Facts About China that will Blow Your Mind

February 25, 2010

From Business Insider, comes 15 Facts (actually 17) About China that will Blow Your Mind. Here are five of them. Visit Business Insider to see the rest and the details.

1. By 2025, China will build TEN New York-sized cities.

Shanghai river waterfront

2. China already consumes twice as much steel as the US, Europe and Japan combined.
3. If the Chinese, one day, use as much oil per person as America, then the world will need seven more Saudi Arabias to meet the demand.

Note:  Another reason why China NEEDS to go Green with their power. See my piece about this topic at China Going Green. The growing crises with industrial pollution linked to oil is another reason.

4. Chinese Internet users are five times as likely to have blogs as Americans.
5. Chinese GDP (Gross Domestic Product) could overtake the U.S. as soon as the early 2020s.

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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

Hangzhou Mansion

February 25, 2010

After cruising on the West Lake at Hangzhou with Bob Grant, you may want to see this government run tourist attraction in the city. Before the Communists claimed China, this mansion was owned by a family that made its money first in the silk industry and then banking.

rock art in garden with tunnels

There’s more to the mansion than this example of rock art in the garden.  These rocks were not here when the mansion was built. There was a time in China during the Imperial era where rock art was popular.

Pond with carp at Hangzhou Mansion

For a few yuan, you will be able to tour most of the mansion and the gardens (yes there is more than one garden area beyond what you see in these two pictures).  This mansion was in the city but once inside you have no sense of the crowded city surrounding the high walls.  Once the owner was home and the gates locked at night, this home become another world apart.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

My Big Day Off – In China

February 25, 2010

This guest post from Bob Grant is a long piece with a lot of pictures.  If you want to see more of  Hangzhou and the Westlake, I recommend that after you read the first two paragraphs, you click on the link and visit “Speak Without Interruption.”  My wife and I have visited this city and lake several times over the years and I enjoyed Bob’s piece about his visit and had a few good laughs.

Originally published at Speak Without Interruption on February 11, 2010 by Bob Grant — publisher/editor for Speak Without Interruption

Below is something that I sent to my family and they all said they liked it.  However, they are family and what else could they say?  I have a manager/partner in China whose name is David – we have associates named Eric and Uncle Wong.  I live in Missouri and my relatives live in Wyoming.  This sets the stage for the following recap of My Big Day Off – In China:

We found ourselves on a Saturday in a city I have visited before named Hangzhou (Han-Joe) with no appointments and time on our hands before our plane departed for Shenzhen (Sin-Gin).  There is a lake in Hangzhou named West Lake.  Not a very original name for the Chinese, but using Chinese logic, I am certain – somewhere – there is a North Lake, South Lake, Southeast Lake, Southwest Lake, South South Lake – you get the picture.  The possibilities are endless.
 
David said, “Let’s take a boat ride.”  Great – sounded like a good idea.  Sitting quietly in a boat watching the countryside and relaxing – NOT.  Think Progressive Dinner.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Who is Doing the Talking

February 24, 2010

I wrote about China’s assault against pornography in an earlier post, and I liked the concept. Now, I’ve discovered a discussion on the topic. After I read the comments/complaints, I wondered whom these people were and what countries they lived in.

The site is called Global Voices Online—Maybe it should be Global Vices.  Could this be a campaign by the pornographers to drum up support so they can stay in business without trouble?  After all, if one of the Chinese mother’s blocks their smut, they will have to work harder to sneak past the censors.  Some of this grumbling was funny, some of it made sense, and some made no sense. If you read the comments, tell me what you think?

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Roughed Up

February 23, 2010

“The police arrived, the guards apologized, and the reporter left without filing charges. Then the policeman told the reporter, ‘You’re free to do what you want, but this is Foxconn and they have a special status here. Please understand.'” So wrote Michael Grothaus for an RSS feed in a piece about “A Reuters employee who was investigating Apple’s legendary secrecy visited Foxconn’s walled city-like facility in Guanlan, China, and was reportedly roughed up by security.”

iPod

Well, yea. The competition is fierce in China for lucrative contracts.  If Foxconn has a contract with Apple and that company loses the contract amounting to millions if not billions of American dollars, it makes sense that their security would be tough on any suspected industrial, high-tech spy. Their jobs even with low pay and long hours are better than no job and poverty. Why put up with a snoop?

If the Foxconn security didn’t take the job seriously, Apple might take their business to another country. How many people would have lost their jobs if that happened?

holding a cup of hot coffee

Consider that China has one lawyer for every 13,000 people compared to the United States, The Litigation Nation, with more lawyers than any other country—one for every two-hundred and sixty-five people and spilling hot coffee on yourself is grounds for going to court.

See Doing Business in China

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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

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