Ancient China’s Armada

August 8, 2010

When the Yongle Emperor died in 1424, China’s Hongxi Emperor stopped the voyages of China’s largest fleet. Source: BBC

A century later, about 1529, another Ming Emperor burned all records of the fleet. This decision to withdraw from the world may have resulted in China not being ready to confront the Western Imperial powers that would arrive in the 19th century starting the Opium Wars, which would devastate China.

The voyages of Chinese Admiral Zheng Hi’s armada were rediscovered in Fujian province in the 1930s. The story was etched in a pillar. By the final, seventh voyage, the fleet had covered over 50,000 kilometers or 30,000 miles and was comprised of three hundred ships and 28,000 men.

By comparison, Christopher Columbus set sale in 1492 with 3 small ships and 88 men. Erik the Red, a Viking explorer, also crossed the Atlantic in even smaller ships to build a settlement in Greenland around 1,000 AD. Some archeologists suggest that the Phoenicians may have reached the Americas before the Vikings and Columbus around 500 BC. Some even say as early as 1500 to 1200 BC.

Today, a joint Chinese-Kenyan expedition of archaeologists plans to find and excavate a ship from Zheng Hi’s fleet, which may have sunk during a storm near the Lamu islands. Source: Old Salt Blog

Many layers of myth surround China’s ancient mariner. According to Kenyan lore, some of his shipwrecked sailors survived and married local women.

DNA tests have reportedly shown evidence of Chinese ancestry and a young Kenyan woman, Mwamaka Shirafu, was given a scholarship to study Chinese medicine in China, where she now resides. Source: Archaeology Daily

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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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Vestiges of China’s Early Empires

August 8, 2010

 David Frum writes about China’s Early Empires referring to Belknap’s six-volume history of Imperial China. Frum says, “There is no Chinese equivalent of the Parthenon or the Roman Forum, no Pantheon or Coliseum.  For all its overpowering continuity, China does not preserve physical remains of the past… Lewis offhandedly mentions at one point that there remains not a single surviving house or palace from Han China. There are not even ruins,” which is wrong.

I recently wrote a three-part series about Han Dynasty tombs discovered in Xuzhou, which was the location of the capital of the Han Dynasty. The tombs, which had not been destroyed or looted, are now tourist attractions. A museum was built to house artifacts that were discovered. One tomb has a living room and a bedroom before the coffin chamber.  Since the tomb was built inside a hollowed-out mountain and made of rock, it survived more than two millennia with evidence of how the Han Dynasty lived then.

In fact, I’ve toured the Ming tombs, seen the graves of heroes from the Song Dynasty near the West Lake in Hangzhou, south of Shanghai.  Also, let’s not forget that the Grand Canal, which was started five centuries before the birth of Christ and is still in use today.

In fact, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 with much of China’s imperial treasures.

Then, if you visit Tibet, there’s the Potala Palace, which was first built in 637 AD and is still lived in. Although much of ancient China has vanished, there are still vestiges that equal or surpass what the Roman and Greek civilizations left behind.

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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. 

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China’s Future Lock on your Next Auto Repair

August 8, 2010

“In China, automotive industry workers are striking for higher pay. In the U.S., auto-industry workers are agreeing to pay cuts — and then their employers are being sold to Chinese companies.” Source: Salon.com

Striking for higher pay isn’t the only thing the Chinese are doing. They are also buying sections of the US auto industry.

Bertel Schmitt at The Truth About Cars writes about Chinese investors buying up Western Auto Parts manufacturers.   He says that 70% of China’s $160 billion auto-component makers are foreign companies.

It appears that due to the sick global economy, which hasn’t hit China as hard, many of these foreign auto parts companies are hurting as profits shrivel.

Schmitt says that some deals have already been made as Chinese bought Australian gearbox maker Drivetrain Systems International, a supplier to Ford and Chrysler, and GM sold Nexter to a Beijing Consortium who had government backing. 

Similar sales took place in 2009, and today struggling U.S. Firms like Delphi, Lear and Visteon may be up for sale soon.

If Chinese investors buy enough Western auto-parts manufacturers, China may add that industry to solar panel and wind-turbine manufacturing along with the country’s monopoly on refining rare-earth mineral necessary for hi-tech products and weapons systems.

See Holding a Vital Key to Humanity’s Future

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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. 

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China’s Fat Camps

August 7, 2010

The battle of the bulge has been launched in China. The overweight children of the Chinese rich are paying as much as $1,000 American dollars a month to lose weight at fat camps, which are appearing across China and this is taking place in a culture where, historically, being overweight was and sometimes still is considered a sign of wealth and success.

However, many Chinese are learning that being overweight will cause health problems such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and high blood pressure. For women, obesity may affect pregnancy

China’s single children, an urban product of China’s one-child policy to control population growth, have been indulged and spoiled leading to an obesity epidemic.

Many Chinese in urban areas have lived sedentary lifestyles leading to serious health problems and weight issues.

At the Fat camps, these overweight Chinese spend several hours a day involved in sports activities. Meng Qing Gang, one fat camp participant, says, “We are in a health conscious era and are here to lose weight.”

See The Challenge of Rural Health Care in America and 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. 

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An Invasion of Tasty Killers

August 7, 2010

Since the launch of China’s “Getting Rich is Glorious” generation, American fast food has become popular in urban China with plans to invade rural areas.

Currently, a study that received a “majority of its support from the Chinese people and Chinese government” called the China Project is being conducted to observe the relationship of disease patterns to diet, particularly the move from the traditional Chinese diet to US fast food. 

Professor T. Colin Campbell, an “outspoken vegan”, has implicated the increased consumption of animal protein in particular as having a strong correlation with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other diseases that, while common in Western countries, were once considered rare in China. 

Diabetes Mellitus says that a diet rich in refined carbohydrates is a major factor responsible for diabetes. 

Obesity is also a major factor. Although no one has discovered how sugar contributes to diabetes, it is the most well known sugar related disorder. Source: Innvista

Wellsphere shows that as sugar consumption goes up, fatal diseases increase.

In fact, The processing of sugar follows the same trail as the opium poppy. It has habit-forming sensory pleasures just as heroin, opium, and alcohol, meaning that what opium did to China in the 19th century, Western fast food is doing today.

If you want to learn more about the dangers of sugar, see 76 Reasons Why Sugar Sucks.

See The Opium Wars

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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. 

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