iLook China

In 1999, I had no idea that I was about to begin a journey of discovery that would lead to China.

It all started when my wife said, “You might be interested in Robert Hart, an Irishman who went to China in 1854.  He worked for the emperor.”

Since my ancestors were Irish, I was curious.

I learned about Robert Hart through his letters and journals and more than a decade later, I’m still learning about China’s history and culture.

In 1999, I was a member of the ignorant democratic American mob in a country that was born as a republic in 1776 with slavery while women and children were considered chattel.

The slaves would be free eighty-nine years later after a bloody Civil War.  The women and children would have to wait longer for their freedom.

While writing about China, I learned that America’s Founding Fathers built a republic because they despised democracies with good reason. The following You Tube video offers an explanation.

Before 1999, like those Americans who have called me a “Panda Lover” and “Pro China”, I believed China was an evil place with a horrible dictatorship and everyone was brainwashed, miserable and Godless.

Little did I know that the Chinese were closer to heaven and God than most Christians and Muslims were, since these Western and Middle Eastern religions act as the intermediary telling people how to think, act, worship and who to kill when it comes time to convert the heathens and non-believers.

In 19th century America, racial prejudice was so strong that sayings like, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” were taken seriously. See: Counter Currents

Substitute “Chinese” for the word “Indian” and that was another slogan that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Many European immigrants to the Americas worked hard to make those slogans true.

Once finished with the North American natives, those people moved on to Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan and China where the killing continued.

See: An American Genocide

In 1999, I knew nothing about the 19th century Opium Wars where Western Imperial powers, including Americans, went to war with China so the West could sell opium to the Chinese people. 

After China lost the Opium Wars, the treaties also forced China to allow Christian missionaries to enter China and go wherever they wanted to save the savage even if it meant more death.

A once proud people with a long history were humbled and crushed as their two thousand year old civilization was torn apart by Western greed and religions.

Then I learned about the Taiping Rebellion fought by Chinese Christian converts. When that rebellion ended, another twenty million Chinese had been killed in the name of the West’s God.

There were also Muslim led rebellions where millions died following a prophet shouting the word of God.

Growing up, the Hollywood movies I watched about China supported the stereotypes. The men were either coolies pulling rickshaws, or owned a Chinese restaurant or laundry and the woman were all concubines or whores.

Thanks to Robert Hart, I learned that the stereotypes about China I was fed as a child were wrong.

I’ve learned that China is recovering its position (one held for more than two thousand years) as a world power.

At the same time, the West continues making the same mistakes that led to the collapse of the Roman Empire — the same mistakes that led to wars in Europe where Christians killed Christians and then Christians invaded the Middle East to fight with Islam where the West is still fighting.

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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. 

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