I found an interesting post about traveling to Tibet. When you read between the lines, it is clear that there are risks but the government’s tourist bureau is working to make Tibet a safe destination for tourists.
Although I’ve been to China many times, I’ve never reached Tibet.
Maybe that’s because of the story I heard about the time my brother-in-law got off the plane and had a small stroke and some bleeding.
I’ve hiked/climbed mountains to 11,000 feet (about 3,353 meters) above sea level in hip-deep snow and the elevation does make the heart pound.
Lhasa’s altitude is 3,490 meters or 11,450 feet and is one of the highest cities in the world.
The post I read about traveling to Tibet was from Free Travel Guides. Here are a few of the interesting facts from that post.
The oxygen density in Tibet is about 50% of what’s normal at sea level, so altitude sickness is possible.
Road conditions are a challenge for tourists who are driving or being driven.
Safety is a big concern for the Xizang (Tibet) Autonomous Region.
A four-step safety system exits, where tourists will receive security education meaning what to look out for and how to respond, a security alarm code probably similar to the US code on danger from Islamic terrorist attacks, and emergency and travel insurance has been made available and may be mandatory.
There is a 110 emergency telephone number to use when needed.
The TIB (Tibetan Tourism Bureau) has daily updates related to tourism, security education and conditions of security.
The best way to reach Tibet would probably be using the Qinghai-Tibet railway instead of the airport. That way your body has more time to acclimate and you get to see great scenery as you climb into Tibet.
About 4 million tourists visited Tibet in 2008 and Tibet has become an increasingly attractive location for tourists.
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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That can be accomplished by telling China they may have all the oil in Iraq and the rare minerals recently discovered in Afghanistan.
Then the US pulls its troops out of both countries within six months leaving the door open for China to move in.
Why would China do this? China needs oil and these rare minerals to keep its economy growing.
Why would it work? Sun Tzu was Chinese. Who better to understand his rules for winning wars. China might even be able to pull it off without firing a shot.
This would work because China is not burdened with America’s affliction–Political Correctness, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the Tea Bag People, liberal bleeding hearts and hawkish neoconservatives who scare American politicians so much that America’s generals are not allowed to fight as a war should be fought.
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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.
The Mercury News reports that four California Chinese American high school students competed in the ninth annual China Girls Mathematical Olympiad and earned top prizes for the United States. There are more details at Silicon Valley girls capture medals in China.
I congratulate these young women for their achievement. Actually, the Mercury News did not tally the entire victory for America’s public schools.
If you click to MSRI Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, you will discover that girls from the IMO (USA International Mathematical Olympiad) team won eight medals —six gold, one silver, one bronze and one honorable mention.
What these results show is that students from America’s public schools can be competitive with other countries.
I wrote about this topic in more detail in a five-part series, Education and Cultures Collide in the US, about how the problems in America’s public school are due more to cultural/socio-economic differences than the perceived cancer of teachers unions protecting bad teachers.
If a student (no matter what his or her ethnicity is) does the work, pays attention and reads daily, most teachers will not be expected to do the impossible and face political and media criticism when they can’t.
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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.
As I finished the series on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, I thought of President Lyndon Johnson who invaded Vietnam (1950 to 1975)—a war where a super power lost to a third-world country as Chu did to Wu about twenty-five hundred years ago.
Nations that fought with the United States lost more than 300 thousand troops with almost 1.5 million wounded. North Vietnam and the Communists lost almost 1.2 million troops and more than 4 million civilian dead. Source: Vietnam War – Wiki
President G. W. Bush rushed into a war in Iraq and Afghanistan on faulty evidence, which may have been based on lies. For these wars, the casualties and losses continue.
Several American presidents ignored Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
Since World War II, America has spent more than 23 trillion dollars fighting wars and in defense. The U.S. won the Cold War against Soviet Russia without fighting.
Too bad the citizen of the US, Presidents Johnson and G. W. Bush did not learn from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
China’s Sun Tzu said, “Sometimes, the best way to win is not to fight.”
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. 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 “banned” 2005 Chinese movie Summer Palace (颐和园, Yíhé Yuán) directed by Lou Ye, has become popular movie among Westerners.
Every expat website that discusses this movie says, “It’s the kind of movie that really shows and expresses the real China and its people.”
This flattering talk kept me wondering what movie was like.
Was it great?
Does it tell some secret things about the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989 like the movie’s poster suggest?
I recently had an opportunity to finally watch Summer Palace, but after sitting for 140 minutes, the question was still there—what was movie good for?
