A Global Misunderstanding

March 20, 2010

“There is nothing wrong with thanking your father and mother, but you should thank your country first,” Yu Zaiqing, China’s State Sports deputy director said. “You have to put the country ahead of your parents.” Source: Vancouver Sun

Yu Zaiqing

What Yu probably meant was “community” instead of “country”. The rest of the piece in the Vancouver Sun goes on with more examples of wrong thinking (by Western standards) from Chinese officials. I disagree with the opinions of the journalist, who wrote the piece, Aileen McCabe, Canwest News Asia Correspondent. Her ignorance of Chinese culture shines.

The reason I disagree is because of Confucius (551-470 B.C.E.), who is considered the founder of China’s ethical and moral system based on the family and his Five Great Relationships. These values have been learned from the family and the community for more than two millennia.

1. between ruler and subject
2. father and son
3. husband and wife
4. elder and younger brother
5. friend and friend

Did you notice the first of Confucius’s relationships? There’s a reason it is number one. Is China supposed to throw out its two thousand years of behavior and thought because a foreigner does not approve?

The first post in this series about Chinese law was Officer in Action http://wp.me/pN4pY-ho

 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Different Cultures Different Laws

March 19, 2010

Language is a powerful tool. When abused by the media or “any” political agenda, the audience is misled and forms incorrect opinions. The Western media often judges actions in China based on Western law from a Judeo-Christian foundation.

Chinese law uses the Chinese Constitution as its basis—not the American Constitution.

China’s Legal System weighs the Law from different values

When the legal system in China arrests and finds political activists guilty, consider Article 28 from China’s Constitution. “The State maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter-revolutionary activities; it penalizes acts that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals”.

If you are not a Chinese citizen and you do not agree, don’t go to China. Understand that Chinese criminal law uses a mixture of Legalism, Confucius, Marxist, and a Leninist, Maoist philosophy as its guide in addition to being modeled on German Law.

Since 1979, China has educated its people about the law in the universities and other education institutions like the primary, middle and high schools. China has also publicized information about their legal system through the China Law Journal and many provincial and municipal journals, magazines, and newspapers. Public lectures are often organized in factories, mines, and rural communes in order to increase the people’s understanding of China’s Constitution and laws. Chinese citizens probably understand their country’s law better than most Americans do.

Discover Justice–a Matter of Opinion

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Officer in Action

March 19, 2010

While in Beijing one year, a friend of my wife’s shared gossip about a neighbor.  The neighbor was a single man in his forties. His former girl friend was in her early twenties, who called the police from his apartment.

Chinese Police in Action with a Murder Suspect

“He raped me. Arrest and punish him,” she said to the officer. All the neighbors crowded in the hall outside the open door. The officer heard both sides. There was no rape. It turned out that the woman had discovered he had another girlfriend.

“He asked me to strip,” she said. “He is corrupt.”

The officer studied her and then the man—the woman was taller and twenty pounds heavier. “You have legs. You could leave. But you stripped. Is that correct?” There was the sound of laugher from the hallway audience.

She nodded.

“No laws have been broken. He is a single man and can date anyone he likes. You could have said no. If you feel that you have been abused, there’s a woman’s organization that will help you. Do you want the phone number?”

“I already went to them. They won’t punish him either.”

The officer shook his head. “You will never come to this apartment again,” the officer said, as he wrote his verdict in a notebook.

China’s police do not have to read a suspected criminal his or her Miranda rights. In China, The police have more power. We often hear about China’s human rights violations. Read China’s response in China chides U.S. on rights record.

Before learning more about China’s legal system, understand moral foundation of the Middle Kingdom

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The One-Child Tragedy

March 18, 2010

China may have cut off a foot to save a stomach. To be clear, I don’t support the antiabortion movement in the United States. The one-child tragedy in China is similar to the United States where the self-esteem movement fostered millions of narcissists, out for themselves—the everything is “I” people. I’m sexy. I’m going to be famous. I’m going to be rich. I’m going to be the next Bill Gates. And this is before they become a teen.

Studies predict that China will soon be short 24 million wives. It doesn’t matter that China bans tests to determine the sex of the fetus for non-medical reasons. Since the culture traditionally prefers boys, many parents will go to underground private clinics to find out what the sex of the fetus is. If it is a girl, many terminate the pregnancy illegally. With the shortage of women, illegal marriages and forced prostitution (sex slaves) is a problem for the police and courts.

If the growing shortage of women wasn’t enough of a tragedy, there are also the little emperor and empresses—spoiled rotten children. Later, many of these brats end up in marriages that don’t last long. The divorce rate in China among those born around 1980 is the highest of all the age groups because they cannot get along or compromise.

Learn more about China’s One Child Policy

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

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

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China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

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Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

March 18, 2010

Based on a novel written by Dai Sijie, who also directed the film.
ISBN: 978-0385722209
Publisher – Anchor (October 29, 2002)

I read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress soon after it came out.  A few years later, we drove more than sixty miles to see the Mandarin language movie. Checking Amazon this morning, I saw there have been 230 customer reviews for the book with a four out of five star average. This short novel spent twenty-three weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. The author, born in China, moved to France where he learned to read, speak and write French. The book was originally written in French and translated into English by Ina Rilke.

Dai Sijie

The story is about two likable, teenage boys and their struggle after being banished to a peasant village for “re-education” during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Sons of doctors and dentists, the boys work at muscling buckets of excrement up the mountainside and mining coal. Then there is the little seamstress of the title, whom Luo, one of the boys, falls in love with. He dreams of transforming the seamstress from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he expected.

This link goes to the Mandarin language DVD with English subtitles.

Discover more Chinese cinema through Joan Chen’s Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl

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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.

#1 - Joanna Daneman review posted June 19 2014

Where to Buy

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