China often gets a bad rap for not being an innovative country or economy.

And, let’s be real: anyone who has spent time immersed in Chinese business or academic culture can attest that neither are especially conducive to coming up with risky, new ideas. 

If you subscribe to this narrative, then your knowledge of Chinese innovation likely ends with the four great inventions of ancient China (compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing).

Modern Chinese inventions, it seems, don't get much press.

I think that's pretty unfair, so let's take a look at some more recent but still amazing Chinese inventions.

The E-Cigarette

Though the idea goes back a few decades, the modern 电子烟  (diàn zǐ yān) - electronic cigarette was developed by a Chinese inventor named Han Li in 2003. 

It took another decade or so for the idea to catch on, and Han unfortunately never made much money from his clever idea. 

But rumor has it he’s currently working on another lung-healthy invention: the   e-hookah!

It's cool when you can take a classic Chinese habit (smoking) and improve it using modern, innovative technology.

The Barefoot Doctor System

There's one fact about China that will help you understand a lot about it.

It's freaking enormous. 

When you have so much space and so many people, sometimes unique innovations come about.

One of these is the 赤脚医生系统 (chì jiǎo yī shēng xì tǒng) - barefoot doctor system, wherein farmers and other rural residents are trained in basic medical care techniques.

This is a clever way to address health care in a country with one general practitioner for every 10,000 residents. 

It's hardly a recent innovation though. 

The system began before the Chinese Civil War when rural doctors in Southern China would wade barefoot through rice paddies to reach their patients. 

Barefoot doctors have been wildly successful, with the WHO (World Health Organization) declaring that “village doctors have dramatically improved access to health care in China’s rural communities over the last few decades.”

Hybrid, Disease-Resistant Rice

If any country was going to make some world-shaking agricultural innovations in growing rice, you’ve gotta figure it’s going to be the country that eats 150 million metric tons a year of it. 

Indeed, scientist Yuan Longping (袁隆平, yuán lóng píng) , after years of research, developed a genetic hybrid strain of rice in the early 1970’s that almost single-handedly solved many of the famine-related issues wrought by the Great Leap Forward and a series of natural disasters in the 1960’s.  

Yuan’s hybrid rice strain is resistant to the diseases that had plagued rice growers around the world.

A variant of Yuan’s invention is still the global standard: a testament to the impact that the "Father of Hybrid Rice" has had on the modern world.   

The Pinyin System

Another uniquely Chinese invention (obviously), the pinyin (拼音, pīn yīn) system basically made Chinese a feasible language for non-natives to learn on a large scale. 

Developed by the linguist Zhou Youguang (周有光, zhōu yǒu guāng) in the 1950's, pinyin was touted as an alternative to foreign-developed systems of romanization, which include: 

• the “Sin Wenz” (新文字, xīn wén zì) system created with input from the Soviet Union,
• the still-occasionally-used Wade-Giles system (“Peking” instead of Beijing, for instance, comes from Wade-Giles),
• and even the Yale system, which was created to aid US soldiers in communicating with their Chinese partners during World War II. 

Pinyin is by far the best, simplest, and most comprehensive system.

Which is why it has become the global standard today.

It has been argued that pinyin wasn't truly developed exclusively in China, as Zhou spent over a decade living and working in New York, and thus isn't really an example of Chinese innovation. 

What's often ignored, however, is that during his time in the US, he wasn't a linguist—he was a banker.

Learn all about pinyin here!

Chemotherapy (as a cancer treatment)

In the 1950's, a Chinese doctor named Min Chiu Li was working at the US National Cancer Institute (in my hometown of Bethesda, MD actually).

A position he took in large part because it afforded him an exemption from the military draft, which was in full gear during the Korean War. 

After seeing first-hand the devastating effect cancer had on the families he met, however, Li became entirely obsessed with finding a more effective cure.

Which led him to develop the first forms of 化学疗法 (huà xué liáo fǎ) —or 化疗 (huà liáo) —chemotherapy that effectively attacked cancerous cells.

60 years later, chemotherapy is still the primary weapon in most cancer treatment arsenals, and shows the amazing things that can happen when a brilliant Chinese scientist is given the tools and environment he needs to make groundbreaking innovations.

The 1,800 MPH Supertrain (still in development)

If you've ever visited Shanghai, you've probably taken the Maglev train (磁悬浮列车, cí xuán fú liè chē) from the airport into the city. 

And you've probably seen (or been) a tourist taking photos of the train's speedometer as it rips through the city at ~400 KPH (250 MPH). 

Though it's been overtaken by a Japanese model, Shanghai's Maglev was once the fastest train in the world.

This tradition of modern Chinese train innovation continues with what's being called the “Supertrain”: a still-hypothetical but apparently feasible vacuum-based train that, by eliminating air resistance, can travel up to 1,800 mph.

For reference, that'd get you from LA to Boston in under two hours.

So what do you think of these Chinese inventions? Did any of them take you by surprise? Did I miss any other inventions from China?

See also: 8 Awesome Things Only Found in China