Since I wrote about rural children living alone yesterday, I thought I’d write about a fairy tale today and let you know that the first known literary version of Cinderella in the world was published in China.
There is a myth that an earlier version existed in Egypt around the first century. If true, since Egypt did not have printing presses then, this may have been an oral story told around camp fires.
However, in 850 AD during the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese version of Cinderella was about a girl called Yeh-hsien. Source: Tales of Faerie
Although this video claims the Chinese Cinderella had bound feet, according to Bound Feet Women, foot binding didn’t appear in China until the Sung Dynasty (960-1276 AD), more than a century after Cinderella was first published.
The French version of Cinderella wouldn’t be published by Charles Perrault until 1697 — more than eight centuries later.
Another version of Cinderella would appear in 1867 and again in 1894 in England.
In 1945, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow would present the premiere of Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet of Cinderella.
Walt Disney wouldn’t publish a version of Cinderella until 1946, more than a thousand years after Cinderella first appeared 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.
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In rural China, more than 100 million migrants have left their homes to find work in the cities. By 2025, it is predicted that another 243 million will migrate. The benefit for these rural to urban migrants is increased income, access to education and a higher standard of living.
However, not all have the money to take their children with them. Some children stay behind — alone.
“Researchers estimate that at least 58 million — nearly a quarter of the nation’s children and almost a third of its rural children — are growing up without one or both of their parents, who have migrated in search of work. More than half of those were left by both parents.” Source: Rural Life in China
In the US, we call such children Latchkey Kids. In fact, Jareb Collins at Associated Content says as many as 77 percent of American youth are Latchkey Kids. If accurate, that adds up to more than 57 million American children.
In addition, in 2009, there were about 18.1 million children in the United States living in single-mother families. Source: prb.org
In the video, Xie Xiang Ling is one of those children in China that lives alone. She is twelve and tells her story to Al Jazeera.
Ling says she lives alone in rural Anhui Province.
Her parents work in the city and she takes care of herself. Sometimes her parents come home on the weekend and sometimes are gone for months.
Ling said there are too many people in the city where her parents sell fruit, tea and nuts.
When Ling visited her parents in the city, she had trouble sleeping nights because the city is so loud and there are so many cars.
Back home, Ling does her own cooking and eats fruit.
At times, she helps on her aunt’s farm and pulls the vegetables from the ground.
In school, she loves language class and math but does not like the English class since the teacher always screams at the students.
Ling wants to go to college and earn good money but her family cannot afford to send her to college.
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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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The top three scandals that come to mind, as I finish writing this post, is the Watergate Scandal, which involved President Nixon leading to his resignation, and the Iran Contra Scandal that involved President Reagan’s White House and last the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal with President Clinton.
In addition, if you want to learn of political murders in the United States, I refer you to Wikipedia’s list of Assassinated American Politicians. At the bottom of this list are links to United States federal judges killed in office and US Congress members killed or wounded in office.
Meanwhile, can we believe everything we read or hear from the media since conservative Republicans often let us know that the media in the US, especially when it reports on corruption and scandals of Republicans, is controlled by a liberal bias, and the GOP does not mention that it was Republican President Ronald Reagan that vetoed the Fairness Doctrine that would have required the media to balance its reporting by allowing both sides of an issue equal space/time to explain each respective point of view.
Then in 1991, another Republican President, George H. W. Bush, threatened another veto if Congress attempted to bring The Fairness Doctrine back.
You Can Buy and Sell Anything!
When the Fairness Doctrine was in place, citizen groups used it as a tool to expand speech and debate. For instance, it prevented stations from allowing only one side to be heard on ballot measures. Source: Common Dreams.org
What does this teach us about politics and honesty in the United States?
And last, the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota reported on a comparison of false statements during political campaigns in the United States and said, “PolitiFact assigns ‘Pants on Fire’ or ‘False’ ratings to 39 percent of Republican statements compared to just 12 percent of Democrats since January 2010,” which may indicate that Republicans lie three times more than Democrats but both still make false statements.
In conclusion, if we follow the advice of Jesus Christ when he confronted the mob that was ready to stone a woman accused of adultery, then the United States as a nation with almost 247 million Christians does not have the right to condemn China as the cover of Time Magazine’s May 14, 2012 issue did with “The People’s Republic of Scandal – Murder. Lies. Corruption. Can China face the truth?”
The real question should be, “Are most American’s capable of facing the truth and dealing with it?”
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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Frisky.com offers a comparison/score of sex scandals between democrats and republicans. The low score wins (see Frisky.com for the details).
Final score: Republicans 67 and Democrats 75
Next, Kickin’ the Darkness.com says, “It’s easy to find Democrats in sex scandals, and Republicans in financial ones, but there just seems to be a party-dependent bias in the nature of scandals… Those principles to which a party most strongly clings seem to also be the ones on which their weaker members seem most likely to stumble.”
