Second China Quiz

May 8, 2010
The answers may be found anywhere in the first three hundred posts for this blog.  The first person to answer all the questions correctly will win a free copy of either My Splendid Concubine or Our Hart.

This prize will be open until the first person answers all the questions correctly. Write your answers in a comment to this quiz.  Make sure to number the answers so they match the questions and provide an e-mail address for me to contact you. Each question has a link that will take you to where you may find the answers.

China

1. What does the First of all Virtues mean?

2. What is the Chinese attitude toward health care?

3. What was the life expectancy for the average Chinese person before the Communists won China in 1949?

4. What was the debate on salt and iron about?

5. Chinese Internet users are _____________ as likely to have blogs as Americans. (fill in the blank)

6. (From Similar “Oily” Interests) What is Wahhabism and where does the money come from to pay for this?

7. What happened during Deng Xiaoping’s Beijing Spring?

8.  What happened to Deng Xiaoping’s son when he spoke out against the Cultural Revolution?

9. What vital key does China hold for humanity’s future?

10. How does Communist China treat its minorities compared to the way minorities have been treated in the United States?

11. Who was Faith Dremmer and what happened to her?

12.  What did Peter Hessler say about happiness?

13.  How many of the world’s smokers live in China?

14.  What is the name of China’s Oprah and how large is her audience?

15. What is the difference between China’s labor laws and United States?

16. What did Lin Yutang say about the Chinese and Christianity?

17. What did the first emperor of China consume that contributed to his madness and death? (This answer is in one of the nine linked posts in a series about Qin Shi Huangdi.) Why did Qin Shi Huangdi do this? (must answer both questions for # 17)

18. When the “Cult of the Dead Cow” gains access to your computer, what do they do?

19. Which issue of National Geographic magazine provides proof that Tibet was part of China for centuries before Mao’s invasion and reoccupation?

20. What is the name of the all-electric car being manufactured in a joint effort between Chinese and California partners?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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6 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Great Generations

May 7, 2010

America and China both have a generation that matured during tough times.

I wonder if the American generation that survived the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the Great Depression and won World War II, would riot like these Greek mobs. 

My parents were from the Great Depression generation. At fourteen, my dad went into the mountains near Los Angeles to fill fifty-pound bags with oak leafs for a nursery, and he mucked out horse stalls at Santa Anita. At fourteen, my mom was a server in a coffee shop in Eugene, Oregon. She supported her mother and younger sister from the tips. Mom and dad weren’t perfect. They had vices.

Japanese invasion of China, World War II, Chungking

What happened to America after World War II is happening in China today. The Chinese who are turning China into a super power are the ones who fought the Japanese during World War II, who won the revolution to free China from Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang dictatorship and threw off the yoke of Western Imperial colonialism. They also survived the deprivations and repressions of the Cultural Revolution under Mao.

Hardships breed survivors, who do not riot when economies collapse. They work for less at any job. They eat yams, rice and soybeans instead of ice cream, candy, French fries, drinking sodas or Starbuck’s lattes.

People from the great generations did without TVs and iPods. They survived without phones and the Internet. They saved and paid with cash instead of using credit cards.

Discover more from Deng Xiaoping’s 20/20 Vision

Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Museums of Tragedy

May 7, 2010

The atrocities committed in Europe during World War II are well known accept maybe in Iran where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has claimed the Holocaust never happened.

Regardless of Lame Brain Mahmoud, the Global Directory of Holocaust Museums tells us how widespread this knowledge is. It’s when we forget about history that we tend to repeat it.  Simon Wiesenthal said, “Freedom is not a gift from heaven…you must fight for it every day.”

Admitting the truth is the first step toward healing and avoiding similar tragedies again. “There is Chinese proverb which says you should use history as a mirror,” Peng Qian, a former deputy mayor of Shantou, said.

A scene from the Cultural Revolution

The official Communist Party line is that Mao was 70 per cent good and 30 per cent bad… However, the first museum inside China that focuses on the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution proves otherwise.  This museum was built near the industrial port city of Shantou in the Guangdong district. Source: Frum Forum, The Independent and the Washington Post.

