The Qing – China’s Last Dynasty – Part 1/3

December 11, 2010

The Qing and/or Manchu Dynasty was established due to a revolution led by Li Tzu-cheng (1605-1645), who attacked Beijing in April 1644.

The Qing Dynasty survived from 1644 to 1911 AD.

After the rebels entered the city, the last Ming Dynasty emperor hung himself on a hill that is part of the Forbidden City.

Meanwhile, a Manchurian army led by Dorgan was allowed through the Great Wall, defeated the Chinese rebels, executed Li Tzu-cheng, and made Fu-lin, a Manchurian, the emperor of China, which was the beginning of the last imperial dynasty.

This was the second time in China’s history that foreigners ruled the Middle Kingdom. The first time was during the brief Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1277-1367 AD).

A CCTV 9 Travelogue History Special takes us on a tour of the Qing Dynasty.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, many wealthy businessmen built large estates on the fertile lands of Shanxi province not far from Beijing.

The Wang family’s estate is situated in Lingshi county. This mansion is an example of the architecture of the Qing Dynasty

This estate covers 150,000 square meters (about 180 thousand square yards).

There was even a school for the family’s children.

The host of this program says that walking into the estate’s courtyard is like walking into a museum.

Everywhere you look, there are works of art. Every stone carving, every statue means something. The art represents either family tradition or the Qing Dynasty culture or the social status of the family.

Continued in The Qing – China’s Last Dynasty – 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.

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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Surviving Extinction

December 11, 2010

In a conversation (through comments) of Saving Siberian Tigers in Northeast China, I wrote that the tiger poachers, if caught, should be castrated and given a second chance at life then executed if they hunted tigers again.

The individual I was having this conversation with said that castration followed by a death sentences was a bit harsh and he or she was right. 

It is harsh.

However, my response, which follows, shows why such harshness may be necessary for humanity to survive its own extinction.

You are correct to sense my anger over the slaughter of animal species by humans.  It’s one thing for a species to go extinct due to environmental changes in the planet but for humans to slaughter senselessly as Americans did with the North American buffalo in the 19th century when expanding west toward the Pacific was wrong in so many ways.

What explains the 19th century people who sat in trains shooting through open windows at the buffalo to see how many they could kill?

The closest example I can think of is World War II in China when Japanese army officers would have beheading contests to see how many innocent Chinese noncombatant citizens could be beheaded in a given time span.

There are terms for people like this:  sociopaths, narcissists, self-centered, and “A” type personalities such as Hitler.   Humanity would be better off to rid individuals like this from the gene pool, which is why I have no problem with China’s death sentences and execution rate.

I’m reading a book, Living With Evolution or Dying Without It.  Before writing the book, the author, K. D. Koratsky spent most of his life studying all aspects of evolution—not just the evolution of species but culture, civilizations, religions, etc.

In one section, he pointed out that cultures that executed dangerous criminal types with behavior that threatened the stability of the culture such as what happened in 2008 with the global economic crises caused by Wall Street and US banks, tended to be stable and survive for much longer period of time than cultures that were too lenient on such people such as the US is today.

If the men depicted in the Inside Job documentary had been Chinese citizens and had caused the 2008 global financial crises from China instead of the United States, the odds are good that they would all have been tried and convicted in a Chinese court and already have been executed for the 64 trillion US dollars in global losses and millions of jobs that vanished.

Instead, in the US, there hasn’t been an investigation and most of the men who brought the world this crises are still working in the industry doing business the way they did before the 2008 financial crises hit.

In America, repeat child molesters are allowed to go free after prison sentences and are often chemically castrated yet have managed to molest again and then are sent back for another prison sentence with another parole in the future. 

This is insanity.

I was actually going easy on the tiger poachers when I suggested castration and a chance to live.  People like that should be tortured then executed to send a strong message.

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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

China’s Feathered Dinosaurs

December 10, 2010

For as far back as I can remember I have been fascinated with dinosaurs. As a child, I read as much as I could from encyclopedias and nonfiction books on the subject and dreamed of traveling back in time to see for myself.

In high school, every time a science fiction or fantasy book came along that had dinosaurs in the story, I checked the book out from the school library.

It may not surprise anyone when I reveal that I own a set of the DVDs of Spielberg’s Jurassic Park franchise.

