time zones offset by 45 minutes.
Fun fact#246
Bhutan measures happiness
Bhutan tracks Gross National Happiness alongside economic figures, surveying wellbeing, culture and environment.
Fun fact#249
Bhutan absorbs more carbon than it emits
Constitutionally required to keep 60 percent forest cover, Bhutan is one of very few carbon-negative countries.
Fun fact#250
India has over 120 languages
India recognises 22 official languages and counts more than 120 with over 10,000 speakers each.
Fun fact#252
The Taj Mahal changes colour
White marble reflects the sky, so the Taj Mahal looks pink at dawn, blinding white at noon and gold under a full moon.
Fun fact#255
India's rail network moves millions daily
Indian Railways carries more than 20 million passengers a day across a network of over 68,000 kilometres.
Fun fact#256
Kerala has backwater buses
In Kerala's backwaters, public ferries serve as school buses and commuter transport across 900 kilometres of connected waterways.
Fun fact#259
Meghalaya grows its bridges
Khasi villagers train living fig roots across rivers for decades until they form bridges that get stronger with age.
Fun fact#260
Ladakh has a magnetic-looking hill
Magnetic Hill near Leh appears to roll cars uphill. It is an optical illusion caused by the surrounding slope.
Fun fact#262
Varanasi is continuously inhabited
Varanasi is among the oldest continuously lived-in cities in the world, with settlement stretching back roughly 3,000 years.
Fun fact#265
Sri Lanka exports cinnamon
True cinnamon comes almost entirely from Sri Lanka, where bark is hand-peeled and rolled into quills that dry into curls.
Fun fact#266
Sri Lanka has a rock fortress
Sigiriya's palace sits on a 200-metre granite plug, reached by staircases that pass between the paws of a carved lion.
Fun fact#268
Maldives is the flattest country
The average natural elevation of the Maldives is about 1.5 metres, making it the lowest-lying country on Earth.
Fun fact#270
Maldives glows at night
Bioluminescent plankton can turn the shoreline electric blue on dark nights, brightest when the water is disturbed.
Fun fact#272
Thailand was never colonised
Thailand is the only Southeast Asian nation never taken by a European power, partly through skilled 19th-century diplomacy.
Fun fact#274
Bangkok has the longest official name
The city's full ceremonial name runs to 168 letters. Locals simply call it Krung Thep.
Fun fact#276
Thai new year is a water fight
Songkran began as a gentle blessing with water and has become a nationwide three-day soaking in April, the hottest month.
Fun fact#278
Vietnam grows most of the world's cashews
Vietnam is the largest exporter of processed cashews, and also a leading producer of robusta coffee.
Fun fact#280
Hanoi has a train street
In the old quarter a working railway runs within arm's reach of house fronts. Residents pull in their chairs twice a day.
Fun fact#282
Ha Long Bay has 1,600 islands
Ha Long Bay's limestone karsts number close to 1,600, most of them uninhabited because the cliffs are too steep.
Fun fact#284
Cambodia's temple is the largest religious monument
Angkor Wat covers about 160 hectares, making it the largest religious structure ever built.
Fun fact#286
Angkor was a megacity
Lidar surveys revealed that medieval Angkor sprawled across roughly 1,000 square kilometres, likely the largest pre-industrial city on Earth.
Fun fact#288
Laos is the most bombed country
More than two million tonnes of ordnance fell on Laos between 1964 and 1973, and clearance teams still work today.
Fun fact#290
Luang Prabang wakes before dawn
Hundreds of monks collect alms in silence at sunrise, a daily ritual that has continued for centuries.
Fun fact#292
Myanmar has thousands of temples in one plain
More than 2,000 brick temples and stupas still stand on the Bagan plain, survivors of over 10,000 built between the 11th and 13th centuries.
Fun fact#294
Indonesia has 17,000 islands
Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world with around 17,500 islands, roughly 6,000 of them inhabited.
