Changing China through its Youth – Part 5/5

February 3, 2011

As PBS’s Frontline started its fourth year of filming in China, the subjects of their documentary were still restless rethinking their lives, their ambitions and values.

One Chinese woman (not identified) talks about a survey called the “Happiness Index”, which is practical.  It has nothing to do with the individual and society. She says, “When Chinese talk about happiness, it’s about affording the things they want to buy, the housing they want, and if they like the work they do…”

Lu Dong, who started an Internet tailoring business, says, “China is a country with no beliefs and there are no role models. All the models are materialistic.”

Although Lu Dong’s opinion may be true for many Chinese in the rising middle class, I disagree that it means everyone in China. There are role models in China’s history, and even today, there are others who will look to them as an example.

He says, “Chinese are very hungry now and hard to satisfy,” which may be a better way of stating the situation today and goes a long way to explain why rural Chinese are willing to sacrifice so much to migrate to cities and work long hours in factories for low pay.

Lu Dong says, “The water is still dirty. What I can do is make the water in my company clean… Although when I deal with the outside world I still have to deal with business the way others do. That’s another reason why I became a Christian.”

Then Ben Wu, who launched the Internet cafe, says he won’t be in the Internet cafe business for the rest of his life. His real passion is renewable energy. His father’s expertise in is solar cells. He wants to start a factory to build this product.

Dr. Zhang Yao works in a large hospital and feels an obligation to do public health work. He thinks residents in large urban hospitals could provide training in rural ones.

Zhang Jingjing is a public interest lawyer. She represented more than a 1,000 families over a power line built for the (2008) Olympics. She wants to protect China’s environment and natural resources. However, she wants to meet the right man too.

Meanwhile, the rapper, Wang Xiaolei, is achieving his dream of becoming a star. He says he has 20,000 fans. He wants to be the head of a record company. He says he firmly believes that if you work hard your dream will come true.

Wow! That sounds like many of the American children I taught during my thirty years in the classroom. How many do you believe actually achieve their dreams?

In conclusion, this PBS Frontline documentary shows us that there are no stereotypes in China. Even in a collective culture such as China, there are individuals.

Return to Changing China through its Youth – 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 iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Changing China through its Youth – Part 4/5

February 2, 2011

Back to Wang Xiaolei, the Chinese rapper, who at the end of Part 3 shared a story where he met a Chinese girl on-line and sent her all his money so she could come live with him.  His money vanished and she never arrived but he keeps a poster-sized picture of the girl he never met in person on his wall.

Then Wang Xiaolei says there is a social problem in China. “Many girls only believe in money. They think they have to marry someone rich.”

Well, yea! In the US, we call such girls “gold diggers”. Women like this exist the world over. He just isn’t meeting the right girls.  After all, where does he spend most of his time—in bars/nightclubs singing his rap as a DJ.

Yet, opportunities exist for Wang Xiaolei that did not exist before 1980. Today, he works in a nightclub singing his songs and talks of starting his own record label. Prior to 1980, there weren’t any nightclubs in China and there were no private businesses.

The Internet love story he shared with Frontline embarrasses Wang Xiaolei.

In fact, if Wan Xiaolei had done some research he might have discovered what I did in a few second at What It’s Worth at Comcast.net. “Watch out, says the FTC, for any Lothario who wants to get you out of the safety of the dating site and onto your personal e-mail or IM, who was planning to visit you but then can’t because of some tragic (read: costly) event, who needs your financial help to get back on his feet, or who claims to love you much, much too quickly. And note: Do not wire money. It’s not like a credit card where you have the backing of a big corporation. It’s like cash. Once you do it, it’s gone.”

If you say that maybe Wang Xiaolei couldn’t find this information because of Chinese censors, consider that China has a very active Internet with hundreds of millions of people on-line.

In fact, China has its Google and Baidu, search engines that find topics on Websites and Blogs in China that I’m sure discuss this same topic since the Chinese have more active Bloggers than any other nation.

Since this Internet love scam is alive and working in China (as it is in the US for the naive and gullible), there must have been others who were burned and then Blogged about it.

Return to Changing China through its Youth – Part 3

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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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Changing China through its Youth – Part 3/5

February 1, 2011

The PBS Frontline narrator mentions how entrepreneurs that have been away from China must get used to doing business in China, which may include bribes.

In fact, to Chinese there is no clear definition of what is bribery — what the West calls corruption is deeply rooted in China’s culture (and has nothing to do with Communism) and is not seen the same way.

Lu Dong, going into the business of Internet tailoring, says, “If we use Western values to judge a Chinese company’s behavior, I think it is very hard to do business with them.”

Ben Wu, the Internet Cafe owner, says they (Chinese businessmen) have no interest in helping or not helping him, and he cannot figure out how to influence them.

To get help in China, one must make friends and since China is an eating culture that takes money. To learn more, discover the meaning of Guanxi in China.

Ben Wu, who was born in China but educated in the US, says he will not bribe anyone. However, he doesn’t think he can stop his Chinese partner.

One wise quote explains the choices. “There is nothing you can do. A fish has to live in water and if the water isn’t clean you must get used to it.”

Now, for a corruption reality check. Here is a comparison with the US. We know an engineer who stopped working in construction because of the difficulty in finding contractors that are honest.

We also had a bad experience with a contractor we signed on to build an addition to our house. Twenty-eight thousand dollars later without any construction starting, he was still asking for money.

An investigation on my part revealed he hadn’t taken out the construction permit even though he had collected the money months earlier to do so. We cancelled the contract and he filed a lien on our property for about $200,000 US.

Months later, we managed to get about half the 28 thousand back and California forced him to cancel the lien. However, we had to see and pay for a lawyer, file a complaint with a state agency in California and the process was stressful and frustrating.

