Homeless

September 16, 2010

The East Asia Forum (EAF) reported September 1, 2010, on the impact of the global financial crises on China’s migrant workers.

It turns out that the impact wasn’t as significant as first thought in 2009 as most laid-off workers went home to the rural, collective village farms.

Two years after the world economy collapsed, the EAF was surprised to discover that migrants who stayed in the cities suffered very little.

Instead, workers who stayed in the cities continued to work while about 15 million migrants, about 10% of the workforce, went back to the farm, where they had already worked on average 52% of the year helping grow the food China eats.

The EAF suggested that small landholders, since most Chinese in rural China cannot own or sell the land they farm, should be allowed to sell their land and that China should move toward a universal welfare system.

Huh?

In America, which has a universal welfare system, when a worker loses his or her job, he or she collects unemployment benefits until those benefits run out. The next choice is to become a homeless beggar.

A report on PBS says that since 2007 there has been a 12% increase in homelessness and that about 2.3 to 3.5 million people in the U.S. experience homelessness.

The suggestion from the EAF that China must allow rural peasants to sell the land they farm is wrong.

As long as those farms exist, few people have to go homeless in China. Being a poor peasant farmer may not offer many choices in life, but it has to be better than sleeping in an alley in Shanghai and going hungry.

It was difficult to discover how many homeless people there are in China.  It appears that most who are homeless lost their homes through floods, earthquakes and other acts of nature and live in tent cities while the government has new homes built.

See China’s Stick People

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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 this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

1 Comment | America, American culture, capitalism, China, Chinese Culture, Communism, cultural differences, family values | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Speaking Out about Education – Part 6/6

September 15, 2010

I’m angry at this national witch-hunt in America, which stems from the self-esteem movement.

Teachers have a thankless job.

It is difficult and traumatic to deal with antagonistic parents and belligerent children, who feel they have the right to say or do anything they want including telling lies at home to avoid reading or doing homework.

In fact, instead of being recognized and praised in public for my accomplishments as a teacher, I was often under assault by parents and administrators for being too demanding.

  • George Carlin says sociopaths have high self-esteem. Caution, Carlin uses vulgar profanity in this video clip – just in case you are easily offended by anything that isn’t politically correct.

If you are an American parent, how many hours of TV do your children watch daily?  How many hours do they spend on the phone socializing or surfing on the Internet?

How many books and magazines are in your home?  How many hours do you require your children to read each day? 

Do you attend parent conferences [these tips might help if you haven’t been]? 

Did you know that many American schools have homework Internet hotlines so you can see what the homework is for each of your child’s classes? 

This information is usually sent home from school with your children, who are supposed to share it with his or her parents.

This is the end of my rant about education in America and why the Chinese do it better – at least for now.

Return to Speaking Out About Education – Part 5

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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 this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | America, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, education | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Chery

September 15, 2010

After you saw the title, I’ll bet you were thinking of something else. Sorry to disappoint you.

Chery Automotive in China builds and develops electric cars.  Chery is working in a joint venture with BenQ, a company in Taiwan, to develop lithium-ion battery technology

Auto Blog Green says Chery’s line of EVs are not strong sellers, yet Chery continues to build and develop electric vehicles anyway. 

Do they know something we don’t? 

After all, China’s central government could announce that all gas and diesel powered cars must be replaced with electric.

Critics in the West would complain but the air in China would be cleaner, which should make environmentalist’s happy.

Chery industries appears to be taking quality and safety seriously too.

Chery’s collision and safety laboratory has been identified as Asia’s largest and can fulfill collision tests at different angles while testing airbag and restraint systems. Source: Chery International

How are the Chinese at building cars?

Sho Minekawa, president of joint venture Guangzhou Honda Automobile Co., says that in-house quality tests show that the China-made Accord is actually superior to the one made in the U.S. Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Look out, Detroit. The Chinese are coming.

See China’s Future Lock on your Next Auto Repair

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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 this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, business, capitalism, China, environment | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Speaking Out about Education- Part 5/6

September 15, 2010

It is wrong to shame teachers as the ABC news segment in Part 1 shows, when a child does not perform well in class.

Instead, teachers should be embarrassing students for not doing homework, studying for tests or reading the assignments.

This is the way most parents in China act. If embarrassing the child works, the child deserves being treated that way.

The reason you do not see children getting in trouble in this video clip taken in China is that most of the Chinese children have learned that they have to do as they are told to avoid being embarrassed. 

Our daughter graduated from high school this year (2010).  From third grade, for the next ten years she had straight As.  She graduated with a PGA higher than 4.66 and was accepted to Stanford University. 

Her mother and I taught her early that homework came first and we expected her to read instead of watch TV. She never had a TV or video game in her room.  She had books checked out from a local library to read.

As a family, we watched TV two or three hours on the weekend—never during school days and homework and at least an hour of reading had to happen daily.

– to be continued

Return to Speaking Out About Education – Part 4

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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 this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, education | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

A Forbidden City Connection to Tibet Revealed

September 14, 2010

Since the Western media is often critical of China and often exaggerates events in Tibet to make China look bad, I was surprised while reading The Last Secrets of the Forbidden City Head to the U.S. by Auston Ramzy.

I was surprised that evidence like this slipped past the Western media censors—sorry, in the West they are called editors.

The TIME piece was about an exhibit traveling to the United States with treasures from the Forbidden City that have not been seen since 1924.

I read, “Many of the 18th century objects that will be displayed are symbols of the emperor’s devout Buddhism. They include a hanging panel filed with niches that hold intricate figurines of Buddhas, deities and historical teachers from the Tibetan Buddhist sect to which [Emperor] Qianlong belonged.” See Buddhism in China

I didn’t know the powerful Qianlong Emperor followed the teachings of Buddhists from Tibet. There are four Buddhist sects in Tibet. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of one of the four, the Yellow Hat sect.

Why would the Qianlong Emperor belong to a Tibetan sect of Buddhism if Tibet were not considered part of China at the time? There is even evidence that Tibetan Buddhist monks traveled to the capital of China to serve the emperors.

I saw this as more evidence that proves China considered Tibet a vassal state or tributary.  In fact, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasty troops are known to have occupied Lhasa over the centuries.

I’ve written about primary evidence from the October 1912 National Geographic Magazine that described how the Imperial government in Beijing managed a difficult Tibet, and I’ve mentioned letters Sir Robert Hart wrote in the 19th century that also mention Tibet as part of China.

In 1890, a Convention between Great Britain and China was signed—more proof that China considered Tibet part of its realm and Great Britain agreed.

Yes, Tibet did declare freedom from China in 1913 soon after the Qing Dynasty collapsed and China fell into chaos and anarchy while warlords fought over the spoils.

The British Empire convinced Tibet to break from China. 

It is also a fact that in 1950, after World War II and the end of the rebellion between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Chinese Communists that Mao invaded Tibet and reoccupied what the Chinese considered a breakaway province as mainland China still considers Taiwan.

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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 this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | Buddhism, Buddhist, China, Chinese history, Chinese minorities, Communism, history, Tibet | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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