How the Chinese think of the owl. About as different as they think of dragons.
貓頭鷹 〜 Owl in Chinese Culture
July 11, 2013
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
Pearl S. Buck’s 1966 China Predictions
July 11, 2013Pearl S. Buck appeared on the Merv Griffin Show in 1966 and made a few predictions.
- Buck said China will be what we make it to be. She meant that the United States will either make China its enemy or its friend.
- Buck said the Chinese are marvelous friends and frightful enemies. If this is true, why are so many Americans and the US media demonizing China instead of cultivating friendship?
- The Chinese have a marvelous sense of humor, Buck says. The Asian people are very human.
- Communism will change. Buck said China will moderate and will modernize in time. She saw Communism arrive in China in 1921, and said it was an impractical, impossible scheme of life. She was right. China has changed and is now a hybrid, socialist-capitalist country with a market economy and an authoritarian, one-party (with more than 80-million members) government.
During her career as an author, Buck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel The Good Earth in 1932 and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1938.
Only seven American authors have been awarded both the Pulitzer and the Nobel: Sinclair Lewis; Eugene O’Neill; Pearl S. Buck; William Faulkner; Ernest Hemingway; John Steinbeck; Saul Bellow, and Toni Morrison—five men and two women.
Pearl S. Buck was born in America (1892 – 1973) and at the age of three months went to China. Except for attending college in the United States 1911 – 1914, she lived in China until age forty
Meet Pearl S. Buck in the following mini-documentary that runs 2:14 minutes.
“She was a builder of bridges between China and the rest of the world,” says Edgar Walsh of his mother, Pearl S. Buck.
In this mini-documentary, Walsh describes how his mother was “ideally positioned to write about China.” Buck was the daughter of missionaries and spent much of the first half of her life in China, where many of her books are set.
What do you think of China?
Discover China: Dictatorship or One Party Republic
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.
His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.
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2 Comments | America, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Communism, history, media, politics, socialism, United States | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
Printing Books in China
July 9, 2013I read a post on another Blog that complained about printing books in China for the American market, and this was my response.
If American’s stopped buying products made in China, Americans at home would lose jobs. Since companies like Wal-Mart have most of its products manufactured in China, Wal-Mart might go out of business or shrink—which might be a good thing. But many low wage people that work for Wal-Mart in the United States would be unemployed like American autoworkers during the recession.
Most Chinese products are manufactured for American companies. Most of Apple’s products are manufactured outside the country like iPods in China. Try to buy a car—any car—that’s 100% manufactured in the United States. Does it matter where the jobs go? They are still gone. People in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc. are manufacturing goods that are sold in the United States. China isn’t the only country that does this. Yet China seems to get all the blame. Why?
Many products may be built in other countries but an American puts them on the shelf, sells them and gets paid for it. When you buy an e-book, where is it manufactured?
Discover Doing Business in China
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.
His latest novel, Running with the Enemy, was awarded an honorable mention in general fiction at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival.
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Leave a Comment » | America, business, capitalism, China, Chinese history, Chinese literature, economy, history, United States | Tagged: China, India, Pakistan | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
The Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven
July 4, 2013Due to the Mandate of Heaven, many of China’s people see rebellion as a birthright under the right circumstances. The Mandate of Heaven has been traced back to 1753 B.C. or earlier.
Click on image to make larger.
With the Mandate of Heaven, the right to rule from divine legitimization to one based on ‘evenhanded’ rule was born. Whenever a dynasty fell, the reason offered by China’s wise men was the loss of the moral right to rule given by Heaven alone—on a good government, Heaven sends down all blessings; on the evildoer Heaven sends down all miseries.
However, humans in China were free to rule unjustly and could harm the people they ruled but their rule would come to a swift end as Heaven passed its mandate to another family or group. Heaven blessed the authority of a just ruler, but would be displeased with a despotic ruler and would withdraw its mandate. In addition, severe floods or famines might be considered evidence of divine repeal of the Mandate of Heaven.
The time an individual or family or a political group like the Communists rules China is based on a fair and just performance. As long as the ruling family or party rules fairly and justly, the majority will see no need for change.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, cultural differences, government, history | Tagged: China's Mandate of Heaven, Mandate of Heaven, no right to rule unjustly, The right to rule, What does Mandate of Heaven mean | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
Farewell My Concubine – a movie review
July 2, 2013Chen Kaige, self-trained as a filmmaker, was the director for this award winning 1993 film. Prior to “Farewell, My Concubine“, Chen received modest acclaim for the “Yellow Earth” and “The Big Parade”. With “Farewell, My Concubine,” he won the Palme d-or in Cannes.
Although the film is in Mandarin with English subtitles, the story captured me from the beginning. If you are interested in Chinese history, this film spans several decades beginning near the end of the Qing Dynasty. On the surface, it is just a story of two boys who happen to become famous, but have their difficulties like most of us lesser mortals do. However, the setting shows the transformation of a nation from the Qing Dynasty to a warlord dominated republic, the Japanese invasion of World War II and then Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
I saw this movie a decade ago and I remember this powerful, dramatic story of one man’s life from the day his mother took a knife and chopped off an extra finger on each hand so he would have five instead of the six he was born with.
The main character is apparently modeled after an actual person—Peking Opera superstar Mei Lanfang—some may imagine that Lanfang was ‘gay’. However, he only specialized in male roles. He was married at least three times and had children.
Discover Not One Less
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.
His latest novel, Running with the Enemy, was awarded an honorable mention in general fiction at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
6 Comments | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese history, cultural differences, media | Tagged: Chen Kaige filmaker, China's history, Chinese films, Farewell My Concubine, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Mei Lanfang, Peking Opera, Qing Dynasty, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
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