Cultural Differences and the Ignorant American in Vietnam

May 22, 2010

Another example of American ignorance and arrogance happened when I served in Vietnam. During the Vietnam war, a US senator spoke out and what he said was quoted in the media. He was angry that women could be bought and sold in Thailand, a staunch US ally. Thailand told him to stuff it and that they would continue to live and run their country as they saw fit.

Vietnam Mural

Forty years later, Thailand hasn’t changed much. Women can still be bought and sold there even though Thailand is considered a democracy.

When I was in Vietnam, we fought alongside a South Korean division–great troops to have on your side. Brutal and tough. Another US senator complained about their brutal tactics with the Vietnamese, like the time they took a suspected Vietcong and hung him upside down from a tree branch and skinned him in front of an entire village to get villagers to reveal where the rest of the Vietcong were hiding.

The South Koreans got what they wanted and cleaned out that VC nest. When that US Senator complained, South Korea said “Shove It” (that’s not exactly the language they used but it means the same thing). The South Korean’s said, if you don’t like the way we fight, we will pull our division out and send our troops home.

That senator stopped protesting and the South Koreans stayed. I fought with the ROKs on an operation and was glad to have them by my side. At that time, The South Koreans hated communist due to North Korea, which made sense then.

Discover Why the Generals Laughed

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Leave a Comment » | America, cultural differences, politics, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Cultural Differences, the Ignorant American and Western Imperialism

May 21, 2010

Before Western Imperialism attempted to change Asia during the 19th century, China was a regional super power for more than two-thousand years. Over time, the Chinese believed they were too civilized and powerful to be threatened by anyone on the planet.  Then the British, French, Portuguese, Germans, Americans, Russians and Japanese arrived and waged war in China for a century starting with the First Opium War.

Opium Wars

China learned a lesson from all of these wars. It only took a century to recover and start over.

The leaders of China are called Communists, but the men and women who rule China were born Chinese and the decisions they make are based on being Chinese—not being Communists. The Chinese culture is a collective culture and when an “individual” crosses the line and breaks the rules doing or saying something that is unacceptable to the collective culture, they are erased (given a death sentence) or reeducated (if possible). That’s how the Chinese collective culture on the mainland does things.

In time, interaction with other cultures may change that.  In fact, China already has changed to some degree. Friendly, harmonious interaction is the key—not hate and accusations like those from Americans like Timothy V.

See Respecting Cultural Differences are Out-of-Focus

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese history, cultural differences, politics, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Cultural Differences, the Ignorant American and Star Trek

May 21, 2010

I’ve watched Star Trek since the 1960s and have seen most of the spin offs.  In the Star Trek Universe there are many cultures and races—far too many for even Christians or Islam to convert since that seems to be a driving force behind both of these major religions even if it means using war and violence to make it happen.

One way to look at this is to consider cultures and countries like China, Japan, both Koreas, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and others as if they are light-years away from Western culture.

If the US sent a spaceship to a far off world around another star and discovered a culture that was alien to our way of life, but these aliens had powerful, modern weapons and a strong military to defend themselves there would be no way to force them to change as the West did to so many cultures during the 19th century and a good portion of the 20th.

But what if this culture around that foreign star had products and materials  we wanted or needed for our civilization to survive. To do business with them, we would have to accept that culture the way it was and not attempt to change them or judge them as if that planet were an American Territory to be terrorized and converted.

None of the Asian cultures on our earth developed from Christianity, Judaism or Islamic roots. Even our staunchest allies in Asia, Singapore and Thailand, are Asian cultures with governments that do not fit the America model.

What does loss of Face mean to most Chinese?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Leave a Comment » | Christianity, Confucianism, cultural differences, Islam, religion, Taoism | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Cultural Differences, the Ignorant American and Suicide by Railroad

May 21, 2010

There is always a spat of suicides in China when public school students don’t get into college. Recently, near Stanford, California, there were suicides by Asian students who weren’t doing well in high school and it didn’t look like they were going to make the grades needed to get into the US university they wanted to attend.

An example of Western religious intolerance may be seen in this post about the Gunn High suicides.

The students would lay on the train tracks and wait for a train to end their misery. As the suicides mounted, the city did what it could to make it difficult for more kids to do the same. The high school shut down and testing was cancelled to remove the pressure. Gunn High is one of the highest ranked public high schools in the country. The Asian student population is about 80%.

Behavior like this is shocking but it is part of Asian culture.  As a Christian nation, is it the responsibly of American citizens to change this behavior even if we have to use violence and war like we are doing in Iraq and what we did to the American Indians in the 19th century?

Learn about the important of an Education to the Chinese

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, education, family values | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Cultural Differences, the Ignorant American and the Architect who Hung Himself

May 20, 2010

Another day, when our daughter was seven, we were hiking in the hills above a park in Southern California. On our way out of the hills along a steep-dirt trail leading toward the park, our daughter rushed ahead.

Minutes later, she was back looking shocked. She took us to her discovery.

An Asian man had hung himself in a tree beside the trail. He’d used an electric cord. It was obvious that he had climbed into the tree, tied the cord to a limb and around his neck and leaped off.

I called the police on my cell phone. They came, identified who he was and went to his mother’s house. The mother and sister arrived and my wife talked to them (for the police) since the mother and sister didn’t speak English.

The dead man was a Chinese architect from Taiwan. He was a partner in a business that had gone bankrupt and he could no longer support his family. Because he had lost face, he killed himself.

In fact, since the global economic crises caused by US, Wall Street greed, family suicides have been on the rise in Taiwan.

See how Power Corrupts

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Leave a Comment » | Buddhism, Chinese men, cultural differences, Taiwan | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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