The character Yu Hong says during the movie, “My college years were the most confused time in my life.”
However, for me, watching this movie was most confused time.
The story begins with the leading girl, Yu Hong (played by Hao Lei), having sex with her first lover at home in a North China village. Then she abruptly leaves for school at Beijing University.
We don’t know what she studies or if she is smart enough to get into “Beida,”, which is top university in China.
At school, a new girlfriend Li Ti takes her to bars and introduces her to boy named Zhou Wei, which turns into stormy relationship with constant love, sex and fighting.
In one scene, they are having naked sex and next scene are slapping and screaming then making love again.
Never does story tell why they act like this. Their love should be deeply hurt and touched inside.
However, all I saw was their cold, wild sex with different people. There was too much unnecessary nudity, like Yu Hong having a lesbian relationship in her dorm room, which cheapened movie.
In 1989, Tiananmen Square incident took place.
Movie poster for Summer Palace shows soldiers with guns and advertises that this story tells something about politics saying, it is “a powerful recreation of the Tiananmen events.”
However, they show few minutes of some students on campus singing songs, riding in the back of trucks and throwing bricks. That’s all.
This movie is definitely not about 1989 Tiananmen. I think director Lou Ye wanted to get commercial attention in the West by making story at the same time as 1989, an insincere marketing tactic.
Anyway, Yu Hong catches Zhou and Li in bed, so she leaves PKU without graduating.
Then she is working in some southern cities. Later, the movie say she is married, but we don’t see or know to whom.
Meanwhile, Zhou and Li travel to Berlin together. He has job there but movie doesn’t tell what job is.
Li Ti spends her time walking naked around her apartment. Then Zhou says he wants to go back to China, so Li Ti jumps off roof in front of him and dies.
Zhou then moves to Chongqing and seems successful but we don’t know why.
Then he is driving on highway and meets Yu Hong again at gas station.
Why is she in central China?
Why is she at gas station?
We don’t know. They go to hotel and have sex, which ends the movie.
Summer Palace is a little, blue sad story.
The director likes to show Yu Hong walking around with pouting, weepy face to get our pity or showing her having crazy sex to arouse us.
The director says it’s love story except there is no love. There’s no reason for anything that happens. There’s nothing to hold the story together.
There is only one scene after another without explanation as if director was confused and didn’t know what to do. With more than two and half-hours of this, imagine how boring that was.
Also, director made stupid, irresponsible mistakes. He shows students in 1980’s China wearing new designer clothes, high heels and sexy lingerie—even though none of these trends had arrived in PRC yet.
Then there are scenes at bars and nightclubs with PKU students drinking foreign liquor and listening to American pop music, which is also unreal.
None of these things came to China until the late 1990s, decade later.
It is obvious that Lou Ye just wants to make his movie cool and stylish so people will watch it. He forgets that as filmmaker, he has certain responsibility to keep story historically accurate.
What bothers me most about Summer Palace is that so many Westerners will think this movie tells some real, true things about Chinese student culture, which is mostly unreal as depicted in movie.
The New York Times review says, “remarkable for its candor.”
The Shanghaiist, a popular website for foreigners in China, says, “This is the only honest piece of Chinese filmmaking we’ve seen in a long time”
Ha! Are they serious?
On the other hand, maybe they have never watched another Chinese movie except Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I know of at least twenty, sixth-generation Chinese moves better than Summer Palace.
Even director’s first movie, Suzhou River, was better than this rubbish.
Maybe this movie is popular with foreigners because there’s so much sex and nudity and because it’s “banned by government”, which really seems to make Westerners excited.
Any movie banned by Communists is automatically “cool” to Westerners, even if movie sucks.
So why was Summer Palace banned and director Lou Ye censored for next 5 years?
Actually, it’s not because of politics because this movie tells nothing about Tiananmen Square incident. And it’s not because nudity since those scenes can easily be edited out.
It’s only because Lou Ye took the movie to Cannes Film Festival in France without permission from China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, which is necessary for all Chinese filmmakers.
Lou Ye did this expecting he would be censored, so he could proudly say his movie was “banned in China” on his movie poster and get instant praise from Western audiences.
However, for me, I think this movie should be banned just because it sucks.
It’s big disappointment and waste of 2.5 hours.
Sixth-Generation Chinese filmmakers are trying hard to be shocking without telling good stories, and Western audience praises these filmmakers because they think Chinese who show nudity are “brave”.
How can anyone call this trash art as confusing as it is?
Lloyd Lofthouse, the host of the Blog, 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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