That’s why soon after the December issue of Smithsonian magazine arrived in the mail and I saw China’s Dinosaurs listed on the cover of the magazine, I couldn’t wait to read the piece.

Smithsonian says, One of China’s star paleontologists, Zhou Zhonghe (and colleagues) in 1995 announced the discovery of a fossil from  (China’s) prehistoric disaster zone that heralded a new age of paleontology.


from Discovery Science

The fossil was a primitive bird the size of a crow. They named the new species Confuciusornis, after the Chinese philosopher.

Zhou works at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. The discovery Zhou and his colleagues made answered one of the biggest questions in dinosaur science about the real relationship between birds and dinosaurs.

Smithsonian says, “China’s spectacular feathered fossils have finally answered the century-old question about the ancestors of today’s birds.”

The idea that birds are descended directly from the dinosaurs isn’t new.  Smithsonian says, In 1870, an English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley wrote a treatise on the subject.

So, next time you eat turkey or chicken remember you are chewing on a descendent of the dinosaurs.

Discover more of China’s past from The Machines of China

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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

The Peace Prize – Confucius versus Nobel

December 10, 2010

Michael Martina of Reuters reported on a Chinese option to the Nobel Peace Prize — the Confucius Peace Prize.

The headline read, China stood up by winner of ‘Confucius peace prize’

The headline used for this Reuters news made mockery of what a few Chinese citizens attempted.

The lead paragraph goes, “It was meant to be China’s answer to the Nobel Peace Prize…”

At first, it sounds as if China’s Communist Party was behind this alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize.

After reading the rest of Martina’s piece, you learn that the Confucius Peace Prize had no link to China’s central government. Since news of it wasn’t reported in China’s state media, few in China probably even heard of it.

A spokesperson for the Confucius Peace Prize said, “This prize is from the people of China, who love and support peace.”

Yet, the people of China had nothing to do with it either.

However, using Confucius’s name for a peace prize makes more sense than using Alfred Bernhard Nobel’s name.

If you compare The Life of Confucius and/or watch the recent Confucius movie starring Chow Yun Fat you might understand why Confucius deserves the honor more.

After all, Nobel built his fortune on death. He was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator and armaments manufacturer. He invented dynamite and manufactured cannons and other weapons.

He also waited until after his death to make amends for the suffering and destruction his products  had caused.

In his last will, Nobel directed that his enormous fortune be used to institute the Nobel Prizes and made sure to name these prizes after himself so he wouldn’t be remembered as the “Merchant of Death” or the “Lord of War”.

To understand better who Alfred Nobel was, I suggest you watch Nicolas Cage in the Lord of War, a movie released in 2005. Although the movie was not about Nobel, it is about a “Merchant of Death”.

In fact, it may not have been Nobel’s idea to include the Peace Prize.

Although Nobel never married, his first love, a Russian girl named Alexandra corresponded with him until his death in 1896. Many believe she was a major influence in Nobel’s decision to include the Peace Prize among the other prizes provided for in his will.

Is this “hypocrisy” time ten?

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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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Modern Romance in China – Part 2/2

December 10, 2010

The segment of Al Jazeeera’s report on Maggie Gu’s “Romance Chinese Style” starts with the sound of violins at a wedding banquet.

The narrator says, “Chinese weddings today combine east and west both in customs and in costumes. However, the all-important wedding banquet must start before twelve to avoid bad luck.”

China’s open society is learning about love and romance.

However, it is also discovering the agony of divorce since in the last two decades the divorce rate in China has taken flight but is still far from the divorce rate in the US.

Divorce has become so common, that it led to a popular, award winning TV drama called called “Chinese-Style Divorce”, which is the story of a woman losing her husband due to jealousy. This program struck a chord with millions of Chinese viewers.

The producer/director of Chinese-Style Divorce went through a divorce the year before he started filming. Many in the production crew were also divorced.

China’s loss of love has also created opportunities in a new divorce industry leading to lawyers that specialize in divorce.

While Chinese laws have made divorce much easier, Chinese culture is still having a difficult time adjusting to the shock that comes with divorce.

Today, marriage in China is more than just sticking it out through hard times. These days young couples want harmony, happiness and romance, which means when marriage becomes torture there is no hesitation to divorce.

However, there are still differences between Chinese and US marriages. In China, many expect their new mate to show respect and support for parents. Chinese parents may also become involved in playing cupid for their children.

Return to Modern Romance in China – 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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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