Rice and Roads

Rice and Roads is a Role-Playing trope used primarily to describe a nation's development of the agricultural and travel infrastructure. Thus far, it has only been used by VilageidiotX and AaronMk to describe the infrastructural and industrial improvements being carried out by China : in that much of their buisiness is building on the nation's roads and building on the nation's agricultural practices. The concept can further be applied to describe the nation building aspects of a post, or nation building posts in general. Due to the common nature of nation building in China compared to other nations, Rice and Roads is much more noticable there then it is in other nations, where political intrigue, chartacter building, and warfare tends to outpace nation building. This was particularly noticable early on, when the majority of posts were about warfare or preparations being made for warfare with the exception of Aaron's posts regarding China, which concentrated primarily on infrastructure and agriculture. As the roleplay has progressed, rice and roads had became more prevalent, notably from the more nation building oriented players such as Persia and Ethiopia. Even still, China seems to be the leader in nation building, causing most Rice and Roads posts to belong to China.

Chinese Usage
The trope was unoriginally put into action in China. One of the opening posts by AaronMk concerning Chinese affairs was a meeting between former Agriculture and People's Affairs minister Mao Tze Dung, Industrial and Infrastructural Minister Mang Zhu and Hou Sai Tang in the middle of 1970 where the project to further revitalize Chinese crops was suggested by Mao, and Zhu suggested the construction of a national high-way and repairing damaged road-ways.

This observation has been made by Vilage who described China from the point of view of the ambassador as being a network of "rice fields and roads".