For those interested in China, who also LOVE coffee
December 11, 2025
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
She’s a Healer, but her body is death
October 14, 2025The Tao of Poison is a powerful, believable story set in 18th century China during the White Lotus Rebellion. The nine-year conflict heavily impacted many districts in central China, leading to widespread losses in the mountainous regions separating Sichuan, Hubei, and Shaanxi provinces.
Qiezi, 17, has practiced mithridatism, a method of building poison resistance, for most of her life. Her body has become toxic. She also studied China’s famous encyclopedia of healing and learned from experts how to heal illness naturally.
Early in the story, a powerful Qing Dynasty official threatens her and her family if she won’t have sex with him. She warns the man that her body is poisonous. The man doesn’t believe her. After he dies, Qiezi and her family are blamed for the powerful official’s death and become fugitives.
Separated from her family while on the run, Qiezi eventually reunites with them after joining a group of Chinese Taoists. These Taoists practice consensual partnered or multi-partnered intimacy to harness sexual energy for self-improvement and spiritual development.
Still, what these Taoists practice is illegal. If caught, they will be executed.
This is a fascinating story of survival in a dangerous China.
The Author
Isham Cook is an American essayist and novelist based in China since 1994. His writing philosophy is big concept, discriminating, provocative. His influences are Ballard, Beckett, Borges, Dick, Kafka, Hesse, Melville, Mishima, Sade—authors and artists who fearlessly forge new territories.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
Do not get vaccinated and risk death to make your country stronger
December 5, 2024The western history of vaccines seldom mentions China, so I’ll start there, explaining why I’ll post this on my iLookChina bog first.
“The Liao Dynasty, which existed around the 10th century, is thought to be the first Chinese dynasty to use inoculation, an early form of vaccination. The son of a statesman was inoculated against smallpox by having a powder made from smallpox scabs blown into his nose. Another method was to scratch smallpox into the skin.
“The Chinese method of inoculation, known as variolation, spread to other countries in the 17th century. In 1689, Russian envoys visited the Qing Dynasty to learn about variolation, which was considered a concept that included both treatment and prevention. In 1726, Jesuit missionaries in Beijing reported on variolation to European countries, but it was not widely accepted.
“In 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner scientifically tested a method to protect against smallpox using the cowpox virus. He is often considered the father of vaccines for his scientific approach.”
“Number of Lives saved by vaccines from 1974 to 2024 — more than 153 million.” — Our World in Data
Not counting the fact that vaccines have saved 150 million children over the last 50 years. — Our World in Data
Next, learn about polio epidemics and the development, approval and impact of the polio vaccine.
“1948-1955: Before a polio vaccine became available, several polio epidemics had occurred between 1948 and 1955. Many people avoided crowds and public gatherings, such as fairs, sports games and swimming pools, during this time due to concern about getting polio. Some parents wouldn’t let their children play with new friends and regularly checked them for symptoms.” — Mayo Clinic
Maybe what Putin wants his puppet, Donald Trump, his supporters, and 2nd administration, to do in the United States is create a pandemic worse than the black plague. It’s no secret that Putin wants to destroy the United States and the EU anyway possible to elevate Russia to superpower status, knocking the US off that perch.
“The Black Death was so extreme that it’s surprising even to scientists who are familiar with the general details. The epidemic killed 30 to 50 percent of the entire population of Europe. Between 75 and 200 million people died in a few years’ time, starting in 1348 when the plague reached London.”
Thirty percent of the US population would add up to more than 100,000,000 [million] deaths.
“The bubonic plague left its mark on the human population of Europe, showing that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” — American Scientist
Did you know that General George Washington mandated [required with no choice] that his army be vaccinated to protect them from smallpox that was spreading through the colonies during the revolution that led to the birth of the United States?
“Before the invention of vaccinations in 1796, people had very few ways to protect themselves from disease.”
George Washington was a well-educated and literate person.
Unlike the convicted rapist, fraud and felon, lover of dictators, who wants to be a dictator, the dumber-than-dumb, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t like to exercise, Donald Trump, his supporters, and his incoming administration.
*****
Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of My Splendid Concubine and The Josh Kavanagh Thrillers.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
The Surprising Life Story of Yong Zhao
January 17, 2023Discover Yong Zhao’s journey from his impoverished childhood in a rural village in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution when he was too small and scrawny to plow the fields with a water Buffalo, so he was allowed to go to school instead. Today he is a Chinese American scholar.
Yong has written some 30 books, which education historian Diane Ravitch once said were “saturated with remarkable scholarship and learning,” and he has done extensive work in creating schools that promote global competence and language-learning computer games.
One of my personal heroes is Yong Zhao, a Chinese-American scholar from whom I have learned much about education. I first met him through his writings, which are informative and provocative. Over the years, I met Yong at conferences, and we became friends. Not long after Anthony Cody and I created the Network for Public Education, we invited Yong to be the keynote speaker at our annual meeting in Chicago. He was a sensation. He had no prepared speech, but he did have a computer loaded with images. As he flashed from one image to another, he told a coherent story that was both based in scholarship, personal, and uproariously funny. When I created a lecture series at Wellesley College, I invited him to speak, and he again gave an informal talk that was illuminating, authoritative, and delivered with grace and humor.
I reviewed one of his books—demystifying the…
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
Is this an Indie Troll or a Russian, Iranian or North Korean Hacker trying to trick me with a Trojan Horse?
September 15, 2022
A few weeks ago, two e-mail alerts landed in my Gmail inbox telling me new comments had been submitted to two of my four blogs. This isn’t anything new. My four blogs have had more than one million views over the years, and I get e-mail alerts like these two all the time.
Once I see an e-mail alert, I go to the specific blog and either delete the comment if it’s SPAM or approve it.
But these two e-mail alerts were different.
The first time these e-mails landed in my inbox, since I seldom if ever click on links in strange e-mails, I went to the two blogs and couldn’t find the comments where they should have been, waiting for me to delete or approve them.
So, suspicious, I sent both of those e-mails to SPAM and blocked them from my Gmail account. Now they land in the…
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
iLook China 