However, Salem News.com said, “Republican Sex Scandals Dwarf Those of Democrats (if you click on the link and scroll down, you will see a long detailed list of republicans and their sex scandals) in the last decade…” and Nerve.com claims, “Republican sex scandals outnumber Democrat sex scandals two to one…”
Then the Washington Monthly reported, “As a rule, when a high-profile U.S. senator is facing a criminal investigation, the media shows at least some interest. When that investigation involves sex, the media tends to show quite a bit of interest… Here we have John Ensign, a ‘family values’ conservative Republican, who had an extra-marital sexual relationship with his friend’s wife, while condemning others’ moral failings. Ensign’s parents offered to pay hush-money. He ignored ethics laws and tried to use his office to arrange lobbying jobs for his mistress’ husband. The likelihood of Ensign being indicted seems fairly high… And yet, there’s no media frenzy. No reporters staked out in front of Ensign’s home. No op-eds speculating about the need for Ensign to resign in disgrace. Instead, the media’s fascinated with Charlie Rangel.”
United States: A Long History of Political Corruption
Then from a known conservative media source, Fox Business.com listed America’s Most Corrupt States in March 2012, and the top eight are listed below.
Taking it further, I researched each of these states to see which political party the governor belonged to and which party held the majority in both houses of each state legislature, which Fox did not do.
The most corrupt states in America according to Fox Business.com:
8. Michigan — Republican governor and both houses controlled by the GOP
7. North Dakota — Republican governor and both houses controlled by the GOP
6. South Carolina — Republican governor and both houses controlled by the GOP
5. Maine — Republican governor and both houses controlled by the GOP
4. Virginia — Republican governor and both houses controlled by the GOP
3. Wyoming — Republican governor and both houses controlled by the GOP
2. South Dakota — Republican governor and both houses controlled by the GOP
1. Georgia — Republican governor and both houses controlled by the GOP
According to Fox, states with stagnant political environments often encourage corruption. Governments with high levels of corruption tend to have a political party—either the Democrats or Republicans—in power for too long. The states that have had a “machine” in place for a long time often tend to be the most corrupt. Machines tend to want to protect themselves.
It would seem from this Fox Business.com report, that there isn’t much of a difference between the US and China—in fact, many in China complain of corruption but most believe it takes place at the provincial or city level and that the national leaders in Beijing are honest. The difference is that corruption and scandals in the US often start at the state level and lead to Washington D.C. and even, at times, the White House.
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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When I saw the cover of Time Magazine’s May 14, 2012 issue, “The People’s Republic of Scandal—Murder. Lies. Corruption. Can China face the truth?“, I thought about the US, which often ignores and/or conveniently forgets the history of scandals at home while pointing fingers at other countries–China is often used as a scapegoat to divert Americans from the political corruption at home.
For example, a report by Steven P. Lanza at the University of Connecticut included a chart that shows “How States Rank in Political Corruption” with Virginia leading the pack with about 1,100 convictions between 1986-1995 and Vermont coming in last with almost zero convictions.
In fact, the reason most American’s do not read or hear about scandals and corruption in the United States as much as they should is because the media often ignores news that happens so often it is considered too common. For example, murder and the number of people held in prisons in the United States compared to China.
According to the Tizona Group, “approximately 45 murders are committed each day in the U.S.”
When someone challenged that number in a comment, tizona replied that the FBI in 2006 (and provided a link) reported 17,034 murders and when that number was divided by 365 days, it was almost 47 murders a day.
Can you imagine more than 45 daily, front-page stories reporting nothing but murders in the United States?
In fact, The International Homicide Comparison says in the US that there are 4.8 murders for each 100,000 people, while China has 1.12 murders per 100,000 but Time Magazine doesn’t mention those facts in its cover story.
When we compare all of the Americas with East and Southeast Asia, the facts are not pretty. The Americas had 15.5 murders per 100,000 people while the number for all of East Asia is 3 per 100,000. The Americas may have more freedom than people in East Asia but what good is that so-called freedom when your odds of being murdered are more than five times higher? Source: List of Countries by International Homicide rate
As for the number of people locked up, Daily Paul (Ron Paul’s site) reported that there were 2,019,234 prisoners in the United States, winning first place for the world, while China came in second with 1,549,000 prisoners but Ron Paul’s site did not mention the disparity in population—the US has about 300 million people to China’s 1.3 billion, which translated to 715 people in prison for each 100,000 for the US and China doesn’t even make the top ten. In fact, China ranks #71 globally, while the US is still number ONE in a category that should say, “Shame on you. What are you doing wrong in that country, and should the world really hold the United States up as an example of anything except consumerism?”
However, all those facts aside, in the next two posts, let’s examine what I found researching political scandals and corruption of one kind or another between the American Democratic and Republican Parties.
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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