Banning Virtual Love for the Troops

July 5, 2010

Tragedy has struck before with online dating like Krista Elizabeth Merry, a 15-year-girl, who vanished after meeting someone on the Internet. Love Fraud.com even offers 7 points to remember about dating and predators.

Knowing how dangerous looking for love can be on the Internet, it should come as no surprise to learn that the People’s Daily announced that China’s military leaders are taking online dating as a serious threat to national security and banned online dating for the troops.

Traditional Chinese Wedding

However, young military men are not in the army to become monks, so China’s officers have had matchmaking added to their duties. Source: IBN Live

Becoming a military matchmaker may not be so easy, because there is a growing shortage of women in China. CNN reported that some 24 million Chinese men of marrying age will find themselves without a wife by 2020.  In that case, being in the military might be an advantage since patriotic Chinese women could move military men to the front of the line—that is if enough women are ready to marry.

Discover You’ve Come a Long Ways, Babe

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. 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.

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.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese men, Chinese women | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Capitalist Revolution (Part 7 of 9)

July 4, 2010

In the first three months of 1989, more than six-thousand corrupt officials were convicted. Many more were beyond the reach of investigators since some had the protection of high-ranking party officials in Beijing.

Then Deng’s right-hand man, who was very popular with the people, died from a heart attack. Without his voice to speak for the people, anger erupted over the corruption and rising prices. People flooded Tiananmen Square.

The protesters were not demanding Western style politics or an end to Communist Party rule as many in the West believe.  They wanted the government to listen to their opinions about   reforms and corruption.  The banners the protesters carried said, “We Support the Great Glorious Communist Party of China.”

However, inside the Great Hall of China, Deng was told the demonstrators wanted to overthrow the Communist Party.  Deng reacted with anger. He believed that Western style democracy would end China’s growth. He said, “We can’t have the separation of powers. We can’t copy the West.”

College students and workers came to Tiananmen Square to show support. Russia’s President Gorbachev arrived to see China’s progress.  The demonstrations were happening at the worst possible time. The protesters were an embarrassment.

As soon as Gorbachev left, Deng called a meeting to discuss what to do.  There were reports that people all over China were protesting.

Return to China’s Capitalist Revolution Part 6 or go to Part 8

_________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. 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.

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.

4 Comments | capitalism, China, Chinese history, Communism, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Myth of Hsi Wang Mu

July 4, 2010

To the Chinese, Hsi Wang Mu is the Queen Mother of the  West (Western China), an important figure of Chinese mythology.

It is believed that the myth of the Queen Mother goes back almost three thousand years, but the earliest recorded history was found from the Chou Dynasty (1122 – 222 BC) and was written in the second century BC.  It appears she may have been a real queen of a Western Chinese state and stories of her life become legend over hundreds of years turning into magical myths.

One of the older stories is about Hsi Wang Mu and the celestial archer, where she asks him to build her a palace of jade in the western sky. His reward was a pill made from the peaches of immortality, which ends in tragedy and heartbreak.

It is said that Hsi Wang Mu had nine sons and twenty-four daughters with her mate, Tung Wang Kung.

See The First Emperor – The Man Who Made China

_________________________

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. 

Sign up for an RSS Feed for iLook China

1 Comment | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Capitalist Revolution (Part 6 of 9)

July 4, 2010

For those Red Hat capitalists who survived harassment from the hardliners, the rewards were huge—fortunes were made. Some Chinese were following Deng Xiaoping’s advice “To Get Rich Gloriously.”

However, there was an area of China’s industry that Deng couldn’t change—factory owned industries, which were outdated and inefficient. The state industries still placed politics over profit. In the average state-owned factory, 15 to 20% of the workers did nothing but read and shout slogans.

Deng decided to take state-owned industries from government management.  He said we are going to bring in experts to run our factories like they do in the West. In fact, Beijing was spending a quarter of its revenues supporting state-owned enterprises. The Chinese constitution guaranteed jobs and no one could be fired.

In 1986, Deng decided to allow unprofitable state-owned enterprises to close. Millions lost jobs. With people out of work, crime soared.  In 1989, Deng did away with price controls. There was a panic while workers in private industries were earning much more than people in state-owned industries.

Then bribery became a problem as those in charge at the local level started to accept bribes from foreign investors.

Return to China’s Capitalist Revolution Part 5 or go to Part 7

_________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. 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.

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.

Leave a Comment » | business, capitalism, China, Chinese history, Communism, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Caressing Nature with Chinese Calligraphy

July 3, 2010

It would be difficult to talk about Chinese art without understanding Chinese calligraphy and its artistic inspiration. A painting has to convey an object, but a well-written character conveys only its beauty through line and structure.

In Shanghai, or Beijing, I’ve watched men with longed handled brushes, as seen in the first video, using water for ink and concrete for paper. With grace, they exhibit the skills of a Rembrandt breathing life to the characters.

Lin Yutang writes in My Country and My People that Western art is more sensual, more passionate, fuller of the artist’s ego, while the Chinese artist and art-lover contemplates a dragonfly, a frog, a grasshopper or a piece of jagged rock—more in harmony with nature.

Owing to the use of writing calligraphy with a brush, which is more subtle and more responsive than the pen, calligraphy as art is equal to Chinese painting. Through calligraphy, the scholar is trained to appreciate, as regards line, qualities like force, suppleness, reserved strength, exquisite tenderness, swiftness, neatness, massivness, ruggedness, and restraint or freedom.

Maybe this helps explain why the Chinese are not as warlike as Christian and Islamic cultures.

See Chinese Yu Opera with Mao Wei-tao

______________

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.

2 Comments | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, cultural differences | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »