Women’s Rights in China

March 21, 2010

Dramatic changes in women’s rights have been achieved in a culture where for millennia women were stereotyped as inferior to men, had no rights and served as slaves, concubines and prostitutes. Marriages were arranged—sometimes at infancy.

In 1949, foot binding was abolished and the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) was formed and supported by the Communist Party. Change in China, as in the United States, has been a painful evolutionary process. However, the struggle to gain equality appears to have moved faster than the United States where the women’s rights movement started in 1848 and still isn’t over.

10th National Women’s Congress in China

At the 10th National Women’s Congress in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, in 2008, Deputy-Chairwoman Huang Qingyi said, “Sex discrimination in employment should be eradicated and the income gap between men and women should be further narrowed.”

It was also been reported that domestic violence is a severe threat to women. Chinese authorities reported 50,000 complaints annually, according to figures released by the ACWF. The domestic violence fact sheet shows this is also a problem in the United States.

Sexual discrimination was supposed to have been abolished in China back in 1949, when Chairman Mao Zedong famously announced, “women hold up half the sky”, but it wasn’t.  It has only been a few years since China outlawed sexual harassment.

Today, statistics show China has about 27,000 women and children’s rights protection agencies.

Discover Changing Times for Women’s Rights

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

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China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Changing Times for Women’s Rights

March 21, 2010

To compare the changes taking place in China concerning women’s rights, first a brief timeline for Women’s Rights in America.

Starting in 1848, the first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York. Then in 1850, the first National Women’s Rights Convention was held in Worcester, Mass. Nineteen years later, the National Woman’s Suffrage Association is organized to achieve voting rights for women by means of a Congressional amendment to the Constitution.

1890 – Two women’s rights organizations merge and wage state-by-state campaigns to obtain voting rights for women.

1903 – The National Women’s Trade Union League is established to advocate improved wages and working conditions.

1920 – The 10th Amendment to the Constitution grants women the right to vote.

Eleanor Roosevelt

1961 – President John Kennedy establishes a Commission to study the Status of Women and appoints Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman.  The Commission reports substantial discrimination against women exists in the workplace resulting in 1964 with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act barring discrimination in employment based on race and sex.

In 1972, The Equal Rights Amendment is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The amendment dies in 1982 when it fails to achieve ratification by a minimum of 38 states.

Discover more about China’s Modern Women

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Every Kind of Beauty Under Heaven

March 7, 2010

When emperors ruled China, those men often wanted to be seen as benevolent—embracing every kind of beauty under heaven. To do this, the emperors encouraged minorities to stay where they had lived for centuries if not millennia. Even in Tibet, China has not driven out or slaughtered in mass (http://wp.me/pN4pY-6S) the minorities as Europeans did to North American natives, who lived off that land for more than ten thousand years.

 

History shows that the Chinese emperors did not force minorities from their land with false promises followed by broken treaties. In China, if a minority king proposed a marriage alliance with the Emperor, the Emperor adopted a Chinese beauty as his daughter and sent her to the minority king. This is portrayed in The Dream of Red Mansions, a Chinese classic written in the 18th century.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Disneyland Chinese Style

March 2, 2010

President Obama’s half brother, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, is married to a Chinese woman and lives in China. Ndesandjo speaks fluent Mandarin and practices Chinese calligraphy. In a TIME interview, he said, “I’ve experienced the warmth and the graciousness of the Chinese people.” Ndesandjo is overwhelmingly positive about his life in China.

Disneyland

TIME magazine also reported that a Shanghai Disneyland has been approved, and according to a report by the Burbank, California based Themed Entertainment Association, “Chinese consumers have a lot of love for Disney. They’re more excited about Disneyland than the EXPO 2010 Shanghai China.”

To give you an idea how much Chinese love everything American, visit Zhang Yimou’s musical, the Impressions of Liu Sanjie. This musical with a cast of hundreds is staged on and alongside the Li River in Southeast China near Vietnam. The theater reminded me of similar theaters at American theme parks like Six Flags or Disneyland but the musical was local and ethnic.

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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. 

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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Chocolate Tofu Pie Recipe

February 26, 2010

I’m taking a break from serious subjects for this post.

The Chinese invented tofu.  Americans are reinventing it. I was introduced to Chocolate Tofu Pie at Mother’s Market in Costa Mesa, California. Then I figured out how to make it at home by experimenting.

Ingredients:

  • Two 10-ounce containers of soft or silken organic tofu
  • Two four-ounce packages of baker’s, unsweetened chocolate—but use only six of the ounces. This chocolate has no milk or sweeteners added.  Use six ounces of the eight.
  • One bag of malt-sweetened chocolate bits. There are no dairy or refined sugars in this chocolate. Use half of this bag. If you skip this ingredient, add more of the baker’s, unsweetened chocolate.
  • Agave nectar. This low absorbing sweetener is absorbed into the body slowly.
  • One package of readymade whole-wheat piecrust (recommended for fiber).
  • Use one tablespoon of arrowroot for a thickener

 

Directions:

  • Mix the tofu in a blender with the arrowroot or another natural thickener.
  • Heat the chocolate in a pan (double boiler hopefully) until melted and pour into blended tofu and mix.
  • Add the Agave nectar.
  • Taste to make sure it is sweet enough and that the bitterness from the baker’s chocolate is gone. Add more Agave if desired. Our daughter enjoys this step the most, since she is the taster.
  • Blend until it is all one smooth color.
  • Pour equally into the pie pans.
  • Put pies in oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
  • Let pies cool after cooking; put in refrigerator after they are cool.
  • The pies will be ready the next day.

I shop at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s
See more about Tofu

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