Oprah Times Four in China

November 24, 2010

After doing research for this post, I thought, how could these four Chinese women be compared to Oprah when her US audience is only seven million?

The four women I discovered in China compared to America’s Oprah are Chen Luyu, Yue-sai Khan, Hung Huang, and Yang Lan.

I’ve written about Luyu before at You’ve Come a Long Ways, Babe.

Luyu’s audience in China averages 140 million. Her show is called A Date With Luyu, which tackles issues that traditionally have been censored by Chinese media officials. The show’s guests have included people who are HIV-positive, lesbians and transsexuals.

Of Yue-sai Kan, The Conversation: The Most Famous Woman in China says she is a journalist, television host, entrepreneur and author and has been a key figure in modern Chinese culture for 20 years. About 300 million Chinese watch her show.

People Magazine called Yue-sai Kan the most famous woman in China. Money Magazine described her as a Modern Day Marco Polo.

After Kan hosted a live broadcast from China in 1984 for PBS, China’s government asked her to produce One World, the first television series ever produced and hosted by an American on China’s only national network, CCTV. Source: Women of China

The next Chinese Oprah is Hong Huang, who hosts a TV show called Crossing Over. Huang’s mother was Mao Zedong’s English teacher. She was sent to the U.S. for an education as a teenager and returned to become one of the most influential entrepreneurs in Chinese print media.

Hung Huang is the chief executive of the China Interactive Media Group and publishes fashion magazines such as I Look, Time Out and Seventeen. Her Blog, which has an audience of about 15 million, is one of China’s most popular and continues to be one of the top five on Sina.com.

The fourth Chinese Oprah I discovered was Yang Lan, who rose to fame as the host of the Zheng Da Variety Show, which often has an audience of 200 million viewers.

In the following YouTube video clip, Yang Lan talks about how Chinese women are making their mark on China’s future.

She says the younger generation in China is turning away from television and using the Internet for entertainment and information.

If you do the math, you will discover that these four Chinese Oprahs reach an audience of about 700 million compared to America’s Oprah with an audience of seven million.

Maybe the US Oprah’s claim to fame is because she was the first Oprah and it has nothing to do with the size of the audience. Did you notice that all of these Chinese Oprahs speak excellent English? I am sure that the US Oprah doesn’t speak Mandarin.

Since the US Oprah is going off the air, you have four choices in China to take her place.

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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.

1 Comment | America, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese women, cultural differences, media | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 2/3

November 23, 2010

The Ming Dynasty was the golden age of porcelain making. Each area and/or city in China that produced porcelain had its own specialty.

Most of the porcelain products that Admiral Zheng He took on his voyages were from China’s capital of porcelain in Jingdezhen.

By the time of the Ming Dynasty, there were about 20 kilns in Jingdezhen producing porcelain for the exclusive use of the Imperial family.

However, porcelain was also produced for the common people and for trade.

Again, the process of porcelain production was similar to a modern day assembly line. Sorry, Ford.

Chinese porcelain became famous throughout the world.  Merchants from all of Europe and the Middle East were doing business with China.

For example, the amount of china one nation, the Netherlands, imported came to about 16 million pieces.

While Zheng He was on his voyages, the Forbidden City, the largest palace in the world, was being built in Beijing. Classical Chinese construction involved eight separate tasks, which have changed little in thousands of years.

Jin Hongkui, Deputy Curator of the Palace Museum says, “The golden yellow tiles of the Forbidden City contain many details that might go unnoticed by a less observant eye.

“For instance, each tile on the roof of the Hall of Supreme Harmony has a miniature dragon sculpted on the tile’s head…

“These small details are a sharp contrast to the grand scale of the palace and this highlights the harmony of artistic and architectural effort that went into the Forbidden City.”

At the same time, the Temple of Heaven was being built in another part of Beijing.

Return to Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 1/3

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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.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Confucianism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Death by Execution or Murder

November 23, 2010

The Huffington Post and other media reported that Ambassador Mark Sedwill, NATO’s Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, said that youngsters living in Afghan’s capital probably are safer than in other big cities like London or New York.

The knee jerk reaction of the virtual mob judged Sedwill wrong without evidence.

However, he was right!

Between 2001 to June of 2010, direct deaths of “all” civilians killed in Afghanistan as a result of insurgent actions was estimated to be 4,949 to 6,499 or an average of 550 to 722 a year.

