Amy Chua’s Suicide Critics

January 23, 2011

Some critics of Amy Chua blame the so-called high rate of suicides in China as an argument that Chinese/Asian Tough Love is wrong.

I suspect these ignorant critics don’t know much about Chinese culture or the most common reasons for suicides in China or countries such as Japan.

Most of the suicides in China are not caused by loving Tiger Mothers that spend hours a day emphasizing education above all else instead of allowing children to watch hours of TV and/or playing video games while ignoring books and homework as in the US. 

Those suicides are results of cultural pressures that go far beyond Tough Love. Loss of face and/or becoming a failure is often the reason one commits suicide.

The World Health Organization (WHO) shows that the suicide rate in China in 1999 was 28 of every 100,000 people.

In the US, that number was 21.7 per 100,000.  The WHO shows that the Ukraine has a much higher rate than either China or the US at 62.1 per 100,000 with the Russian Federation reporting more than 80 per 100,000.

I suspect poverty and oppression are a stronger reason than loving but strict Tiger Mothers.

Thailand, with its share of Asian Tiger Mothers, was eight per 100,000. Singapore was 18.9 while Japan was 50.6

China was almost tied with Sweden’s suicide rate, which was 27.7 per 100,000.

However, China and Japan almost tied for female suicides at 14.8 for China and 14.1 for Japan.

What could be the cause?  Possibly children like Amy Chua’s youngest daughter Lulu rebelling until the mother is so depressed she takes her life because she considers herself a failure.

Maybe writing Battle Cry of the Tiger Mother was Chua’s way to deal with the sense of failure she must have felt when Lulu broke that drinking glass in Moscow and shouted at her mother she hated her for being so strict. If so, writing a memoir is better than suicide and writing is a great way to deal with depression.

The WHO shows Australia has a higher suicide rate than China at 37.1 per 100,000. Why didn’t Amy Chua’s critics point this out? I suspect the reason is that they are too lazy to do the research. After all, learning something new might take time away from watching TV or social networking on Facebook.

 

Moreover, the number of women committing suicide in Lithuania in 2000 was 16.1 per 100,000. Sri Lanka suicide rate was 16.8 women and 44.6 for men.

I know of one Chinese suicide first hand and an attempted suicide by a Japanese woman. Both took place in California, and the reasons had nothing to do with Tiger Mothers.

The high school where I taught had a high percentage of Philippine students. I taught many and Philippine mothers often practice Tough Love as Amy Chua does.  I had one Philippine girl break into tears when she earned an A- on a test. She made it up by doing all the extra credit, which Amy Chua says isn’t an option in China.

The WHO says the suicide rate in the Philippines in 1993 was 4.2 per 100,000 people. Do you see the decimal between the four and the two?  That number is more than five times lower than the suicide rate in the US.

I’m shocked!

What could America’s Politically Correct Self-esteem driven mothers be doing wrong? After all, who else could we blame for the gap between US suicides and those in the Philippines except America’s mushy soft-love mothers.

When our straight “A” student, Chinese-American daughter was nine, we were hiking along trails in the hills near our Southern California home. She rushed ahead of us on the winding path until we lost sight of her.

Then she came running back saying there was a man hanging from a tree and he looked dead. 

My friend Neil and I hurried to the hanging tree. While Neil climbed into the tree to see if the man was alive, I called 911.

When the police arrived, they searched the dead man’s wallet and called his mother’s house. It turns out that he was an architect from Taiwan. My wife speaks Mandarin and the police asked her to talk to the wife and the mother, who spoke no English. We discovered that his Taiwanese company had gone bankrupt and he had taken his life due to loss of face because he saw himself as a failure. He was at least 40 if not older.

The second incident I read of was mentioned in the media a few years back.

A Japanese woman had taken her young children to the end of Santa Monica pier and leaped into the ocean taking her children with her. Surfers managed to save her but her young children died.

The reason for attempting suicide was that her husband, a Japanese executive working in the US, had an affair. When the Japanese wife discovered her husband was cheating, she saw herself as a failure, and the only way to erase the shame was to kill herself and her children. 

Since she was a Japanese citizen, Japan requested that she be returned to Japan. The reason given was due to cultural differences.

Learn from 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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Foreign Entrepreneurs in China – Part 1/2

January 23, 2011

Young and Restless in China was filmed over a period of four years starting in 2004 for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Paris Franz, a student, blogger and writer with a passion for history, art and travel, wrote a post about Young and Restless in China for Suite 101.com.

This two-part segment is about foreign entrepreneurs in China. I plan to also feature other segments of this PBS Frontline documentary because it demonstrates how much China is changing. The more I learn, the more it appears that there is more freedom in China than most people outside China are aware of.

Franz wrote, “The film highlights what is unique about China at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

“The entrepreneurs – starting up tailoring, hotel and internet café businesses – are full of optimism, supremely confident that their hard work is going to make them rich. As one of them says, China today is “the land of opportunity.”

Part One starts with “there is this misconception of China that it is not modern, that it is still changing, but if you come and see with your own eyes you will discover that (urban) China (where about 500 million people live) is as modern as any city in the world.

One entrepreneur says, if you visit Beijing and see the architecture, you will see that it is leaps and bounds ahead of the US.

Another entrepreneur says, China is a melting pot for all types of entrepreneurs in Beijing… For young entrepreneur it is cheap to start something new in China compared to the US.

In fact, as the economic tide turns against the west, younger, foreign talents are taking their entrepreneurial ambitions to China because the market is right for starting a business.

One American entrepreneur says he graduated from law school at Penn State in 2005. He then talks about how he arrived in China to create, manufacture and sell his own brand of sex toys and fetish clothing.

