China’s Middle Class Defined

June 1, 2010

I finished reading “China’s New Middle Class: Constants and Variables” by Tom Doctoroff in the Huffington Post, and I agreed with most of what he wrote.

Doctoroff said that in Confucian society the burden on men to be the providers is very absolute and very heavy…, as a man, you are responsible for the overall wellbeing of your clan/family.

I agreed when Doctoroff wrote that the Chinese middle class would never become Westernized. They are becoming modern, they are becoming internationalized, but they are not becoming Westernized.

Shopping in China

There is one underlying truth in Chinese society that says the only absolute evil is chaos and the only absolute good is stability and order and this is a prerequisite for progress on a national and individual level…

Every strand of Chinese thinking reinforces the supremacy of stability and order, and this is learned from a young age, which comes from Confucianism. Doctoroff wrote that in Japan, this conflict is not nearly as severe, but in China, this conflict defines the topography of the Chinese heart. The Chinese see the central government as there for them to advance and to make order from chaos. They would never trade in the Chinese system for a Western style democracy.

One thing that wasn’t mentioned by Doctoroff was the earning power of the clan/family and how that collective earning and savings allows families to buy into the Chinese middle-class lifestyle.  When the mother of a friend of my wife wanted a better Shanghai flat, both children—a son and a daughter—came up with the cash. Most Chinese work hard and avoid squandering money.

Learn more about China’s Middle Class Expanding

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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1 Comment | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, Confucianism | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Dragon Boat Festival

June 1, 2010

When I was at the 6th Annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration in San Francisco on May 15, I learned that Dragon Boat races take place in San Francisco Bay.  I stopped at the Dragon Boat booth and was told there would be more than a hundred boats competing in the 15th Dragon Boat Festival from Treasure Island in San Francisco on September 25-16, 2010.

In China, The Dragon Boat Festival is held on the fifth day of the fifth moon. History/myth tells us that the festival celebrates and honors Ch’u Yuan, who drowned himself in the Mi Lo River during the fourth century BC during the Chou Dynasty to protest government corruption.  There is some controversy over the real reason but this one is the most popular.

It is said that people rushed onto the river in boats to find Ch’u Yuan’s body but failed.  Today, the festival is a day where boat races are held throughout the Chinese-speaking world wherever significant numbers of Chinese live.

Read more about Chinese dragons

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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

Kombucha Fermented Tea

May 30, 2010

Sometimes I wonder about the sanity of most Americans.  It seems they will drink or eat anything that arrives pretty on a plate or in a fancy bottle. I  read a piece this morning that said Lindsay Lohan and other Hollywood types like Madonna, Kirsten Dunst and Halle Berry are into this new (but old) synergy drink called Kombucha.

Kombucha Home Brew

No one knows for sure where this fermented tea originated but recorded history says it started in Russia during the late 19th century. Promotional material says the drink comes from ancient China or Japan. In fact, some say that kombucha, known as the Godly Tsche, dates back to the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) and was “a beverage with magical powers enabling people to live forever”. Since the first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, didn’t live forever, we can discount that claim.

I asked my wife about this tea and she said that as a child she saw it being fermented and that the stuff floating around inside the jar reminded her of dead cockroaches.  Once someone like Pepsi or Coke gets hold of something old like this there is no telling what kind of chemicals will be added. If you want to make this tea, click Kombucha Tea for the home brew recipe.

If you believe the health claims for this tea, you may want to learn about the Chinese “Chong Cao“. Remember, the Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) hasn’t evaluated any of this stuff yet.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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10 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese food | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Chinese Work Ethic

May 30, 2010

At the turn of the century, Jack London visited China (1904-05) and saw how hard the Chinese worked. He surmised that Westerners, living in ignorant bliss, had no understanding of Asian cultures and were far too confident of their superiority to realize that their days of world power were severely numbered. He urged that Westerners make concerted efforts to meet with Japanese and Chinese to understand each other better as equals. Source: History News Network

Jack London with his wife

In fact, I’ve met highly educated Chinese who came to the US and couldn’t get jobs in their field of study. Did they give up and lay around complaining how unfair life was?  No. They became handy men or worked in construction for far less than what a Latino, illegal immigrant worker earns. These same Chinese, with strong family values, also save money to send their children to college.

Sir Robert Hart, who lived and worked in China (1854 – 1908) and is considered the Godfather of China’s modernization said the same thing Jack London would say decades later. In the 1880s, he predicted that within a century China would be a super power again.

Sir Robert Hart in China

The Chinese work ethic is also reflected in Article 42 of the PRC’s Constitution.

“Citizens of the People’s Republic of China have the right as well as the duty to work. Using various channels, the state creates conditions for employment, strengthens labour protection, improves working conditions and, on the basis of expanded production, increases remuneration for work and social benefits. Work is the glorious duty of every able-bodied citizen. All working people in state enterprises and in urban and rural economic collectives should perform their tasks with an attitude consonant with their status as masters of the country. The state promotes socialist labour emulation, and commends and rewards model and advanced workers. The state encourages citizens to take part in voluntary labour. The state provides necessary vocational training to citizens before they are employed.”

Who built the Great Wall of China?
Who built China’s Grand Canal?
Who built the first emperor’s tomb and all those Terra Cotta Warriors?
Who took a country in 1950 that produced 0.005 kilowatts of electricity and built more than a hundred modern cities in less than three decades with plans to build 400 more—something historians say has never happened in the recorded history of humanity?
Whom has the only viable space program left on the earth with plans to go to the moon and beyond?
Who built America’s Western Railroads during the 19th century?

To learn more see All About Balance

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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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1 Comment | America, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, cultural differences, family values, government | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Keeping China’s People Working

May 30, 2010

Marginal Revolution (MR) posted his or her “China fact of the day” and just about everyone who left a comment got it wrong—as usual.

“Of the 22 Chinese corporations listed on the Fortune Global 500, 21 are controlled by China’s central government or state-run banks.” Source of quote: New York Times

I read the The New York Times piece that was quoted by MR and the gist was that China is going through something similar to what Japan did for the four decades after World War II, and that China cannot depend on manufacturing and exporting goods to the rest of the world to maintain a healthy economy indefinitely.  China “needs” to grow a domestic economy that supports itself and that is what the Chinese are trying to do. If they get it wrong, they will pay a steep price.

The first comment to MR’s “China fact of the day” said, “So much for the triumph of capitalism.”

True, so much for capitalism. After all, it was the Republican, Reagan, Bush, Wild West, capitalist system in the US that caused China to start pumping money back into state-run businesses.

Creating Jobs for China's People

In April 2009, Time did a good job explaining why China’s state owned companies are making a comeback.  When the world’s conomy burst and deflated in 2008 thanks to Wall Street greed, exports from China fell by almost 20% and an estimated 300,000 small and medium-sized private sector companies in China collapsed. “The Crisis hits China’s private sector really hard because China’s private sector accounts for a larger share of China’s manufactured exports, says Yasheng Huang, an MIT professor.

What did China do?  China started to put the people who had lost their jobs in the private sector to work in State Run Companies.  Duh! All anyone has to do is see what happened in the United States during the Great Depression when Herbert Hoover was president to understand why China is acting this way to keep people working and earning money.

See Jobless in America and Angry at China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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