In the US, total murders 2001 to 2009 were 137,840 people. Forcible rape was about a million. Aggravated assault was about eight million. Source: FBI

About 260,000 children die globally each year in motor vehicle collisions and ten million are injured. That’s more than all the roadside and suicide bombings in both Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars started.

In the US, Child Help reported that 10,432 children died from abuse 2001 to 2007 and over 3 million reports of child abuse are made annually.

That leads me to the Western mob’s criticism of China’s convicted criminal execution rate.

Amnesty International estimated that 1,718 executions took place in 2008 in China.

The big difference is that most people executed in China at least get a trial and a chance to prove innocence before death. In a motor vehicle collision, murder or child abuse, the innocent victim has no chance.

It is wrong that criminals serving life sentences in the US without a chance for parole or execution cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

KPBS did a special on The Cost of Life in Prison. For 2,600 serving life sentences in California, the projected cost was about $6.4 billion.

Criminal Justice says, 140,610 people are serving life sentences in the U.S. and more than 40,000 are serving life without parole.

China’s justice system is doing the right thing. China has executed convicted child molesters. Source: Dream Catchers for Abused Children

Discover The Founding Fathers had it Right about the Death Penalty

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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.

4 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese police, crime, cultural differences, family values, legal system, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Letting China In

November 23, 2010

When I wrote the post about The Economist’s cover for the November 13 issue, The Fear of Mao Buying the World, I had not yet read the feature story the cover represented.

Now that I have seen China buys up the world, And the world should stay open for business, I’m not sure who designed the cover but I don’t believe it was the same person that wrote the feature.

This may have something to do with the unique way The Economist does business.

The Economist describes itself as “a political, literary and general newspaper.… Articles … are not signed, but they are not all the work of the editor alone.… Nowadays, in addition to a worldwide network of stringers, the paper has about 20 staff correspondents abroad.”

In the Western media, I’ve read a few pieces about China that were well done and many that sounded as if someone suffering from Sinophobia wrote them.

This feature in The Economist comes from someone that seems to know China well.

He or she says that the world should not lock China out from buying up businesses in other countries. As is, China owns just 6% of global investment in international businesses compared to both Britain and America that have owned about 50% (Britain in 1914 and the US in 1967).

The Economist says that creating hurdles for China’s state-backed firms from buying companies outside China would be a mistake because most of China’s state-owned companies compete at home and their decision-making is consensual rather than dictatorial.

In fact, I’ve said that “most” decisions in China were consensual and that China is not a dictatorship by definition. The Chinese just make decisions differently than “most”.

However, what does “consensual” mean when doing business?

When doing business, consensual means with permission, without coercion, arriving at a decision or position by mutual consent, involving the willing participation of both or all parties, performed with the consent of all parties involved.

The Economist also says, “not all Chinese companies are state-directed. Some are largely independent and mainly interested in profits.”

The conclusion to the feature demonstrates a rare genius, “As it (China) invests in the global economy, so its interests will become increasingly aligned with the rest of the world…”

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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.

2 Comments | business, capitalism, China, cultural differences, economy | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 1/3

November 23, 2010

During the Ming Dynasty, great achievements were recorded in architecture, shipbuilding, porcelain making, and textile weaving.

Chinese products became known around the world for high quality and craftsmanship.

Admiral Zheng He took more than 10,000 copies of books to give away in the hope of spreading Chinese civilization and traditional Confucian ideas.

However, it was the silk and brocade that was most welcomed during the voyages of the great fleet.

Most of the Chinese silk that Zheng He took on his voyages came from southern China.

 

Of all the textile industries, silk weaving was number one and could be found in almost every large and small town in the south.

Shang Chuan, a Research Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences says, “Textiles in China have a long history. By the Ming Dynasty… large workshops had appeared, although work was still done by hand.

“However, compared with the old family production model, large worships were superior as the products were quality guaranteed, all looked the same and were the same standard.”

The silk industry was the beginning of modern manufacturing. In fact, silk weaving had matured two thousand years before the Ming Dynasty during the Warring States Period and was widely traded with the known world during the Han Dynasty

It has been discovered that eighty years before British discovered what caused scurvy — a lack of vitamin C — Chinese sailors were not suffering from scurvy because the Chinese had developed porcelain containers to grow bean sprouts in while at sea.  Bean sprouts are a rich source of vitamin C.

Return to Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 1, 3/3

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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.

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