The American Mental Illness Olympics

March 24, 2011

The race to acquire a serious mental illness (SMI) is a race you “DO NOT” want to win, and Asians earned last place. If you are among the 97% of Asian-Americans without a SMI, thank your Tough Love parents.

To the average Caucasian-American parent, in a perfect world, all dreams come true and everyone is having fun and enjoys life daily.

That is the foundation of the self-esteem movement, which turned the average American parent into a SAP (a member of the Self-esteem arm of Political Correctness).

Here is more evidence that Tough Love parents, the Amy Chua’s of the world, are right while the SAPs are wrong.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 2008 said that Asian-Americans (coming in fifth in the mental illness Olympics) had the lowest prevalence of SMIs by race, while Caucasians took the gold medal; Latinos the bronze and Africa-Americas came in fourth.

American Indian/Alaska Natives took the silver SMI medal.

The most disturbing comparison was the one between young and old. Those 18 to 24 had four times the SMIs than people over fifty had. It is obvious that SAPs did not raise older Americans. I am sixty-five and my parents did not score high on the Amy Chua Tough Love scale, but they were not SAPs.

Another NIMH study says, “Moreover, African-Americans and Mexican-Americans were significantly less likely to seek treatment than whites.” There is no mention of Asians in this study.

The evidence suggests that Amy Chua’s Tough Love methods (or Tough Love parenting methods in general) lead to adults better able to cope with the challenges and stresses of life that most “will” face.


Self-Discipline may be the key to controlling mental health.

In addition, success at completing college shows that the average Asian Tough Love parent is more successful than all other parenting methods.

The National Center for Education Statistics (IES) said, “Bachelor’s degree completion rates of students seeking a bachelor’s degree at 4-year institutions varied by student characteristics, including race/ethnicity and sex. Asian/Pacific Islander students had the highest 6-year graduation rate, followed by White, Hispanic, Black, and American Indian/Alaska Native students.”

If whites were so successful at earning college degrees (since they were second place), why did they come in first in the SMI Olympics—the race you want to lose?

In fact, the IES says, “The educational systems that outperformed the United States in fourth-grade mathematics—namely, Chinese Taipei, England, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, the Russian Federation, and Singapore — all were located in Asia or Europe (where Tough Love parenting methods prevail).”

I’m confident that most American SAPs will continue to criticize Amy Chua’s Chinese-American Tough Love parenting style for being too demanding.

I’m also confident that most American SAPs will keep blaming US schools and teachers for the lack of student performance.

However, the average number of minutes (less than 5 a day) that s SAP parent in the US talks to his or her average SAP child that spends an average 10 hours a day watching TV or playing video games, or texting or social networking on Facebook shows who is really to blame for winning the SMI Olympics, and it is not Amy Chua.

I wonder how many of Amy Chua’s critics have placed at the SMI Olympics.

Discover more at 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.

7 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese women, cultural differences, education, family values, health care, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Concubines Return Riding Capitalism’s Wave of Wealth

March 23, 2011

A friend of mine sent me a link to an interesting post of China’s Second Wives (concubines). “A 2008 estimate says that Second Wives account for a third of the country’s consumption of luxury products.”

The area Director of JWT North Asia, Tom Doctoroff, answered questions for the piece. He said, “When I ask people how much it costs to maintain a second wife – a trophy concubine – the average I’m told is 50,000RMB (about $7,600US). This isn’t just a girlfriend, this is someone who is kept. And she is displayed as somebody that’s a result of this guy’s power and influence, and access to funds.

However, it wasn’t like that for several decades.

When the Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War and drove Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists from China, Mao announced that women held up half the sky; the practice of bound feet ended and women were considered equal to men for the first time in China’s history.

For thousands of years, the wealthy and powerful in China often had more than one wife and several concubines. The emperor had thousands of concubines.

Between 1949 and 1976, Mao’s goal was to change China by ending the old ways and building a new China that would be stronger and more capable of defending itself from invasions. Mao denounced Confucianism and literally waged a war against Buddhism (and all religions) in China. Mao ended the practice of having concubines too.

The goal to lead China away from its ancient cultural heritage ended after Mao’s death and recently the party had a statue of Confucius erected in Tiananmen Square in an effort to bring back some of the old ways.

Now that China is a hybrid capitalist nation, powerful and wealthy men are collecting concubines (those second wives) again.

However, there is a difference. The legal system in China sees women as equals so women cannot be legally bought and sold. This time, a woman has a choice.

In the embedded YouTube video of the Young Turks, it is mentioned that some wealthy and powerful men in America have concubines too, but in the US, those women are called swingers.

In fact, if a Chinese wife doesn’t approve of her husband having concubines, she now has the freedom to divorce.

Discover Modern Romance in China

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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 lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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

Is China’s Unique Love Affair with Cupid Changing?

March 18, 2011

For millennia, Chinese parents or matchmakers played cupid and arranged marriages sometimes at birth.

However, that may be changing and matchmaking cupids in China are facing unemployment.

