Learning from Canada

July 10, 2010

The China Daily reported that China and Canada plan to double trade. “I have agreed with Prime Minister Harper that we should take active measures to make our countries’ two-way trade volume reach a target of $60 billion by 2015,” Hu Jintao said in Ottawa.

President Hu Jintao shaking hands with Prime Minister Harper

While the US pressures China to do something about North Korea, sells modern weapons to Taiwan and hosts the Dalai Lama at the White House, which all upset China, Canada works to build a relationship and earned approved destination status (ADS), so Chinese tourists may travel to Canada in organized, pre-sold tour groups.  Canada’s tourist industry hopes to see $100 million a year increasing tourist revenues and creating jobs.

Canada also signed several energy cooperative agreements involving oil sand, nuclear energy and gas. In addition, one agreement might mean more Canadian food products being sold to China, which creates more jobs for Canadians since so many were lost when the US Sub Prime Mortgage crises caused a global economic meltdown. 

Why can’t the US find constructive ways like these to do the same—shrink the trade imbalance with China and create jobs at home without irritating Beijing?

See Doing Business 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. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Goodbye traditional China — Hello New-world Glamour

July 10, 2010

About China’s TV Program, Red Mansion
Guest Post by Hannah in China

These days, Chinese TV is showing the all-new version of Red Mansion (Hong Lou Meng, which is directed by Li Shaohong). Red Mansion is based on the well-known Qing Dynasty novel (also known as Dream of Red Chamber) written by Cao Xue Qin. The story is about the feudal noble family’s rise and fall from prosperity to decline. But to the Chinese, the most fascinating parts of the book are the sad love story, which happens to the three main characters: Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai.

Lin Daiyu

Red Mansion is one of four Chinese classic novels. The other three are the Journey to West, Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. So, these four stories are constantly made and remade into Chinese TV shows or movies since television first became popular in China in 1980s.

Jia Baoyu

Before this new version of Red Mansions, there’s the most popular one made in 1987, which is the best accepted and beloved by all the Chinese people from young to old (Find the 1987 version of A Dream of Red Mansions at Amazon.com). Even till now, when people talk about the Red Mansion, all we can think of is the 1987 version. These original actor and actress really conveyed the souls of the book’s character and never can be performed or interpreted by anyone else as well as they did. The producers from 1987 spent YEARS to pick out from millions of people in the country these actors and also took a year to train them and naturally develop into the characters, then took another year to film the show. That’s why the 1987 production is the best and the classic.

Xue Baochai

Now China has new technologies and enough material to make all the beautiful scenes for the same shows. But are we Chinese still pure enough to make the real GREAT shows?

There are hidden rules in all the entertainment these days—talent does not matter anymore. So new actors must have connections or money. Maybe that’s why the first director left the new production of Red Mansions and was replaced by Li Shaohong. Truthfully, I like Li Shaohong a lot because of the great show Palace of Desire (Da Ming Gongci) about Tang Dynasty. Dream-like beautiful scenes are the trademark of Li Shaohong, but in the new version of Red Mansion, all the actors are too young and glamorous compared with the original, traditional cast from 1987.

naked legs in the modern TV production

Viewers of the new version comment on their blogs that the new show sometimes feels like a ghost show because it tries to shock us so often. And they say the new female leads dress and wear makeup more like girls from a modern brothel than an ancient royal court. They show too much of their legs and thighs in every scene. They are liked whores.

Lin Daiyu - naked and dead in the modern production

And it seems even the director Li Shaohong cannot understand the true meaning of the Red Mansion story. First, she doesn’t like the book (she admitted this in an interview). Second, she made Lin Daiyu naked in her dying scene, explaining that she aimed to shock the audience by doing this. This is an insult. The Qing Dynasty was very conservative and women were not allowed to show skin. How can a noble, elegant young girl be naked?

Also, there’s a funny mistake in a scene on the Qing-era boat. There are rubber tires on the boat!!!

rubber inner tubes on an 18th century Chinese boat

I don’t know when or where rubber was invented, but certainly not in ancient China.

 (Note from this Blog’s host: The invention of rubber has been traced to the ancient Mayans of central America to 1600 BC. There is no record of rubber tires reaching China at the time “A Dream of Red Mansions” was written by Cao Xueqin [1715-1763]. In fact, Charles Goodyear invented the first vulcanized rubber in 1844 and it wouldn’t be until 1888, that John Dunlop invented air-filled tires for bicycles.)

modern production - the one with nudity

So, on and on are my criticisms of the new Red Mansion TV show. It’s more like watching the new world, but maybe that’s what China’s government-run media wants—everything new and glamorous. 

See Hannah Travel Adventure (Chinese) or Hannah China Backpacker (English)

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Conquest

July 9, 2010

I woke up this morning thinking that many in the West want nothing less than China to be something he or she understands, which means a capitalist, multi-party republic, Christian nation with a culture based on individualism rather than China’s more than two-thousand year old collective culture without religion. 

To help dispel this atmosphere of ignorance in the West, Pearl S. Buck urged Lin Yutang to write a book about China and its people. In the Preface for My Country and My People (1935), Lin Yutang wrote, “I write only for men of simple common sense…” Later, in the Prologue, he mentions how for every Sir Robert Hart, the Irish godfather of China’s modernization, there are ten thousand who do not understand the Chinese and do not care to learn.

Then in the Introduction for Lin’s book, Buck wrote, “It (My Country and My People) is truthful and not ashamed of the truth: it is written proudly and humorously and with beauty, seriously and with gaiety, appreciative and understanding of both old and new.”

It is unfortunate that most Sinophobes have no concept of China and its culture and do not want to learn, and men and women of simple common sense are as rare today as in Lin Yutan and Pearl S. Buck’s time.

Discover more about Lin YuTang’s “My Country and My People“

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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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Invented in China—Printing

July 9, 2010

Six hundred years after paper was invented, the Chinese invented printing and the first printed work was Buddhist scripture during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 906). The most basic printing techniques are older. Engraving came later. The carving, printing technique originated during the Tang Dynasty

When we talk about paper and printing, it is to collect knowledge, preserve and share it.

Once there were paper books being printed to share Buddhist ideas, the religion spread through China into Korea and Japan. Over a thousand years printing techniques continued to improve until there were multi-colored printings.

Then during the Sung Dynasty, the printing board was invented, which used clay characters. One character was carved into a small block of clay. Then the clay was put in a kiln to heat into a solid block. This method was efficient for printing thousands of sheets. These blocks would be placed together to create sentences and paragraphs of Chinese characters.

Later, the characters were carved into wood. Over time, printing was developed into an art.  In fact, Ancient Chinese culture was preserved due to the invention of paper and these printing methods, which wouldn’t reach Europe until after 1300 AD, almost 800 years later.

Without the Chinese invention of printing, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism may not have spread to the extent that they have.

See With or Without Paper

_________________________

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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2 Comments | Buddhism, China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese history, Christianity, Confucianism, Islam, media | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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The Power of Chinese Assimilation

July 9, 2010

Andrew Clark contributed a post to Politics Daily about China’s minorities and the autonomous regions they call home. As Andrew clearly pointed out, “Han Chinese make up 92 percent of the People’s Republic of China. The remaining 8 percent is made up of minority groups, mainly Tibetan, Zhuang, Uyghur, Mongolian, Miao, Manchu, and Hui (these are the major ethnic groups — China officially recognizes 55 minority populations).”

Clark concludes with, “It remains to be seen whether the Chinese government can successfully assimilate these groups, or if consistent suppression of uprisings can force social tranquility.”

The Chinese map has inflated and deflated for more than two-thousand years. Some of these minorities have been in China longer than others. The Mongolians Clark visited, like the Tibetans and the Uyghur, are three who haven’t been inside China as long since they were conquered by the Qing Dynasty (the Manchu minority), who ruled China from 1644 – 1911.

One other minority ruled China for a brief time and that was the Mongols as the Yuan Dynasty (1277 – 1367). Both the rulers of the Qing and the Yuan were assimilated into the Han culture while they ruled China. That’s was primarily because they were surrounded by Han Chinese in the capital.

Tibet broke from China in 1913 and stayed out until 1950 when Mao sent an army into Tibet, which has always been a difficult place for China to rule since sending armies there to enforce control was difficult. But today, a highway and a railroad make that journey easy. If those transportation routes are cut, there’s still air transportation. The travel distance between Tibet and  Beijing is shorter than it was a century ago.

Currently, China is adding about 40 thousand more kilometers of rail throughout China and building another grid of high-speed rail. This improved transportation system is also bringing about change and causing a Han migration that would have been unthinkable more than a century ago when most of China didn’t have electricity or roads.

For centuries, China ruled over these minorities without moving Han Chinese into their territories, but times have changed and the Han Chinese, like the Americans Europeans moving West, have been migrating into the autonomous regions for years, which may have more of an impact keeping these territories part of China than armies ever have. And if that doesn’t work, China still has the largest standing army in the world.

Clark also claimed, “the United States has seemingly countless ethnic and cultural minorities that are proud to call themselves American…”  While somewhat true, many of almost 2,500 American native tribes still  hold to their old ways and live on reservations proud to be Navaho or Sioux, Black Foot or Apache, maybe more so than being American.

If given a choice,  many of these North American tribes would jump at the chance to have their ancestral homes back. But the FBI keeps a tight watch over these American minorities, and the US Marines are always a phone call away. Then there is the fact that Alaska and Hawaii both have strong secessionist movements.

Discover more about Minorites 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. 

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