China is Not Red White and Blue – Part 2/2

May 10, 2011

Ai Weiwei was warned by representatives of the lawful government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to stop his illegal activities (according to Chinese law).

In such cases, it is common to receive an invitation to tea, which may not be refused, where the person responsible for what is considered counter-revolutionary activities (or another crime against the state) is told to stop or face the full might of China’s law.  China is not like Hitler’s Germany where the Gestapo showed up without warning and carried citizens off to be roasted or gassed by the millions.

The facts speak for themselves. Ai Weiwei refused to cooperate, and he violated Chinese law. Now he is locked up.

CNN doesn’t mention Ai Weiwei may have been in violation of the 1982 Chinese Constitution, which says in Article 28, “The state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter-revolutionary activities; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.”


US Marines Marching

The PRC is not hiding anything except where Ai Weiwei is locked up and the details behind his crime. Even in the US, the authorities are often denied the right to talk about an accused criminal and the facts behind a legal case to the press.

I’ve read in the past where some Western critics say that Chinese law is difficult to interpret and has loopholes that the PRC may use to the Party’s advantage.

Since when was any law in any country easy to understand?  If you aren’t an American lawyer, how easy is if to understand the US legal system, and doesn’t the US have loopholes that the wealthy and corporations take advantage of not to pay taxes in America? President Ronald Reagon did not pay any tax one year, and he said loopholes in the law allowed it.

Compare the language of the 1982 Chinese Constitution to the US Constitution and anyone may see the differences.

In addition, Article 53 of the Chinese Constitution says, “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China must abide by the constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property and observe labour discipline and public order and respect social ethics.”


PRC Troops and Flag Ceremony

An amendment to Article 13 was revised to say, “Citizens’ lawful private property is inviolable” and “The State, in accordance with law, protects the rights of citizens to private property and to its inheritance” and “The State may, in the public interest and in accordance with law, expropriate or requisition private property for its use and shall make compensation for the private property expropriated or requisitioned.”

In fact, nowhere in the CNN piece does it explain that no one owns land or houses in China as they do in the US. It’s more like a lease with the right to pass that property on to someone else in the family after death.

What happens in the US if the property tax isn’t paid? Does anyone really own the house and land they live on?

In part one I mentioned that China’s flag wasn’t red, white and blue. Instead, it is red and gold.

The red of the Chinese flag symbolizes the communist revolution, and it’s also the traditional color of the people. The large gold star represents communism, while the four smaller stars represent the social classes of the people. In addition, the five stars together reflect the importance placed on the number five in Chinese thought and history. Source: World Atlas

Maybe Ai Weiwei forgot which flag flies over his country or he is blind.

Return to China is Not Red White and Blue – Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is theaward-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.

2 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Communism, cultural differences, legal system, politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China is Not Red White and Blue – Part 1/2

May 9, 2011

The last time I looked, which was a moment ago, the US flag was red, white and blue with 50 stars and 13 stripes; many in the US love football, baseball, basketball, mom and apple pie and eighty percent of its citizens are Christians. The founders were men such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams.

The Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the US Constitution were written for the United States of America.

If you are an American, do you have a copy of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? I do. Have you read it and if you have, how much do you remember besides ‘the Pursuit of Happiness’, which many in the US want the US government to pay for these days?

China may start with the letter “C” as California does, but it is not part of the US, and its founding fathers were men such as Sun Yat-sen, Mao, and Deng Xiaoping and about 3 to 7% of Chinese are Christians while more than 60% belong to no religion.

CNN ran a piece on its CNN Wire service of a Chinese artist and citizen of the People’s Republic of China, (PRC). His name is Ai Weiwei.  The title of the piece was, “China says Ai Weiwei is being held for economic crimes“.

If you read the entire CNN piece, you will discover that the artist was taken into custody in route to Hong Kong. The piece quotes his wife and mother, who both believe he is innocent and he was arrested and locked up because he refused to listen to warnings that he should stop his “reckless collision against China’s basic political framework and ignorance of China’s judicial sovereignty to exaggerate a specific case…”

Ai Weiwei is also one of China’s best-known artists. He helped design the Bird’s Nest stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympic. Ai Weiwei is more than an artist. He is also a democracy activist and a critic of his government. The US Constitution protects US citizens when they criticize the government.

However, the Chinese Constitution does not offer the same protections. In fact, most countries don’t. In Saudi Arabia, woman cannot work or drive and criminals are often executed by beheading—a practice once common in China but no more.

In fact, the American CIA has taken advantage of foreign laws such as those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt when terrorists have been sent for torture and questioning without the due process of law as guaranteed in the US (not outside of it).

Continued on May 10, 2011 in China is Not Red White and Blue – Part 2

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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, Communism, legal system, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Beating Cancer with Chinese Medicine

May 8, 2011

While watching Oprah with my wife recently, Pam Grier, known for her Foxy Brown role, was a guest on the show.

Grier has been a major African-American actress from the early 1970s.

She says, “People see me as a strong black figure, and I’m proud of that, but I’m a mix of several races: Hispanic, Chinese, and Filipino. My dad was black, and my mom was Cheyenne Indian. So you look at things beyond just race or even religion: I was raised Catholic, baptized a Methodist, and almost married a Muslim.”

In 1988, Grier was diagnosed with stage four cancer and given a few months to live. There was nothing Western medicine could do to save her.

During Grier’s appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show on Thursday, February 3, she said, “My physician said, ‘Western medicine has done all it can, I recommend that you go to Chinatown. You’ll meet these practitioners and you’ll listen to them.’ ”

She started making regular trips to Chinatown in Los Angeles.

