History’s Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 5/5

October 16, 2010


A few Chinese intellectuals pleaded for a more open approach for knowledge. This took place a few decades before the clash between China and the West during the Qing Dynasty.

One Chinese scholar, Chiang Siu Chung, said that the Confucian texts were history and Confucius may be a true guide to life but the time was past to continue following this old curriculum of study.

Two years before this scholar’s death in 1799, he wrote a letter that said that history should no longer concern itself merely with the past but should use the past to reform the present and to look into the future. He predicted the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

Near Chiang Sui Chung’s death, China was about to come face to face with another culture whose view of history was diametrically opposed to Chinese tradition.

The Europeans with their Judea-Christian heritage believed that history had a purpose — that it was leading toward an appointed end and they would be the winners.

When The Chinese first met the Westerners, the Chinese had a dark description of the Europeans as a savage people who didn’t just come to sell but came to impose their ideas, their religions and their will on everyone they met.

This era culminated in the Opium Wars, which meant the Europeans wanted to get as many Chinese addicted to Opium as possible.

China was defeated by the very technology they had developed centuries earlier because they had stopped in their development. Unable to cope with the pressure from the West, the Chinese government collapsed and the Western Imperialists treated the Chinese people as if they were animals in their own land.

Then a great time of revolution had arrived as the I-Ching, the book of changes, says. In the I-Ching, there is a hexagram titled revolution.

In a revolution, the I-Ching says there are two mistakes that must be avoided. You must not move with excessive haste nor use excessive ruthlessness against the people.

Return to History of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 4

 

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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

When China “Could” Have Ruled the World

October 16, 2010

An interesting post at The Globalist says, “Many regard China’s economic powerhouse as a new phenomenon.  But a thousand years ago, Chinese merchants ruled the seas of Asia.”

The post goes on to point out how China’s Song Dynasty promoted international trade and that Chinese merchants expanded foreign trade rapidly but with Chinese government control over trade as in China today.

The Song Dynasty also kept a close watch on exports as in China today.

The Globalist said, “Even 1000 years ago, China’s government kept a close eye on trade. If a ship was blown off course, its captain had to report it promptly (on his return to China) — and produce evidence.”

In fact, Merchants from all over the world came to China at that time just as they are doing today.

Therefore, it should be no surprise when The Economist says, “China’s overreaction to a Japanese ‘provocation’ has set its regional diplomacy back years. … China sneezes, Asia shivers.”

I don’t believe China cares if diplomacy suffered.  China is more concerned with not letting anyone step on its toes again.

When I say that, I’m talking about the Opium Wars then Western domination of China’s politics for close to a century before World War II when Japan invaded and killed about 30 million Chinese.

If we are to believe Marco Polo (1254 – 1324), who said China could have conquered the world, then we should also breathe a sigh of relief that China didn’t want to do that then when it could have and still doesn’t.

However, China’s desires to control events that affect China have not changed.  Japan sneezed and China roared back. It’s all about harmony—in China.

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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

History’s Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 4/5

October 16, 2010

Marco Polo had no doubt that China was the world’s greatest civilization. He wrote that if the Chinese were war like, they would conquer the world.

He said, “Thank goodness, they are not.”

During the Song Dynasty, the standard of living in China was the highest in the world.

The key concept of Chinese civilization was the search for harmony and during the Song Dynasty this balance was achieved for a few centuries.

Writing was considered a tool that provided access to the ancestors until writing became civilization itself.

 

However, the way China saw the world started to change after Chinese Admiral Zheng He sailed from China with a huge armada in the fifteenth century.

Zheng He’s ships were eventually broken up and the logbooks destroyed.

Western thinkers have a simple explanation that the end of Zheng He’s explorations was proof that the Chinese were backward and ignorant and had no desire for new knowledge.

However, there is another explanation.

After all, at the time, the Chinese were the most advanced technological nation on the globe.

Therefore, perhaps it is a difference of how different civilizations believed technology should be used and the Chinese may have realized that their real interests were in China — not in the world.

In Europe, however, Western philosophers, leaders and writers were not concerned with perfecting the past but how to control the world’s future.

Return to History of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Universal Values and Medical Care

October 15, 2010

For the last two years, the U.S. has been embroiled in partisican warfare over universal healthcare.

Universal values wasn’t an issue. The Political Correctness of the democratic mob decides that.

The American Republican Party says they will get rid of universal healthcare if they gain a majority in Congress in the mid-term elections.

However, in China, the debate is over universal values. In The Economist for October 2, 2010, there is a piece on this topic that mentions a “smouldering” debate in China for the past two years.

The lead sentence says, “It is not quite true that China is rejecting Western values such as democracy. Rather, it is fighting over them.”

If there is a Politically Correct belief in the West driven by Sinophobia that the Chinese have no freedom, consider this quote from The Economist, “A philosophical question of whether universal values exist has turned into a political fight, dividing scholars, the media and even, some analysts believe, China’s leaders.”

It even appears, according to The Economist, that China’s Vice-President Xi Jinping, who is all but certain to take over from Hu Jintao as party chief in 2012, has been involved in this debate about values.

See Misconceptions of China – The Chinese Government

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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, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

History’s Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 3/5

October 15, 2010

In the eighth century AD, all roads in Asia led to Xian. It was the greatest city in the world. Rivaled only by Bagdad and Constantinople.

At this time, foreigners were allowed into China for the first time and they were kept in their own area away from the center of power.

In the western part of Xian in the foreign enclave, there was a great mix of cultures.

To the Chinese, the Tang Dynasty was the most golden of all ages for Chinese poetry.

For the Chinese, composing poetry is one of the central ideas of civilization.

A famous Silk Road poet talked about in the video said that the people of China could face any test as long as their leaders treated them humanely.

The Tang Dynasty ended in chaos and anarchy like so many in China’s history but was followed by an even greater Dynasty.

Four hundred miles from Xian lay Kaifeng. In the 11th century AD, this city was the capital of what is considered the peak of Chinese civilization, the Song Dynasty.

During the Song Dynasty, the invention of printing and inward development changed China. This would guide Asia for another thousand years.

In Kaifeng, as everywhere in China, several decades of Communist rule have not cut the ancient beliefs.

Reverence for ancestors, filial piety, and Confucian virtues are all coming back into the open now that freedom of worship (of the old ways) is guaranteed.

Like its medicine, Chinese cooking is based on harmony and balance – the old themes of Chinese culture. In fact, the oldest restaurant in the world first opened in 1153 AD and is still open for business in Kaifeng.

Return to History of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 2

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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 Culture, Chinese history | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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