Sufie, of Sexy Beijing, takes us on a journey to discover what’s happening to matchmaking Cupids in China.

One man Sufie interviews on the street says he was born in the late 70’s so he has no problem with traditional matchmaking but those born in the 80s and afterwards may not like it.

In this embedded episode of Sexy Beijing, Sufie wants to discover if arranged marriages are still popular in China. To see what she learned, watch the video


Sexy Beijing: Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Cupid is no stranger to China and may have traveled there on the southern Silk Road when the Roman Empire was trading with the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 219 AD).

Top News, China Through a Lens reports that archaeologists working at the Quren Ruins of Yunyang Country, Chongqing Municipality discovered what easily passes as a little bronze cupid.

“The discovery of the naked “cupid” naturally associates the Han Dynasty and ancient Greece and Roman Empire”.

Did you know that in China the apple stands for peace and its blossom for adoration? Instead of buying a dozen roses, maybe a Chinese man buys the woman he adores apple blossoms if that is possible.

My wife often tells me not to waste money on roses but to take her out to eat instead so buying a dozen apples makes sense.

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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Learning from the Qianlong Emperor at the Met

March 12, 2011

I’ve written of the Qianlong Emperor before. He was one of China’s greatest rulers. During the 18th century, this devout Buddhist was a contemporary of France’s Louis XV, Catherine the Great of Russia and George Washington in America. At the time, he ruled the most powerful, wealthiest country on earth.

In the Qianlong Emperor and Google, I wrote if Google had read what the Qianlong Emperor (1736-1796) wrote in his famous letter to King George the III in 1793 — when China was strong enough to resist external influence — it might understand why China reacted the way it did when Google refused to censor its search engine.

In fact, the Chinese make decisions based on a cultural foundation that many in the West do not understand.

However, we may learn much of China if we pay attention to its history. Although China has changed a lot as it modernizes, the Confucian, Buddhist, Taoist foundation that makes the Chinese unique still exists.

In The Economist’s February 5 issue, Paradise on earth, we learn more of the Chinese and how they honor their ancestors.

The Economist says, “Unwilling to challenge the record of the longest-serving Chinese monarch (his beloved grandfather, the Kangxi emperor) who ruled for 61 years, Qianlong vowed to remain no more than six decades on the throne.”  The Qianlong Emperor kept his word and retired several years before his death.

The Economist’s piece was about The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City, which is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until May 1.  It said, “This exhibition may be the only chance to have a good look at its treasures.”

The Met Museum of Art curator Mike Hearn (in the embedded YouTube video) says, “This exhibition’s real purpose is to teach us more about what is great about China and what we can understand about China. We will then be able to use (this knowledge) in our lives…politically as well as culturally…to recognize both China’s greatness and its potential as a partner.”

Discover China’s Greatest Emperors

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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 » | Buddhism, Buddhist, China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Confucianism, cultural differences, family values, history, Taoism | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

It Started on a Sunday Hike (the home taught child) – Part 3/3

March 10, 2011

Those that read my work regularly may know that I was a public school teacher in Southern California for thirty years.

During that time, some of the toughest parents I met were Christian fundamentalist evangelicals and none was SAP parents (Self-esteem arm of Political Correctness).

One Caucasian student was home taught by his parents because they feared exposure to children raised by SAP parents and taught by teachers pressured to dumb down the work while inflating grades by the same SAPs.

However, when he was old enough to go to high school, he managed to convince his parents to allow him to be among teens his own age.  It was obvious from the start that this tall, pale skinned Caucasian teen had been raised by Tough Love parents (probably not as demanding as Amy Chua) to be a disciplined, polite young man that earned excellent grades in high school.

When his parents enrolled him in the high school where I taught, they requested the counselor put him in the toughest teachers’ classes.

As a ninth grade student, he ended in my English class where I recruited him into my journalism class.


Most high school journalism students are disciplined and work hard.

Then, in his senior year, he became editor-in-chief of the high school student newspaper, and I was the faculty advisor. He never missed a deadline. He even managed to intern at a local newspaper his last semester in high school.

Last time we shared e-mails a few years ago, he was the news anchor for a network TV station in Palm Desert, California. He’d even spent a tour in the US Navy.

The fact is that there are great Tough Love parents in America but the average US parent according to many studies is a SAP that allows the child to spend an average of 10 hours a day watching TV, on the Internet probably on Facebook, playing video games or sending out hundreds of text messages while eating unhealthy food.

The SAP crowd is noisy and nosey.  For example, I just searched Amazon for books with topics on Self Esteem and discovered 3,358 books with those words in the title or description.

When I searched Tough Love, the results came back with eighteen titles.

I also discovered that there’s a Website that talks about Self Esteem Magazines for Children. I didn’t find any magazines about Tough Love, but Chinese parents don’t need magazines to know how to be a better parent than a SAP.

Return to It Started on a Sunday Hike -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.

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 » | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese women, cultural differences, education, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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