The fact is that there is corruption in every culture and country. It just wears different clothing.

Return to Changing China through its Youth – 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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Amy Chua Debates Former White House “Court Jester” Larry Summers

January 31, 2011

A friend of mine forwarded a link to Larry Summers vs. Tiger Mom, which was published in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on January 27, 2011.

Larry Summers, who has billed himself as a “hard ass”, was President Barack Obama’s top economic advisor for the last few years. Summers recently left the White House to return to Harvard as a professor then had a debate with Chinese-American “Tiger Mom,” Amy Chua, who wrote an essay that appeared in the WSJ with a headline (she didn’t write), which said, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.

Summers said why go through all the trouble to earn a university education when computers are eventually going to do the work that requires discipline.

He also said, “People on average live a quarter of their lives as children. That’s a lot. It’s important that they be as happy as possible during those 18 years. That counts too.”

Summers isn’t alone in his belief that children should focus on being happy instead of academic excellence.

The average American parent belonging to the Self-esteem arm of Political Correctness (SAPs) spends less than five minutes a day encouraging  his or her child to be happy which explains why the average American child enjoys ten hours a day watching TV, socializing on Facebook, playing video games, and/or sending hundreds of text messages.

Summers cites in his debate with Chua that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard. Look at what those “two” achieved without a university education.


“Asian countries value education more than other countries.”

While Gates was building Microsoft and Zuckerberg Facebook, do you believe these two billionaires spent ten hours a day doing what the average American child raised by SAPs such as Summers does to enjoy the first quarter of his or her life?

Summers doesn’t mention that Warren Buffet, one of the richest men on the planet, attended the Wharton Business school at the University of Pennsylvania for two years then transferred to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Working part time, he managed to graduate in only three years.

Summers doesn’t mention that it is common that the top one percent of executives with annual incomes of $500,000 or more often have Ivy league educations from universities such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale or Princeton.

Summers doesn’t mention that the top 15% of the upper middle class are highly educated and often have graduate degrees while earning a high 5-figure annual income commonly above $100,000.

To be specific, the median personal income for a high school drop out in the US with less than a 9th grade education is $17,422, and with some college that medium income jumps to $31,054, while a person with a professional university degree earns an annual medium income of $82,473.  Source: Wiki Academic Models (this source was citing US Census data).

It’s okay if Summers and his fellow SAPs let their children and teens have fun the first eighteen years of life, but don’t forget, the average life span in the US is 78.3 years. 

What are those children going to do for enjoyment while working to earn a living the next 60.3 years as an adult?

Most children raised by Tiger Moms such as Amy Chua shouldn’t have to worry. Those children as adults will probably be in the top 15% of income earners and enjoy life much more than those earning less than $18 thousand annually.

Discover 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.

1 Comment | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Confucianism, cultural differences, education, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Changing China through its Youth – Part 2/5

January 31, 2011

In Part 1 of this series covering a PBS Frontline documentary of how China’s youth is changing the country, we ended with  Ben Wu who had been away for more than a decade gaining a business education in the US and New York.

Recently, a Chinese-American friend returning from China after a long visit complained of the younger people (under 30) not saving money and using credit cards running up debt to buy consumer items (what I call mostly junk).

What Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times wrote of this Frontline series was true. “Soon it becomes clear that everything about them (the younger Chinese) is just like us. …” Learn more of The University Influence from the US and Europe.

This is scary since Money-Zine.com says, “The total amount of consumer debt in the United States stands at nearly $2.5 trillion dollars – and based on the latest Census statistics, that works out to be nearly $8,100 in debt for every man, woman and child that lives here in the US.”

Imagine what would happen to the world if China and America both had economic meltdowns equal to what started in the US in 2008? Instead of $64US trillion lost globally, the numbers would have been much higher.

Anyway, back to Ben Wu and his venture to start up an Internet cafe franchise. After months of living on caffeine and cigarettes (working two jobs–one to earn money and the other starting up the cafe), he opened for business.

By then it was probably 2005 or later. Soon after opening, Ben Wu reported, “The cafe is doing very well. It’s pretty much what I estimated.”

The next Chinese youth Frontline focuses on is Wang Xiaolei, a Chinese rapper using his music to express “his” dark view (opinion) of China’s new boom times.

In my opinion, Wang Xiaolei’s ignorance is on display. Since he doesn’t know how dark it was in China before the economic miracle, he has no idea what he is talking about. His own music says he’s never been to the US but it is apparent that he must have a gold plated perception of the US.

Facts say otherwise. Even the CIA reports that only 2.8% of China’s population lives in “absolute poverty”.

Meanwhile, in the US, the latest Census numbers reported by the Associated Press say “The number of poor people in the US is millions higher than previously known, with 1 in 6 Americans (almost 17%) – many of them 65 and older – struggling in poverty…”

Wang Xiaolei says, “There is a lot of discrimination in China. Like, if you don’t have money, people look down on you.”

How is that different from the US?

Try walking the streets of downtown Berkeley, California and see how many homeless beggars ask for money. Then drive around San Francisco and see if you can keep count of the homeless that live on the city’s streets.

In fact, “There is anecdotal evidence that many Americans complain about the presence of homeless people, blame them for their situation, and feel that their requests (begging) for money or support are unjustified.” Source: Wikipedia

Several years ago in this report, Frontline said that 70% of Chinese had no medical insurance. That was before current plans to improve medical services in urban and rural communities from 2011 to 2015. Source: Xinhuanet.com

What Frontline doesn’t say about health care in China is also important and puts the situation into perspective. The CIA reports that life expectancy in China for total population is 74.51 years. In 1949, life expectancy was a meager 35 years.

Return to China Changing through its Youth – 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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