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

Censorship Perception

November 13, 2010

I read Don’t Call China’s Internet “Censored”, at Good Magazine.  It’s rather brief and biased, which is usual from a Western media source that judges China from a Western cultural perspective.

However, what I found interesting were two comments to the post.

Shaun Pen’s comment was, “Chinese people in China don’t consider it censorship, much the same way we Americans don’t consider anti-child pornography laws “censorship.”

Nathan Heath says, “But Shaun is also missing a few things.  The average Chinese internet user uses the internet completely differently than Americans do.  In fact, I honestly think it would take a long time for Chinese internet usage to change in China even if the “Great Firewall” were lifted tomorrow.  The vast population just doesn’t care. (Except Facebook. We want FB back.) THAT is the cultural difference between China and the West.”

Then there is The Economist, which had opinion pieces about China’s censorship in two recent issues.

The Oct. 23 issue had Gagging to be free, which claimed if Marx lived in China today he wouldn’t have been able to publish the Communist Manifesto. 

Not true.

There is a thriving underground in China that translates and publishes censored books into Mandarin, and I’ve often found books in Beijing and Shanghai’s English language bookstores that are on China’s censorship list. If the books are in English, China doesn’t seem to care.

Considering that learning English is mandatory in China’s public schools, why bother to censor anything. If there is money to be made, there are Chinese that will figure a way to earn it.

The Oct. 30 issue of The Economist had another go at China’s Net Nanny with Breaching the great firewall. The complaint here focuses on Twitter being blocked and replaced with a popular copy-cat called weibo, which is heavily monitored for “subversive” content.

When you discover what the West is doing to monitor subversive content on the Internet, you’ll see the hypocrisy.

Wired says, “In the US, American spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.” 

In fact, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community is putting cash into software that specializes in monitoring social media.

If these agencies are developing and buying this software, you can be sure they are using it.

In addition, if most Chinese don’t consider the Net Nanny censorship, then it isn’t. There is software available in the US so parents may censor and monitor their children’s’ activity on the Internet. That’s how most Chinese see the so called “Great Firewall”.

Those in the West who complain the most are probably the same people who want to influence and subvert Chinese thought until the globe is filled with Western clones.

Discover why Internet Censorship May be Going Global

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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

Anna May Wong – The Woman Who Died a Thousand Times

November 10, 2010

Almost half a century after her death, Anna May Wong (1905 to 1961) has not been forgotten.

As a child, Anna loved going to the movies and even cut school to go to the show.

Between 1919 and 1961, she acted in 62 films. The Internet Movie Data Base says she was the “first Chinese-American movie star”.

However, to act, Anna had to play the roles she was given. The Western stereotype cast her as a sneaky, untrustworthy woman that always fell for a Caucasian man. The dark side of achieving her dream of acting in movies was that Anna had to die so the characters she played got what they deserved.

Anna often joked that her tombstone should read, “Here lies the woman who died a thousand times.”

Until Chinese started to emigrate to the U.S. in the mid-19th century, they had never encountered a people who considered them racially and culturally inferior.

The discrimination against the Chinese in America was only exceeded by the racism and hatred directed at African-Americans.

In fact, in the 1960s, many of the anti racist laws enacted during the Civil Rights era focused on protecting African-Americans, which created a protected class.

Since the Chinese—due to cultural differences often did not complain—they were left behind.

In many respects, this racism toward the Chinese still exists in the US today and manifests itself through the media as China bashing, which supports the old stereotype.

When Anna May Wong visited China in 1936, she had to abandon a trip to her parent’s ancestral village when a mob accused her of disgracing China.

After her return to Hollywood, she was determined to play Chinese characters that were not stereotypes, but it was a losing battle. To escape the hateful racism, she lived in Europe for a few years.

Since U.S. law did not allow her to marry the Caucasian man she loved, and she was afraid that if she married a Chinese man he would force her to give up acting since Chinese culture judged actresses to be the same as prostitutes, she never married.

Anna May Wong smoked and drank too much. She died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California at age 56.

Discover The Home Song Stories

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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, American culture, China, Chinese women, cultural differences, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Playing Politics for Simple Minds

October 30, 2010

Shikha Dalmia writes for Forbes and says, China Bashing is for Losers. My first thought was, who is this sensible person?

After all, China bashing is a popular sport in America and ranks slightly below basketball, baseball and football. Whenever Americans lose jobs or there is a national election, it is China bashing season— before China it was Japan or some other country or race or religion.

I discovered that Dalmia is a senior policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank. She is also a columnist at Forbes and won the first 2009 Bastiat Prize for Online journalism for her column in Forbes and Reason magazines.

What she says about China bashers is true. Since I started writing iLook China, I’ve discovered that most of my critics know little to nothing about China and base their flawed opinions on stereotypes that should have died with Mao in 1976.

Instead, ignorance rules the day and politicians love that because it leads to votes from people who shouldn’t vote.

However, Shikha Dalmia knows what she is talking about. She points out that protectionism doesn’t work.

Dalmia provides evidence to make her point.

She writes that between 2005 and 2008, the yuan rose 21% but the trade divide, instead of going down, went up by $66 billion because while a strong yuan increases the dollar price for Chinese goods, it also lowers the yuan price of foreign raw materials.

She then uses the iPod as an example. The iPod, Dalmia says, is designed in America and its 451 parts are made in dozens of countries. When all those parts arrive in China to be assembled, that adds only $4 to the price if a $150 item.

This means if the US punishes China by erecting trade barriers, people lose jobs all along the manufacturing line, which starts in the US at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters.

Dalmia concludes by stating a truth few know—that Republicans and Democrats are sowing the seeds of their own destruction, which will lead to more suffering when the US economy drops lower. 

I suggest you read Dalmia’s piece at Forbes to understand why global trade is too complex for simple minds to understand.

Learn more about the Chinese Stereotype Alive and Rotten in America

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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, American culture, China, Communism, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Every Vote Counts

October 28, 2010

Fear tactics still grab votes or American conservatives would stop using them.

Since America’s 2010 midterm elections are being held in November, the Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) ran a political video designed to exploit fear of China.

Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool most of the people some of the time and some of the people most of the time…” 

Evidently, the CAGW decided they could fool some of those people in time to make sure they vote against Democrats.

New York Magazine ran a piece, Is this Really the Best Political Ad This Year, which proves why it is dangerous to be a democracy instead of a republic.

Ben Smith of POLITICO writes, “This slickly-produced new ad from Citizens Against Government Waste … attacks spending in the Mandarin-speaking voice of a gloating, future Chinese professor.”

The sad thing is that millions of Americans believe these distortions.

According to the PEW Global Attitudes Project, 36% of Americans view China with an unfavorable view.

It is no secret that Rush Limbaugh is a Sinophobe and has between 14 and 30 million listeners (depending on who you read).  Glenn Beck has about two to three million. 

In fact, the people that Rush and Beck appeal to must be some of the voters the CAGW is hoping to influence.

The National Center for Educational Statistics shows us that forty-three percent of Americans read at or below basic, which means 93 million votes could be influenced through fear of China.

After all, the illiterate and semiliterate are the easiest voters to fool and that’s why they shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Learn more at Democracy, Deceit and Mob Rule

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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, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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