Fun fact#296
Bali's calendar has a day of silence
On Nyepi the entire island stops. The airport closes, lights stay off and nobody goes outside for 24 hours.
Fun fact#298
Komodo dragons live in one place
Komodo dragons are found wild only on a few Indonesian islands and can grow past three metres.
Fun fact#300
Krakatoa was heard 4,800 km away
The 1883 eruption produced possibly the loudest sound in recorded history, audible in Australia and on Rodrigues Island.
Fun fact#302
Malaysia's towers are still the tallest twins
The Petronas Towers remain the tallest twin buildings on Earth, joined by a double-decker skybridge at level 41.
Fun fact#304
Borneo hosts one of the oldest rainforests
Parts of Borneo's rainforest are estimated at 130 million years old, far older than the Amazon.
Fun fact#306
Singapore is growing
Singapore has expanded its land area by roughly a quarter since the 1960s through reclamation, importing sand from abroad.
Fun fact#308
Singapore banned chewing gum sales
Selling chewing gum has been restricted since 1992, with therapeutic gum available only from pharmacies.
Fun fact#310
Philippines has more than 7,600 islands
The Philippine archipelago counts over 7,600 islands, and new surveys keep adding a few more.
Fun fact#312
The Philippines has an underground river
The Puerto Princesa Subterranean River flows more than eight kilometres through a limestone cave straight into the sea.
Fun fact#314
Banaue's rice terraces are 2,000 years old
Carved into the Cordillera by hand, the Ifugao terraces are still farmed by the descendants of their builders.
Fun fact#316
Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country
Kazakhstan covers 2.7 million square kilometres without a coastline, larger than all of Western Europe.
Fun fact#317
Baikonur launches from a steppe
The world's oldest and largest operational spaceport sits on Kazakh steppe and is leased to Russia.
Fun fact#320
Uzbekistan is double landlocked
Uzbekistan is one of only two countries surrounded entirely by other landlocked countries, the other being Liechtenstein.
Fun fact#321
Samarkand sat on the Silk Road
Samarkand's Registan square was the commercial and intellectual heart of Timur's empire in the 15th century.
Fun fact#324
Turkmenistan has a burning crater
A gas field collapse near Darvaza was set alight decades ago and the Door to Hell has been burning ever since.
Fun fact#326
Kyrgyzstan is nearly all mountain
Over 90 percent of Kyrgyzstan lies above 1,500 metres, and summer pastures are still reached on horseback.
Fun fact#327
Tajikistan's highway climbs to 4,600 m
The Pamir Highway crosses the Ak-Baital pass at 4,655 metres, one of the highest paved roads on Earth.
Fun fact#330
Afghanistan hides blue lakes
Band-e Amir's six lakes are dammed by natural travertine walls and glow a deep mineral blue.
Fun fact#331
Iran has wind towers older than air conditioning
Yazd's badgir wind catchers funnel breeze down into homes and over underground water, cooling rooms without electricity.
Fun fact#334
Persepolis was burned by Alexander
The ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire was destroyed by fire in 330 BC, which ironically baked and preserved its clay archives.
Fun fact#335
Iraq holds the first cities
Uruk and Ur in southern Iraq were among the first true cities, and the world's earliest writing appears there around 3200 BC.
Fun fact#337
Jordan's Petra is carved, not built
The Nabataeans cut Petra's facades directly into sandstone cliffs and engineered a water system that supported thousands in the desert.
Fun fact#340
The Dead Sea keeps dropping
The Dead Sea surface falls around a metre each year as the Jordan River is diverted, exposing sinkholes along the shore.
Fun fact#341
Israel has three seas
A traveller can swim in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Dead Sea within a single day's drive.
Fun fact#344
Jerusalem's old city is tiny
The walled Old City covers less than one square kilometre yet contains sites central to three world religions.
Fun fact#345
Lebanon has cedars on its flag
The Cedars of God grove holds trees over a thousand years old, remnants of forests that supplied ancient Egypt and Phoenicia.
