Eating turkey in China

November 22, 2010

Turkey is a fowl the Chinese seldom eat. However, eating duck and chicken is common. Duck is even considered a delicacy. In fact, the Unvegan says, “No trip to Beijing is complete without eating some Peking Duck.”

Since I am a vegan, I didn’t eat Peking Duck, but I watched my wife eat it at Quan Ju De (Peking Duck) in Beijing.

The Virtual Tourist says, “It is thought that Beijing roast duck, like the tradition of roast turkey in America and the UK, owes its origin to the roast goose that is still popular in Europe on festive occasions.”

Most Americans do not celebrate the Chinese New Year (the Spring Festival) and most Chinese do not celebrate Thanksgiving. After all, Thanksgiving is an American holiday that Canadians celebrate too but on the second Monday in October.


Thanksgiving in Beijing with Peking Duck

China.org says, “From 2001 to 2005, China imported 486,000 tons of turkey, with all of the whole turkeys and 90 percent of Turkey parts coming from the US…. Currently, 70 to 80 percent of the consumers are Westerners.” 

I’m assuming that Westerners eating turkey in China are there working, as tourists or are expatriates living in the Middle Kingdom and can’t do without turkey on Thanksgiving in October or November.

If you are from North America in China during Thanksgiving, you have a choice between Peking Duck, which is easy to find, and turkey.

Go China says, “Just head to your local international grocery store (Jenny Lu’s in Beijing, Cityshop in Shanghai) and stock up on all the fixings: frozen Butterball turkeys, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie makings. But you better do it fast, there tends to be a run on these items so if you’re shopping on the last Thursday in November, you’ll be out of luck.”

Learn more about China’s Eating Culture

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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 » | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese food, cultural differences, expatriates, food, history, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Stonehenge

November 21, 2010

 In August 2008, The Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco sent a team to China to film a total-solar eclipse.

While in China, Pauld Doherty, a physicist, teacher, author and rock climber, visited China’s Stonehenge of the Gobi Desert, a Stonehenge like structure in Xinjiang Province.

Pauld says, “The Gobi Stonehenge is made with a central pillar where a viewer stands and 6 pillars that mark the positions of sunrise and sunset on the equinoxes and the solstices. There are also pillars to mark due north and south. When the sun passes over the south pillar, it marks local-solar noon.”

“The shape of an observatory like this one depends upon the latitude,” he says, “and my calculations show that the excellent Chinese astronomer who designed this one did a superb job.”

Patsy Burns left a comment, “The Stonehenge and center of Asia markers note Chinese have long been studying the skies…. Have you been to the remnants of the Emperor’s observatory just east of Tiananmen Sq by the Gloria Plaza hotel…if it is still there? Supposedly Marco Polo’s star gazing Jesuits matched calculations with the Emperor’s people there and that knowledge gave Marco Polo guanxi, credibility.”

To answer Patsy’s question, yes, the Ming Emperor’s observatory is still there and a planetarium was added.

To study astronomy, the Ming Dynasty built an observatory in Beijing in 1442. The observatory covers 1,000 square meters (more than 10,000 square feet).

Eight bronze astronomical instruments stand on a platform. The design of the instruments reflects both the influence of oriental craftsmanship and the European Renaissance demonstrating an understanding of measurements and physics.

In 1955, a new hall covering 7,000 square meters (more than 75,000 square feet) was built, and it opened to the public two years later. It has an exhibition hall, a video projection room and observatory for everyone. 

In 2004, a new hall covering about 20,000 square meters (more than 215,000 square feet) was added.

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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.

1 Comment | America, astronomy, China, Chinese history, history, science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Sending a Message the Wrong Way

November 20, 2010

Yasheng Huang at Foreign Policy magazine says in an opinion piece — identified as an “argument” — that the US should bypass China’s government and “somehow” directly reach the Chinese people with the message that the US knows what’s best for China.

Considering China’s history with the West starting with the first Opium War and the West’s support of the Dalai Lama, Tibetan and Islamic Separatists, outspoken Chinese democracy activists and religious cults such as the Falun Gong, I’m sure that would be well received — not.

Wanting to know more about Yasheng Huang, I discovered that he has a long title and is a professor of political economy and international management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a special-term professorship at Fudan University with an honorary professorship at Hunan University.

Impressive resume. You may want to check it out. Just click on his name above. I’m sure the good professor wears his many titles well.

Professor Yasheng Huang may be right when he says, “To be sure, the vast majority of serious economists are absolutely right that in the long run, a currency revaluation is in the interest of the Chinese. But this is politics, where the issue is not about the technocratic intricacies of who is right and who is wrong.”

However, the professor is wrong to suggest that Washington D.C. find a way to communicate more effectively with the Chinese people by bypassing China’s government.

