304 USA

Code for America is an organization founded by Jennifer Pahlka which brings together volunteer coders to try to help the government move into the digital age so that its systems can work more efficiently and serve people in a better way. ShaoLan teaches Jennifer how to say “America” in Chinese, which is quite flattering because the word literally means “beautiful country.”.However, it was a bit of a fluke, because the character for “beautiful” was chosen because of the sound of the character as opposed to the meaning, but as Jennifer says “what a happy accident!”

The way to say America in Chinese is 美國/美国. The first character means “beauty” and the second character means “country” or “kingdom.”. The “beautiful country” is “America”!