Learn more about Doing Business in China and/or read about Bob Grant’s (one American businessman) Love Affair with China and its People.

Another voice is expatriate Tom Carter and his China Backpacker Diaries.

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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

High-Tech Entrepreneurs Thrive in China

January 22, 2011

This post is taken from China’s 360 Series and is about Zhongguancun, China’s Silicon Valley, which is located in Beijing’s Haidian District and was first developed in the late 1990s.

Here are a few pictures of the concrete, glass and steel canyons of Zhongguancun taken by Steve Hsu, a professor of physics at the University of Oregon.

Prior to this post, I’ve read several times in the Western media that China doesn’t have a chance to match California’s Silicon Valley because China lacks freedom. This is simplistic thinking.

The Chinese have every economic freedom that many Americans do except two — total freedom of religion and limited political expression if it is considered a threat to the central government and the stability of China’s economic progress.

It isn’t as if these few limits to freedom are a secret since they are part of China’s Constitution, which is taught in the public schools.

Other than that, since money and freedom are linked, the growing Chinese middle class has as much freedom to live the same consumer lifestyle many Americans do.

In fact, a 2010 survey by the California Voter Foundation found that 51 percent of nonvoters (in the US) grew up in families that did not often discuss political issues and candidates.

This is evidence that total freedom of religion and/or political expression is not necessary for entrepreneurial innovation to improve lifestyles and consumer freedom.

If you still doubt that China can compete with America, I remind you of the recent PISA results where China’s Shanghai teens earned first place in every category tested while the US ranked 23rd of about 65 nations tested.

Time magazine reported, “Chinese classrooms have more students, but teachers make more money than in the United States and there is a huge emphasis on problem-solving skills.”

This 2008 video takes us to a lab in Tsinghua University in Beijing where students are discussing solar technology.

Ye Yuming, an award-winning student at Tsinghua University said, “China lags behind other countries in the solar power industry. The solar PV will help us improve and break the monopoly held by foreign businesses. The solar PV has great market potential, especially in China. The market size is huge.”

What Ye Yuming said was true at the time but two years after he made that statement, China became the world’s largest solar power manufacturer.

Feng Jun, a Chinese entrepreneur, set up one of China’s first private high-tech companies. Today he is president of AIGO. He says, “1992 was the year the real reform of China began.” By 2008, AIGO was one of the top ten camera manufacturers in China. He says that 20% of profits go to profit sharing and the other 80% goes into research and development.

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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

Black Market Mooncakes

January 21, 2011

In September 2010, I wrote a post about China’s Mid-Autumn Festival, which is also the time of year for giving and eating mooncakes. At the time, I had no idea that Haagen-Dazs sold the most sought after modern version of this Chinese traditional treat.

However, recently my wife learned from a friend in China of the popularity of Haagen-Dazs and mentioned the mooncakes, so I did some “scooping” for this post.


Mooncake Mania for China’s September Holiday

Kai Ryssdal reported in September for American Public Media’s Marketplace that China’s mid-Autumn Festival and tradition of eating mooncakes has become an underground business possibly worth billions.

Marketplace’s Shanghai correspondent Rob Schmitz says mooncakes carry about a thousand calories and most of the cakes bought are gifts as a way to show respect to business partners and people you want to be close to.

Imagine the size of the market—more than a billion people, which explains why Starbucks, Nestle and Dairy Queen got into the business of selling mooncakes in China.


2009 Haagen-Dazs Chinese Mooncake Commercial

In fact, Haagen-Dazs sold 1.5 million boxes of mooncakes in 2009, and when these popular mooncakes cannot be found, buyers turn to black market, back-alley vendors, much like scalpers for popular US sporting and music events.

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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

Young and in Love in China

January 20, 2011

Kellie Schmitt of CNN Go Asia wrote, “Love & Other Catastrophes: Conquering China’s young-love taboo“.

The China that Western Sinophobes, gossips and stereotypes paint is not today’s China. Anyone that reads this Blog regularly knows that China is not the “Party” but is the people. That’s why it is called the People’s Republic of China.

In fact, Schmitt is a Shanghai-based writer whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist’s Business China, Marie Claire, World Hum and Backpacker. I haven’t read all that she has written but this piece was worth mentioning.

If you want to learn about China, you would have to travel to China often or live there as an expatriate as Schmitt has. Marrying into a Chinese family also helps.

While living in China, Schmitt moonlighted as a restaurant reviewer for City Weekend Shanghai. She’s gone falcon hunting in Yunnan, drank fermented mare’s milk in a Mongolian yurt, and attended a mail-order bride’s wedding and donned qipaos with Shanghai’s senior citizens.


Another example of being young in urban China. The world this generation knows is not the world their parents grew up in.

Instead of playing it safe and staying primarily in modern China around other foreigners and expatriates as many do, Schmitt has “tasted” what being Chinese means.

Schmitt has written often of China. Visit her profile page to see topics she’s written of from Shanghai’s lesbian sub-culture to debates held at the 15th century Sera Monastery by Lhasa monks.

As for young love, Kellie Schmitt writes, “In Shanghai, teachers and parents widely prohibit dating in high school, urging students to study instead.”

But for Enid and Michael (the couple Schmitt writes of), their love was “worth a little sneaking around”. That was when they were sixteen.

When they turned 22, they were still together and got married. When Schmitt wrote the post for CNN Go Asia, Enid and Michael were 26. As in all marriages, Enid and Michael have had their difficulties but it appears love has kept them dedicated to each other and together. I recommend Schmitt’s post to learn more of how China is changing.

Discover more of China’s Sexual Revolution

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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 » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, expatriates, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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