In twelve days on June 22, the 2013 New York Book Festival will be held at the Radisson Martinique on Broadway in New York City’s Midtown Manhattan—just steps from the Empire State Building.
The sun never set on the British Empire until endless wars brought that empire to its knees. I’m sure that at one time, a British citizen could easily say with arrogance, “If Russia (or China, or Germany, or Italy, or France or Spain) doesn’t behave, we will spank them.” And Britain did spank these countries and others for centuries until the empire was bankrupt and burdened with debt—sound familiar?
I read a piece in The Huffington Postrecently and was reminded how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Then I remembered what an old friend said in an e-mail. This friend is a conservative, born-again Christian. He claims to be guided by scripture. He believes that George W. Bush (GWB) was the greatest if not one of the greatest American presidents. He also believes in the nation building that GWB attempted in Iraq.
He makes part of his living as a handyman. He lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment and drives a very-used car that he keeps running by visiting junk yards for parts and doing the work himself. He also votes Republican and often bashes evil liberals while listening to radio-talk shows like Dennis Prager and reading authors likeAnn Coulter.
This friend wrote in an e-mail, “IfChinadoesn’t behave, we will spank them.” He also wrote once that Communism was evil. My reply was that individuals like Mao or Stalin were corrupted by their power and did evil things, but not all communists were or are evil.
I always thought that ‘power corrupts’ only applied to people in powerful positions like corporate CEOs or elected officials. I was wrong. A nation’s power may also corrupt the thinking of its people.
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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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I guess I’m naïve or stupid or something. During the nine years I attended colleges and universities to earn my BA in journalism and MFA in writing, I did all my own work. It didn’t even occur to me that I could pay someone else to do the work for me.
And when I read, “Rampant cheating hurts China’s research ambitions” (Yahoo news), I was disappointed at the lack of balance. There was no mention that cheating is a problem globally—not just in China.
Was this another example of China bashing?
I taught journalism and was an adviser for an award winning high-school newspaper for several years, and the student reporters learned to write balanced pieces—even for the opinion page. I taught that both sides of an issue should be heard even if the balance isn’t perfect and one side is not politically correct.
Listen to the first few minutes to get the idea.
Since Yahoo’s headquarters are in Sunnyvale, California, I’m going to focus on cheating in America to correct this imbalance.
ABC News/Primetime published “A Crisis in America’s Schools — How It’s Done and Why It’s Happening“. “…according to a 2002 confidential survey of 12,000 high school students, 74 percent admitted cheating on an examination at least once in the past year…. Lifting papers off the Internet is one of the newer trends in plagiarism — and technology is giving students even more ways to cheat nowadays.”
Then there’s “High-Tech Cheating in College” about cheating at MIT, California Polytechnic State University at San Louis Obispo, and Stanford University. “Many colleges offer no comprehensive approach to minor academic cheating (the exceptions are institutions with honor codes, though few have them accordingTracy Mitrano, Cornell University’s director of information-technology policy.”
Then there is Lance Armstrong and the US cycling team.
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.
Cheng Naishan, a mainland Chinese author and writer known for her work about life in Shanghai, died recently of leukemia.
The Blue House, a novel that is also available in English, French and Spanish, is about the world of romance, business and family life in Shanghai during and after The Cultural Revolution.
Her work is known for the history, culture and legacy of Shanghai in the 1930s before World War II when the city was known as the “Paris of the Orient”.
Cheng was born in 1947 into a family of bankers. The family moved to Hong Kong in 1949, and returned to Shanghai—out of patriotism—in 1956. Her first story was published in a literary magazine in 1979 launching a literary career in China that spanned more than three decades.
“I know some people say I always write about the old Shanghai and try to keep the flavor of old Shanghai and that makes my writing look less modern,” she said in a 2012 interview with an official publication run by the government-backed Shanghai Federation of Literary and Art Circles. “I am not concerned about what those people say about me because in my heart the old Shanghai is just an endless story and I won’t stop writing about it.”
The editor of the Shanghai Dialect column for Xinmin Evening News, Lyu Zheng said, “She can write adeptly about the lower-class life experience of dumping the chamber pot, as well as upper-class social life between coffee cups.”
Her husband, Yan Erchun, said, “Naishan has great love for the city of Shanghai, especially the district of Jing’an. She was born and raised here. There are endless stories she wanted to write about Shanghai.”
Cheng was diagnosed with leukemia in the winter of 2011, and she continued writing until near the end.
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.
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The city of Huangzhou in Zhejiang province is about a hundred miles or 161 kilometers from Shanghai. We’ve visited several times. Our last trip together was in 2008 shortly before the project this story covers was launched. Huangzhou is one of the most beautiful cities in China.
In the video, Al Jazerra’s Melissa Chan reports on one of the largest bike sharing projects in the world and one of the most successful.
The people Chan interviewed say they use the bikes to go to work and it is great to be outside and exercising. One woman says it cuts her commute time.
Melissa Chan says the first hour of bike use is free. It’s actually possible to cycle free all day as long as you check in at a stop every hour.
The system is easy to use—just swipe a bike card across a reader (similar to riding many urban rapid transit systems) and off you go.
Registering for a card is simple. All that’s needed is a deposit and identification.
Huangzhou, also known as the Westlake, has been one of the more environmentally conscious cities in China.
The government made space to build parks alongside the rapid development and modernization. Huangzhou has remained picturesque unlike many other cities in China where the concrete jungle has taken over.
Li Zhi Hong of Hangzhou Public Transport says the city wanted to encourage citizens to leave their cars and use more public transportation. The bicycles allowed people to take that final kilometer from the bus station to their destination.
The bikes are also great for tourism.
Melissa Chan says public busses have also adopted European emission standards. While there are still many cars on the road, people tell her that it could be a lot worse.
The city has taken the pollution issue seriously and Huangzhou’s success has attracted the attention of Beijing where the pollution problem is still “painfully” visible with each breath.
Today, Huangzhou is one of the cleanest cities in the country. In fact, recently it was one of seven cities in China to limit the number of vehicles driving on roads using travel restrictions based on vehicle license plate numbers.” Source: Hangzhou Weekly.com (2013 update)
In addition, Huangzhou’s air is rated cleaner than seventeen of China’s Provincial Capitals including Xi’an, China’s ancient capital, and Beijing, its modern capital. Source: What’s On Ningbo.com
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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.
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