Fun fact#347
Syria's Aleppo souk was vast
Before the war, Aleppo's covered market ran for roughly 13 kilometres of vaulted alleys, one of the largest in the world.
Fun fact#350
Saudi Arabia had no formal borders for years
Parts of the Saudi desert frontier remained undefined into the modern era because the sand simply had no landmarks.
Fun fact#351
Dubai's tower needed new pumps
Pumping concrete 600 metres up the Burj Khalifa required specially developed mixes that would not set in the pipe.
Fun fact#353
Abu Dhabi's mosque holds one carpet
The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque contains what is considered the largest single hand-knotted carpet in the world.
Fun fact#355
Oman has no skyscrapers by design
Building height rules in Muscat keep the skyline low and white, preserving views of the Hajar Mountains.
Fun fact#357
Qatar is mostly desert and coast
Qatar has almost no natural fresh water and produces most of its drinking supply through desalination.
Fun fact#359
Bahrain means two seas
The name refers to fresh springs bubbling up within the salt sea, once the basis of a famous pearl industry.
Fun fact#361
Yemen has a mud skyscraper city
Shibam's tower houses of sun-dried mud rise up to eleven storeys and date from the 16th century.
Fun fact#363
Socotra looks like another planet
A third of Socotra's plant species exist nowhere else, including the umbrella-shaped dragon's blood tree.
Fun fact#365
Pakistan has five peaks over 8,000 m
Pakistan holds five of the world's fourteen highest mountains, including K2, widely considered the hardest to climb.
Fun fact#367
The Karakoram Highway is the highest paved border crossing
The Khunjerab Pass between Pakistan and China sits at 4,693 metres and closes with the first heavy snow.
Fun fact#369
Bangladesh has the largest mangrove forest
The Sundarbans span roughly 10,000 square kilometres of tidal forest shared with India, and shelter Bengal tigers.
Fun fact#371
Bangladesh's rivers braid and move
Hundreds of rivers cross Bangladesh, and some shift course by kilometres in a single monsoon season.
Fun fact#373
North Korea uses its own calendar
Juche years count from 1912, the birth year of Kim Il-sung, and appear alongside Gregorian dates.
Fun fact#375
Siberia has a pole of cold
Oymyakon has recorded temperatures near minus 68 degrees Celsius, the coldest for a permanently inhabited place.
Fun fact#377
The Trans-Siberian takes a week
Moscow to Vladivostok is 9,289 kilometres and takes about seven days without stops, crossing 87 cities.
Fun fact#379
The Gobi is a cold desert
The Gobi can drop below minus 30 degrees in winter and sometimes gets snow on its dunes.
Fun fact#381
The Himalayas hold fossils of sea creatures
Ammonite fossils found near Everest prove the range was once seabed before India collided with Asia.
Fun fact#383
Asia holds the lowest and highest points
Both the highest land on Earth, Everest, and the lowest exposed land, the Dead Sea shore, sit on the same continent.
Fun fact#385
Chai is a shared word
From Turkish cay to Hindi chai and Russian chai, most of Asia uses a version of the same word, carried overland from China.
Fun fact#387
Monsoon means season
The word monsoon comes from the Arabic mausim, meaning season, used by sailors who timed voyages to the reversing winds.
Fun fact#389
Bamboo can grow a metre a day
Some bamboo species grow up to 90 centimetres in 24 hours, which is why it is used for scaffolding across Asia.
Fun fact#391
The Mekong feeds four countries' fisheries
The Mekong supports one of the world's largest inland fisheries, and Cambodia's Tonle Sap reverses direction every year.
Fun fact#393
Tea ceremony is a form of meditation
The Japanese tea ceremony can take four hours and is judged less on the tea than on attention, hosting and restraint.
Fun fact#395
Asia has the most megacities
More than half of the world's cities over ten million people are in Asia, led by Tokyo, Delhi and Shanghai.
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