Yuan Shikai — the general who became China’s second president then emperor

December 28, 2010

For thousands of years, the history of China has been defined by wars, rebellion, power struggles and famine, which explains why today’s central government worries about famine and allowing dissidents a voice.

Between 1911 and 1976, three men were responsible for much of the devastation and death that swept over China causing tens of millions of deaths — Yuan Shikai, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung.

In 1911 when the Qing Dynasty fell, Yuan Shikai was a general and commander of the most modern military force in Imperial China. He kept his position by supporting the revolutionaries that brought down the Qing Dynasty.

After the Qing Dynasty fell, rebellion spread through the Yangtze River Valley before revolutionaries from fourteen provinces elected Sun Yat-sen president of a provisional (temporary) government and in January 1912, Sun announced the establishment of the Republic of China.

However, generals controlled China’s provinces and refused to give up power. China’s young republic was essentially the capital city of Nanjing.

On March 20, 1913, Yuan Shikai’s agents assassinated Sung Chiao-jen, who helped Sun Yat-sen become the first president. Sun demanded that those responsible be brought to justice.

Yuan Shikai resisted, sparking a “so-called” second revolution and on September 15, 1913, he ordered Sun Yat-sen’s arrest. To survive, Sun fled to Japan as a political refugee. He wouldn’t return to China until a few months after Yuan Shikai’s death.

Yuan Shikai, supported financially by the British Empire, became China’s second president, but after 1914, World War I caused a reduction in Britain’s financial support.

Weakened, Yuan Shaikai was forced to accept twenty-one demands made by Japan, which included giving up Chinese territory. He agreed on May 7, 1916, which is now considered National Humiliation Day.

Yuan Shaikai was unable to establish control beyond Nanking so he declared himself emperor. His attempt to replace the republic with a monarchy and him as emperor touched off revolts in southwestern China followed by uprisings of Sun Yat-sen’s followers in several other provinces.

This resulted in twelve years of warfare between the warlord generals of China’s provinces and the weak Republic of China.

Yuan Shikai died in 1916, then Sun Yat-sen returned to lead the republic. Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, which caused the Civil War between the Chinese Communist Party and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists.

Discover more from The Roots of Madness

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Living in an Egg House

December 27, 2010

Matt Hickman at Mother Nature Network reports on a young Beijing architect that built a solar-powered, egg-shaped hut and planted it on the streets of Beijing near where he worked.

I’ve been to Beijing several times and getting around is a challenge since there seems to be gridlock on the roads almost 24/7, so this was a smart move.

Hickman writes that the Egg House measured six feet at its highest point. The architect, Dai Haifei, built the wheeled home for $964 (US) using a bamboo frame clad with sack bags filled with sawdust and grass seeds.

Inside the egg house is a bed, water tank, washbasin and night table. Plug-in possessions, including a bedside lamp, were powered by a solar panel on top of the pod.

If you want to learn more of how Dai Haifei lived in his egg, click on the Mother Nature Network link above.

However, earlier this month Hickman reports that Haifei was forced to remove his egg from the sidewalk and is currently living with friends.

Tanto News powered by Xinhua, China’s state-run media, explains why Dai Haifei resorted to such an extreme.  The cost of living in Beijing or Shanghai is high.

A recent survey showed that 80% of college graduates start their careers in second tier cities instead of first tier cities such as Shanghai or Beijing.

It seems people may live comfortable in a second tier city with a monthly salary of 4,000 yuan (about $600 US dollars).

However, in Shanghai, people barely survive with monthly earnings of $750 US.  To live in Shanghai or Beijing would require at least $30,000 US annually.

Discover more about China Going Green

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Beast of too much Self-Esteem and Positive Language

December 26, 2010

The New York Times reported Top Test Scores from Shanghai Stun Educators. China’s students were number one globally while the US came in 23rd.

How did the United States fall so far behind?

The scapegoat is not bad teachers or their unions. Even the flawed and biased documentary Waiting for Superman says only 7% of the teachers were found to be considered bad. Since the average student has about 50 teachers kindergarten through high school, this means less than four might be poor teachers.

The real culprit is the “positive language” and the inflated “sense of self-esteem” movement that has plagued the US for several decades.

In fact, Rapid Net.com reports that Edward Wynne, Professor of Education at the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle campus), and Kevin Ryan, Professor of Education at Boston University, question the benefits of the obsession with self-esteem in America’s schools. In their recently published book Reclaiming Our Schools, they note: “The self-esteem movement puts a false and infectious pressure on teachers. They are more and more expected to keep students feeling good about themselves. In other eras, teachers were expected to provide pupils with an environment and educational opportunity to grow and achieve.”

Rapid Net.com says, “A 1990 study contrasting the performance of American students in mathematics skills with five other countries revealed that the math scores of American 5th-graders were the lowest of the six countries. The Koreans were first. The test asked pupils to say whether they felt they would be “good at mathematics in high school.” Of the Americans, 68% said “yes” while only 26% of the high-scoring Koreans gave that reply.”

The answer is returning to Aristotle’s idea of the “Golden Mean”, which means avoidance of extremes since building a false sense of self-esteem in children is an extreme.

However, Aristotle is not alone.

In Chinese philosophy, a similar concept, Doctrine of the Mean, was propounded by Confucius.

Buddhist philosophy also includes the concept of the Middle Way.

Reverend Dr. George C. Papademetriou at Goarch.org says, “The way of (Christian) Orthodoxy is to converge on the golden mean, carefully avoiding extremes and the pitfalls that can lead to destruction.”

