“My parents were hippies, and the story is that they went through a dictionary looking for a beautiful word to name me. They nearly called me Banyan, but flipped a few pages on and reached "China," thankfully. The other reason they liked it is that "china" is Cockney rhyming slang for "mate." People say "my old china," meaning "my old mate," because "china plate" rhymes with "mate.” PeopleReasonStoriesBeautifulNamesParentPagesChinaMatesPlatesRhymeDictionaryHippieRhymingFlippedSlangBeautiful WordsCockneys Author:China Mieville
“For nearly a century the psychoanalysts have been writing op-ed pieces about the workings of a country they've never traveled to, a place that, like China, has been off-limits. Suddenly, the country has opened its borders and is crawling with foreign correspondents, neurobiologists are filing ten stories a week, filled with new data. These two groups of writers, however, don't seem to read each other's work. That's because the analysts are writing about a country they call Mind and the neuroscientists are reporting from a country they call Brain.” WritingMindHas BeensTwoCountryStoriesSeemsBrainPiecesGroupsWeekCenturyTenLimitsFilledChinaDataBordersTraveledAnalystsCrawlingFiling Author:Susanna Kaysen