I’ve read A FEW opinions about iLook China on other Blogs that say I write too much about China’s history.
I’ve also been judged to be a “Panda Lover” and “Pro China”.
I happen to enjoy learning about history and there is a reason that history has been included as a topic in this Blog.
A SHORT HISTORY LESSON
Barbara Tuchman (1912 to 1989) explains it better than I do.
Tuchman was an American self-trained historian and author, who twice won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.
One of her last books was The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.
Tuchman says, Many individuals are guilty of folly (Tuchman also calls this woodenheadedness), but when governments persist in folly, their actions can adversely affect thousands, even millions of lives. Folly is a child of power. “The power to command frequently causes failure to think.” (p.32).
I’ve read that historians say an event must be at least fifty-years old to be judged as history. I used that as my criteria.
LEARN FROM HISTORY
I wanted to find out if I was writing too much history about China, so I surveyed all 734 posts that I have written to date.
The first history post I discovered was Foreign Devil Heroes and that was post 49 that appeared on February 13.
An American Genocide (56) and An American Shadow Over the Philippines (57) qualify but those two are about American history, and I have discovered that some misguided American patriots don’t want to learn about the dark side of U.S. history.
The next history post would be Learning from China’s History (90).
Next was China’s Health Care During Mao’s Time (92)
Post 118 is about The Man Who Made China, which qualifies since China’s first emperor lived more than two millennia ago.
The history of religion in China appears with Christianity and Islam in China (125) followed by Cults and Christian Cannon Balls (126) and The Influence of Confucius (127).
Since so much of China’s history with Christianity and Islam turns out bad, one commenter complained that I was against Christianity.
A LONG HISTORY LESSON
Of more than 730 posts, 107 were on history and 70 of those appeared in the last two months mixed in with more than a hundred posts on other topics—the number of history posts represents less than 15% of the total.
Then I checked statistics for top posts of “All Time”. If no one was reading history, I decided I would stop writing about it.
Seven history posts were among the top twenty and iLook China has had more than eleven thousand visits since the January 28, 2010 launch.
That means 35% of the top 20 most-popular posts visited were on China’s history.
A FINAL LESSON ABOUT HISTORY
For individuals who want to avoid history, there are menus on the HOME page that offer choices.
______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
iLook China 
“The power to command frequently causes failure to think.”
I liked that one.
“Panda lover” *lol* Guess they went out of arguments.
But you are a teacher. What you write here is very informative and it means that as a reader one must be well informed before one can argument in a way that would be in the same level as you concerning Chinese and American history. Sad tho that no one of all those readers have not shown interest enough to even try. Maybe they are paranoid and suspicious with your intentions with this blog, never know.
You are a nice panda lover 🙂
Thank you.