Considering how secretive China’s collective culture is, this first museum demonstrates how far China has come since Mao’s death in 1976. As China open like a flower, one day there may be a list of Cultural Revolution Museums to equal the Holocaust Museums.

To discover more about China, read Facts about China that will blow your mind.

Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Freedom

May 7, 2010

If you have been reading “iLookChina.net”, you may have discovered that many Chinese have similar freedoms to Americans. 

Every citizen in the US has a right to a mandatory education to twelfth grade. China has mandatory education too, and the better the education, the higher earning power.

Americans may buy property but so can the Chinese. In America, most homeowners have to pay annual property tax but not in China. In fact, if one has the money, he or she may buy anything sold in China just as in the US. But most Chinese pay with cash and still manage to save.

The average American carries $8,000 in credit card debt. If you are an American, are you one of those credit card slaves?

 

Recent estimates say sixty-five million Chinese globetrot as tourists. In 2007, it was estimated that fifty-seven million Americans traveled internationally.

About the only freedom the Chinese don’t have is they aren’t free to publicly criticize their government. The punishment is severe, but that is spelled out in their constitution. It isn’t a secret.

In America, we might have a Bill of Rights to protection us from our government, but we don’t have any protection from violent street gangs that clog every American city. China has one person in jail for about every 867 Chinese.  In America, it’s about one out of every 31 adults.

What does freedom look like to you?

To learn more, see “You’ve come a long ways, Babe“.

Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The American Assault on China’s Currency

May 6, 2010

For weeks, I’ve been watching the brouhaha about China manipulating its currency and taking jobs from Americans.

The truth is those jobs were lost due to American Wall Street banking greed. After all, China’s currency policies have been around for decades. The housing bubble burst in 2008. Without the economic collapse, many of those lost American jobs would still be there in spite of what China does with its currency.

It’s always interesting to watch politicians and pundits play to the mob. Looking for a scapegoat to the truth, Senator Charles Schumar (D-NY) leads 130 other lawmakers who want to punish China, and Tristan Yates wrote at Pajamas Media that America’s Socialists are bulling China’s socialists.

People Protesting

On April 13, Obama reacted to the pressure by saying it’s in China’s interest to let the market determine the value of the yuan, but he also said he would not hold Beijing to a deadline for action. “I have no timetable,” Obama said at a press conference following a nuclear summit. Source: Market Watch

Since I’ve traveled to China often and love the buying power my American dollars have when I convert them into yuan, I’m not going to follow the mob demanding currency changes in China. Prices for most essential goods in China are low allowing those living near the poverty level a means to survive.

If China caves in to these demands, what we are looking at would be a reevaluation of the yuan so the exchange rate would be 5 to 1 instead of 7 to 1— a small change for the world but a huge impact for more than a billion people.

China has kept the exchange rate steady for years. If China’s currency controls were lifted and prices shot out of control, many in China might starve. For sure, there would be more unrest and riots, and China’s government doesn’t like that.  What government would? I’m sure President Obama is not happy about the Tea Bag people running around shouting slogans about big government and so called Obamacare.

In China, “Thousands of workers have lost their jobs and many have taken to the streets to demand unpaid wages.… Street protests and demonstrations at local government offices have been a daily occurrence in many townships in the region… More such protests are on the cards in coming weeks and months.” Source: Green Left

If push comes to shove, who do you think China will attempt to appease—some overweight, out-of-work American several thousand miles away or tens of thousands of Chinese workers who also lost jobs and have families to feed and rent to pay? I guess it depends on how far a rock can fly.

The real reason behind bashing China over currency is politics.  Many Americans unjustly blame China for jobs lost in the US. Although China’s currency policies may be partially to blame, America’s high level of consumption leading to high consumer debt, deficit spending and protectionism is also to blame. Source: Politico.com

Discover Why is China Studying Singapore?

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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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