Consider how Americans would take to China’s Communist Party bypassing Washington and going directly to the entire US population with a huge media campaign to win them over.

The US already tried that in the Middle East and that hasn’t worked well. Islamic Fundamentalists have done a much better job winning Muslims over to their cause than the US has.

In fact, a report by Professor Frank Griffel at YaleGlobal Online makes a good case for why Professor Yasheng Huang’s suggestion won’t work in China.

Griffel writes, “Muslim fundamentalist movements encourage the use of the internet among their followers, for instance, not in order to sell something by e-mail order, but rather to promote the creation of a network of like-minded people who share a common understanding of what ‘Islam’ means and what it advocates.”

The same is true of the Chinese, who use the Internet differently than people in the West and are promoting a network of like-minded people who share a common understanding of what being “Chinese” means.

Most Chinese are not interested in being told how to think or what to do by anyone outside China.

I suggest that the good professor stick to economics and let the politicians do their job even if they don’t always get it right. Doesn’t he understand that it is impossible to even get a majority of Americans to listen and agree on one concept?

Learn about the Power of the Peasant

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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

Tiger Trade leads to Guilin in Southeast China

November 20, 2010

Every country has poorly written laws with loopholes that allow industrious entrepreneurs to make money anyway possible.

Exploiting wild animals is one way to make that money.

In May 2003, the San Diego Wild Animal Park in the U.S. came under intense criticism from animal welfare groups…

In February 1999, the San Jose Mercury News published a series of articles by Linda Goldstein entitled “Zoo Animals to Go”.

Goldstein alleged that major U.S. zoos in the United States purposely over breed some animals to produce babies that are popular with the public and bring in crowds. Older and less popular animals are quietly discarded and often end up at rundown roadside zoos and exotic animal auctions.

Unwanted but healthy animals were euthanized at the Detroit Zoo during the 1990s, and a handful of dealers preferred by the major zoos have become wealthy from the sales of unwanted exotics given or sold to them by the zoos, Goldstein claimed. Source: Entertainment Animals – Zoos

In China, animal welfare activists allege that a wildlife park in southeast China has been farming tigers.

Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley reported from Guilin that the tigers are declawed and defanged and threatened with sticks to perform tricks for audiences.

The Guilin tiger park claims it is a research establishment devoted to the welfare and survival of the big cat.

However, Chinese animal welfare activists claim that this is nothing more than a farm producing tigers for their valuable body parts.

Hua Ning of International Fund for Animal Welfare says people hear about these farms and think that the tigers will not perish. She says the truth is this park has about 1,500 tigers and many are abused.

Birtley says that killing tigers in China is illegal and offenders face stiff jail terms.

However, allowing tigers to die from starvation and neglect is not technically killing. That is the loophole in China’s law that critics say is being exploited at this wildlife park in Guilin.

The reality is that tigers are worth more dead than alive.

There are only a few hundred tigers at this park on display for visitors. Birtley was told the rest were used for research in a large section of the park closed to the public.

One product this park sells is wine made from tiger bones. One bottle may sell for $250 dollars.

Traditional Chinese medicine uses all parts of the tiger, but the bones are the most valuable part of the animal. It is believed these bones prolong life, cure rheumatism, arthritis and solve sexual problems.

Twenty-five kilos (55.1 pounds) of tiger bones will make enough wine to earn $300 thousand dollars.

Meanwhile, China’s government has urged zoos to stop serving wild animal products and holding wildlife performances in an attempt to improve the treatment of tigers, bears and other animals amid concerns over widespread abuse in zoos and wildlife parks. Source: Animal News

Discover China’s Tea Horse Road

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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.

4 Comments | America, business, capitalism, China, cultural differences, environment | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The History of Organized Crime in China — Part 5/5

November 19, 2010

During one assassination attempt from one of his gangsters, Nicky Louie was shot in the head but managed to run to the police station to save himself.

He agreed to work with the police and the federal prosecutors.

However, to gain the government’s protection, he had to admit to his own crimes and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

This led to the end of the era of New York’s Chinatown Triads.

Today in the U.S., the Chinese Triads consist of an elusive array of constantly changing alliances among many small gangs scattered across the country.

The only bond between the gangs is the desire for making money. These Triads are involved in everything from human trafficking and smuggling to heroin smuggling.

For the first time, the Chinese American Triads are moving beyond the Chinese community and are willing to work with anyone as long as they make money.

FBI Unit Chief Kingman Wong says this makes the Triads in the U.S. a more significant threat to the safety of American citizens.

It is not easy to define Chinese organized crime today. The Triads are difficult to penetrate.

Return to The History of Organized Crime in China – 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.

Leave a Comment » | America, business, capitalism, China, Chinese men, Chinese minorities, Communism, crime, legal system | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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