It’s all About Iron

September 16, 2010

Take a look at China Page.com and see the photos of modern cities in China. Since 1980, China has rebuilt most of its established cities and added hundreds more. 

In 2004, the BBC News said, “The biggest mass migration in the history of the world is under way in China, and it is creating what some are calling the second industrial revolution.… A massive building boom umparallelled anywhere is taking place ­– last year, half the concrete used in construction around the world was poured into China’s cities.”

Concrete isn’t the only product China needs.  Iron and steel are also needed.

China is buying iron ore from around the world. In 2009, India exported 106 million tons. A July 2010 Reuters piece says, “Chinese steel producers are increasingly turning to Australia’s magnetite iron ore sector, pouring in funds to explore and develop mines once considered uneconomic…”

In 2006, China was the number one producer with 820 million metric tons of iron ore and still imported 52% from other countries like Australia (470 metric tons), India (150) and Brazil (250).  Source: Wikipedia

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. 

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 » | business, capitalism, China, Chinese Culture, economy | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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

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

Speaking Out about Education- Part 4/6

September 14, 2010

In thirty years, two parents accepted my invitation and one of those parents, sounding like Marie Meyer in the ABC news segment, started to verbally bad mouth with me in front of my students.

I had to call administration to remove that parent from my classroom.

She thought I was being too hard on her son and on my students by demanding that they stay quiet and pay attention.

When a student started to have a personal conversation and I sent him to the office with a referral, that parent exploded saying her son was right and that I was mean.

In China, self-esteem is not considered a factor. 

Instead, students are often embarrassed by their parents if they do not succeed.

My opinion comes from thirty years in the classroom.  I believe that the problems in America’s public schools belong mostly with the parents and the students.

If the student goes home and says that he or she did all her work at school so there is never any homework and the parent never checks, which most don’t, whose fault is that?

– to be continued

Return to Speaking Out About Education – 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 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

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