The extreme self-esteem movement in the US is leading the country towards destruction.

In China and in most American-Chinese homes, when a child brings a poor grade home from school, the teacher is not blamed.  The parents accept the blame and tell the child he or she is lazy and stupid and must work harder. 

Then the Chinese parent enrolls the child in private night or weekend classes to help them succeed.  They may also hire a tutor for the child.

Maybe the Chinese concept of raising children explains the 2009 PISA test results from Shanghai and the economic miracle that has taken place in China since the early 1980s. 

Since the Chinese are not as perfect as most Americans born after 1960 believe they are, the Chinese are willing to work harder regardless of low or high self-esteem.

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Vampires

December 25, 2010

Belief in vampires is not confined to the people of Transylvania, and half humans able to transform themselves into monsters are no strangers to Chinese folklore. Some tales may be traced back to the third century AD.

Since Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897, this makes a case that vampire folklore may have originated in China and traveled west along the Silk Road almost two thousand years ago.

The Chinese vampire is called a Jiang-shi (also spelled Kaing-shi or Chiang-shih). However, Chinese vampires are different from Dracula or Anne Rice’s vampires.

Chinese folklore says the Jiang-shi is stiffened by rigor mortis and these vampires have to hop to get around.  The Jiang-shi also finds its victims by smelling your breath, so if a hungry Jiang-shi is about, it is best to stop breathing.

In the 1980s, there was a series of vampire movies produced in Hong Kong. The first in the series was Mr. Vampire (you may watch Mr. Vampire here. For parts two through ten, scroll down to the embedded YouTube series at the bottom of this post).

 
Mr. Vampire – Part 1/10
with English subtitles

Ricky Lau directed Mr. Vampire and the producer was Sammo Hung.

Chopper Time says, “Almost all of these movies are pretty watchable, but the best of the bunch was the first one, an expert horror-comedy called Mr. Vampire.”

There were a few Taiwanese vampire films, which include The Vampire Shows His Teeth (a series of three films (1984-1986), New Mr. Vampire (1985), Elusive Song of the Vampire (1987) and Spirit versus Zombie (1989).

Today, Vampires stories are becoming popular in mainland China. Tom Carter, an American author and expatriate living in China, says Twilight is a popular pirated novel and some Twilight fans are now writing their own fan-fiction and vampire stores in Chinese on their Blogs.

In fact, a shop called the Vampire opened its doors recently in Beijing to sell vampire, zombie, and werewolf blood along with Satan poison and UFO fuel.

In November 2010, the China Daily reported Blood Shop drawing a thirsty Crowd.

“The shop, which opened September 20, is reportedly the first of its kind in Beijing. The storefront also has a stained-glass window adorned with a miniature vampire model sucking blood from a cup held in his skeletal hand.”

Another excellent Chinese movie is Farewell My Concubine but there are no vampires in this film.

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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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Mr. Vampire continued
with English subtitles


Mr. Vampire – Part 2/10


Mr. Vampire – Part 3/10


Mr. Vampire – Part 4/10


Mr. Vampire – Part 5/10


Mr. Vampire – Part 6/10


Mr. Vampire – Part 7/10


Mr. Vampire – Part 8/10


Mr. Vampire – Part 9/10


Mr. Vampire – Part 10/10

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Christmas in China

December 24, 2010

I don’t read Mandarin and a few days ago an e-mail arrived that was in Mandarin with an attachment.

I’ve learned the hard way that you don’t open e-mails when you don’t know where there from, so I waited until my wife read the Mandarin and told me it was from our daughter’s grandfather in China.

Inside the attached file were twelve virtual Christmas cards in English with flashing Christmas lights in winter settings. Grandpa lives in Shanghai.

Shanghai shopping malls are decorated for Christmas.

Many Shanghai Chinese have adopted the Christmas holiday and take it seriously even giving gifts.

One Chinese man in the embedded video says, “Perhaps because Shanghai is quite an international city, we attach much importance to this festival and celebrate it in a grander manner compared to other cities in China.”

A young Chinese woman says, “If you live overseas for a long time, you will know that this is the time to reunite with your friends and exchange Christmas presents with those you know.”

The expat owner of a German restaurant even set up a stall outside offering blue wine, a type of warm wine popular among Germans during Christmas.

The twelve virtual Christmas cards our daughter’s grandfather attached to his e-mail said, “Remember… Through the year, be thankful for what you have…”

2. “If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep… You are richer than 75% of the world.”

3. “If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish some place, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.”

 4. “If you woke up this morning with more health than illness… You are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.”

5. “If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation… You are ahead of 500 million people in the world.”

6. “If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death… You are more blessed than three billion people in the world.”

7. “If your parents are still alive and still married… You are very rare, even in the United States.”

8. “If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful… You are blessed, because the majority can, but most do not.”

9. “If you can hold someone’s hand, hug them or even touch them on the shoulder… You are blessed because you can offer healing touch.”

10. “If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore… You are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.”

11. “Have a good day, count your blessings, and pass this along to remind everyone else how blessed we all are. You are wished a Merry Christmas.”

12. “Remember… throughout the year, be thankful for what you have been blessed with…”

A grandfather that fought on the winning side of China’s Civil War (1925 – 1949) then held an important position in Chinese Communist Party until he retired at 67 (as the 1982 Chinese Constitution requires) sent these twelve virtual Christmas cards.

In fact, he was born during the Civil War about 1930 and was nineteen when it ended.

Discover the Top Five Restaurants Expats Love in Shanghai

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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