In Attitudes Toward Health in China, I wrote, “The focus in China is on prevention — to plan your lifestyle around healthy habits. That’s why early in the morning in China you may find many older Chinese outside exercising using the graceful, poetic movements of Tai Chi to insure health and longevity.”

In Health Care Without Drugs, I wrote, “The history of acupuncture goes back over 8,000 years. One would think if it didn’t work, this medical practice would have ended long ago.”

The use of herbal medicines in China has been traced back to the Zhou Dynasty, late Bronze/early Iron Age, about 2,500 to 3,000 years ago.

In fact, the World Health Organization reports that about 80% of people worldwide use herbal medicines for their healthcare.

All of these facts of Eastern and/or Chinese medicine beg for a question. Why do Western drug companies reserve the right to use the word “cure” and no one else may use it legally?

“As many of you [may not] know the word “cure” is reserved for use of the [Western] medical/pharmaceutical industry only. To use this word in the West is to risk prosecution.” Source: Hulda Regehr Clark, Ph.D., N.D.

“The word “cure” is reserved exclusively for pharmaceuticals; it can never be used with herbs or other nutritional therapies.”  Nick Adams, the Health Ranger at Natural News, says, “I find that to be an interesting double standard.”

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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, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, health care | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Throw No Stones

May 3, 2011


More than two billion Christians believe Jesus Christ was the son of God and is God.

About 13 million Jews see Christ differently. Some Jewish scholars note that though Jesus may have used the phrase “my Father in Heaven” (cf. Lord’s Prayer), this common poetic Jewish expression may have been misinterpreted as literal.

In fact, Rabbi Jacob Emden considered Jesus a righteous man, who brought the light of faith and morality to the world, but not as a Messiah.

One and a half billion Muslims, on the other hand, see Jesus as a savior and a reformist. Mission Islam says, “Jesus is known to the Muslims as ‘Issa – this is the name for Jesus that we have been given in our scriptures.

“To Muslims, Jesus – or ‘Issa – is a savior, a reformist, the Messiah (the anointed one), the ‘Word of God’. He was elevated to heaven. He could cure the ill, raise the dead, fashion inanimate objects and blow life into them, all by the Will of God.

“We believe that the one who disbelieves in Jesus is not a Muslim, because the person who disbelieves in one of the prophets disbelieves in all of them. So Muslims believe in Jesus and in his message. His message was one with all the other messengers. In the Qur’an, it is said that God never sent a messenger to mankind except that he was sent with one warning: Worship Allah alone.”

There are even atheists that recognize Jesus Christ as an important historical person. In Atheists for Jesus, we learn that Ken Schei has a goal to rescue Jesus from the Religious Right then from the Bible.

Schei says, “I have come to have a great deal of respect for the teachings of Jesus. My respect for Jesus is not based on the Cross, but rather on the Mount—not on His death and supposed resurrection, but on His teachings as exemplified by the Sermon on the Mount.”

Now that I have established the wide variety of people and beliefs that recognize the importance of Jesus, John 8:7 in the New Testament says, “So when they continued asking him (Jesus), he lifted up himself, and said unto them, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’.”

With John 8:7 in mind, what are we to say of critics that continue to cast stones at Amy Chua, the Tiger Mother.

At Amazon.com, in some of the one-star reviews, critics often cast brutal stones heavy with opinions at Amy Chua accusing her of child abuse, being a narcissist, a psychopath, a liar and a backstabber all because Chua spent hours each week with her daughters setting high expectations and following through sometimes using insults and threats to achieve her parenting goals.

China is another example of critics casting stones, and the Western media often casts these stones at China without telling the whole story.

One example of a “stone thrower” is an anonymous Blogger that writes Understanding China, One Blog at a Time—An American in China. This Blogger mostly writes criticisms of China such as the most recent one, “Irrational Chinese and Crazy Nationalism”.

This anonymous Blogger often judges all of China based on his or her personal experiences while living and working there and this Blogger has attracted fans with similar opinions that enjoy criticizing China without much evidence and/or understanding of China, its people and its history to support those opinions.

Would Jesus Christ have approved of these individuals that so easily cast stones?  If He were here today, what would He say?

Discover In Defense of Tiger Mothers Everywhere

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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.

2 Comments | America, American culture, China, Christianity, cultural differences, family values, history, Islam, parenting, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

A Child’s fun and Self-esteem versus the Survival of a Nation – Part 3/3

April 16, 2011

When you study the average life span in other Asian countries such as China (68 for men and 71 for women) and India (59 for men and 60 for women), we learn that other Asian nations don’t do as well as Japan.

Then why do Asian-Americans beat every other racial group in the US at just about everything?

Could the answer be parenting methods leading to a better education and healthier lifestyles?

Here are some facts that are food for thought — In the American Mental Illness Olympics, I wrote that Asian-Americans had the lowest incidence of serious mental illness while Caucasians had the highest numbers.

In fact, if you do some Googling, you will discover a larger ratio of Asian-Americans graduate from high school and college than any other racial group in the US.

Asian-American teens have the lowest incidence of drug use, alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy and HIV-AIDS, and STD rates.

Asian-Americans also make up the smallest number of teen street gang members in the US.

Amy Chua, who wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is an Asian-American parent. It may not come as a surprise that Chua is under attack by many “average” American parents.

A good place to start learning what it means to be a better parent would be to read Parenting resolution revolution that a friend forwarded to me. Then, as a parent, practice all sixteen points of advice with number sixteen being what my friend wrote, “One big missing item is NO TV!”

Remember, today’s children will be tomorrow’s citizens.

Return to Part 2 or start with Part 1

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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, cultural differences, education, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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