2012 – Changing the Guard

March 8, 2010

The fifth generation of Communist leadership in China will take charge in 2012, as the fourth generation steps down.  Retirement from public office is mandatory at 67.

Who are these people? There are two factions (recognized by the Western media) competing for leadership of the country.

One faction is the Gang of Princelings whose parents were powerful members of the Communist Party. The other faction comes from those that climbed the ranks from China’s Youth League. This year’s session of the National People’s Congress marks the unofficial start of the campaign season for 2012 when most of the current leadership will retire.

One rival is Wang Yang, once a member of the Communist Youth League. Wang has talked about having new, capital-intensive industries replace the old, labor-intensive industries in Guangdong.

One princiling has been in the spotlight recently. He has achieved celebrity status in China because he was successful fighting organized crime in Chongqing, a city with a population that is more than thirty million.  His name is Bo Xilai, one of the princelings, and his father was one of China’s eight Communist Immortals.

Bo Xilai

In China, family history is important and always has been. The Chinese look at the history of the family, the father, the mother and believe that will show them who the child will be and if that man or woman can be trusted.

See Family Connections

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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

Family Connections

March 7, 2010

In China, if you can’t trust anyone else, you should be able to trust your family. That belief also applied to the emperors.

In China, when a minority king became too powerful and caused unrest, the emperor proposed that this king marry the emperor’s real daughter (instead of an adopted daughter), as if to say, “You will be a member of my family so stop what you are doing—stop fighting with The Middle Kingdom. Since we are soon to be related through marriage, there is no need to fight.”

This happened more than a thousand years ago with Tibet when the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty married his daughter to the Tibetan king so the Tibetans would stop raiding China.

Traditional Chinese Wedding

Under the rule of emperors, minorities were not forced to pay taxes like the Han Chinese. It was believed that minorities were less fortunate and did not have the same advantages. After Mao, China’s government, with few exceptions, continued this policy.

More about a few of China’s Minorities
China’s Zhuang & Yao ethnic people
Li River Minority area
Li River Minority area # 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

Every Kind of Beauty Under Heaven

March 7, 2010

When emperors ruled China, those men often wanted to be seen as benevolent—embracing every kind of beauty under heaven. To do this, the emperors encouraged minorities to stay where they had lived for centuries if not millennia. Even in Tibet, China has not driven out or slaughtered in mass (http://wp.me/pN4pY-6S) the minorities as Europeans did to North American natives, who lived off that land for more than ten thousand years.

 

History shows that the Chinese emperors did not force minorities from their land with false promises followed by broken treaties. In China, if a minority king proposed a marriage alliance with the Emperor, the Emperor adopted a Chinese beauty as his daughter and sent her to the minority king. This is portrayed in The Dream of Red Mansions, a Chinese classic written in the 18th century.

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China’s Modern Women

March 6, 2010

The changing role of Chinese women has been dramatic since Mao won China in 1949. Prior to that time, China was ruled by the Kuomintang—a dictatorship. There were never national elections held in China. There wasn’t much that changed under the Kuomintang leadership regarding the role of women. When my wife was born in the late 1950s, her grandmother had bound feet.

Chinese girl with bound feet

Before Mao, women were grass to be stepped on. Their role was to serve men.

The changes ushered in by Mao set the stage for his wife to become China’s leader after her husband’s death. The only reason she did not assume the leadership was because she was arrested as a member of the Gang of Four and sent to prison for crimes committed during the Cultural Revolution.

Modern Chinese woman

Since Mao, the changes have been even more dramatic.  Woman own businesses, hold political posts in the government, have jobs, and cannot be sold to become a wife or bought to serve as a concubine. They are not property. They are equals to men in many ways.

Learn about Marriage and Money in China.

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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.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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Shanghai Huangpu River Tour

March 6, 2010

Shanghai is considered the Paris of Asia.  There’s a reason for this and I hope these five pictures and video will show that.

 

Notice the Chinese middle-class tourists on the boat.  Study how they dress. See the cameras. And ask yourself this—if these people are so brainwashed and downtrodden, why are they out taking a cruise on the Huangpu River taking pictures as if they were visiting the Grand Canyon or New York?

Pudong side of Huangpu River

 See the city skyline along the river. 

This is only a small portion of Shanghai.

Shanghai side of Huangpu River - the croweded Bund

East of the Huangpu River is Shanghai. On the west bank is Pudong–fifty years ago, this land was farm land.

A close up of the crowded Bund on the Shanghai side of the river

Check out the number of Chinese tourists visiting the Bund in this photograph.  I’ve waded through these crowds.  These people are laughing, smiling, eating, taking pictures of each other, clowning around.  They are having more fun than I see from most American tourists when I travel in America.

Look at the signs-Nikon, LG, Nestle

China has almost five hundred million people living in its cities. Another eight hundred million live in the country.  If it hasn’t already happened, there will be more Chinese on the Internet than the population of the United States and there are ways to get around the censors.  Fifteen to seventeen million people live in Shanghai.

 

To discover more about Shanghai visit:
Shanghai
Shanghai Huxinting Teahouse
Eating Gourmet in Shanghai
Shanghai’s History & Culture
Chinese Pavilion, Shanghai World Expo

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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.

3 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, economy, environment, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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