Mitchell here.
Jess and I were at the tailor last week when we discovered that China has their own unit of length very similar to the inch, called a cun. When I remarked how odd it was that the Chinese had their own version, he politely reminded me that China had been using this system for thousands of years. The way he said it implied that whatever us new kids are using over in America is simply a fad that will eventually go away when China takes over the world.
And just in case I find myself in the dire situation of trying to order pants in a China controlled world, I made a mental note that mine should be 26 cun long.
For those craving a little more background, you can read about the Chinese cun on wikipedia.
i thought a chinese inch would just be shorter because they are so much smaller than we are :)
ReplyDeleteThat is the most clever thing I've read all day ...
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I found a tape measure in the lab at work. I started to measure something and realized it seemed off. Sure enough the measure was not calibrated in inches. I threw it away thinking it was incorrectly made. I'll bet that it was actually measuring in cun.
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