A “Fruitful Meeting” Between Civilizations – Part 2/2

May 12, 2011

Y Chan’s comment continued with, “In the English language, the word “Christianity” usually refers to the hundreds of religions (some estimate the total number of Christian sects to be about 38,000 worldwide) that are based on Jesus as their Savior… However, to the Chinese people, the words “Catholicism” and “Christianity” seem to refer to two different religions, which is wrong. The translation got lost somewhere.”

“In fact,” Chan wrote, “different Christian sects came to China at different times with different techniques. The Catholics first came to China under Father Matteo Ricci around 1582 “WITHOUT” weapons or gunboats.

“All Ricci brought was the Bible and scientific knowledge and thus gained the respect of the Chinese people [even today the Chinese respect him].

“Actually, the religious exchange went both ways. Whilst the Jesuits brought Christianity to China, they also introduced Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism to Europe, because Father Ricci studied and translated many Chinese texts and sent them back to the Vatican.

“On the other hand, the Protestants arrived in China [in the 19th century] with the assistance of Western gunboats and opium. The first Protestant missionary was Robert Morrison of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. He pioneered the translation of the Bible into Chinese. He actually was hired by the notorious British East India Company that sold opium in China.

“Therefore, Chinese historians usually give a much higher respect to Father Matteo Ricci than to Rev. Robert Morrison. Today, Morrison has largely been forgotten by most Chinese.

“Father Matteo Ricci was an Italian, came to China 400 years ago, arrived in Macao and learned to speak fluent Cantonese rather than Mandarin.

“He studied Buddhism, dressed as a Buddhist monk and talked as if he were one when he tried to introduce Christianity to the Chinese people. However, Ricci discovered to gain the trust of the Chinese Emperor, he had to understand Confucianism.

“Through the study of Confucianism, he was accepted into the Imperial Court and was the first Westerner to hold a high position in the Chinese Government.

“Father Ricci treated Chinese culture and religions “EQUALLY” as he introduced Christianity to China, whilst the British missionaries [Robert Morrison and the Protestants] looked down on China as a land of barbarians [heathens] to be “saved” as they came ashore supported by gunboats and opium.

Return to A “Fruitful Meeting” Between Civilizations – Part 1

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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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A “Fruitful Meeting” Between Civilizations – Part 1/2

May 11, 2011

Pope Benedict XVI (born 1927 – ) has called Matteo Ricci [a 16th century Jesuit, 1552 – 1610] a model for a “fruitful meeting” between civilizations. Source: Catholic News Agency

America and the other Western democracies could learn much from this man, who is being considered for beatification by the
Vatican.

This wasn’t the first time I heard of the Jesuit missionary. In 1999, while my wife and I were on our honeymoon in China, she told me about Ricci. At the time, I was busy learning of Sir Robert Hart, the protagonist in my first two historical fiction novels, “The Concubine Saga”.

When we first visited Book City in Shanghai, I searched for information of Ricci but the only copy I found was in Mandarin, which I do not read.

Over the years, I forgot about Ricci until a commenter, Y Chan, reminded me when he left a comment for The Connection Between Opium, Christianity and Cannon Balls in China , a post republished March 1, 2011.

Here’s what Y Chan first said in his comment.

“You may want to be more specific when using the word “Christianity” in your article.”

Continued on May 12, 2011, A “Fruitful Meeting” Between Civilizations – Part 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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Beating Cancer with Chinese Medicine

May 8, 2011

While watching Oprah with my wife recently, Pam Grier, known for her Foxy Brown role, was a guest on the show.

Grier has been a major African-American actress from the early 1970s.

She says, “People see me as a strong black figure, and I’m proud of that, but I’m a mix of several races: Hispanic, Chinese, and Filipino. My dad was black, and my mom was Cheyenne Indian. So you look at things beyond just race or even religion: I was raised Catholic, baptized a Methodist, and almost married a Muslim.”

In 1988, Grier was diagnosed with stage four cancer and given a few months to live. There was nothing Western medicine could do to save her.

During Grier’s appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show on Thursday, February 3, she said, “My physician said, ‘Western medicine has done all it can, I recommend that you go to Chinatown. You’ll meet these practitioners and you’ll listen to them.’ ”

She started making regular trips to Chinatown in Los Angeles.

In Attitudes Toward Health in China, I wrote, “The focus in China is on prevention — to plan your lifestyle around healthy habits. That’s why early in the morning in China you may find many older Chinese outside exercising using the graceful, poetic movements of Tai Chi to insure health and longevity.”

In Health Care Without Drugs, I wrote, “The history of acupuncture goes back over 8,000 years. One would think if it didn’t work, this medical practice would have ended long ago.”

The use of herbal medicines in China has been traced back to the Zhou Dynasty, late Bronze/early Iron Age, about 2,500 to 3,000 years ago.

In fact, the World Health Organization reports that about 80% of people worldwide use herbal medicines for their healthcare.

All of these facts of Eastern and/or Chinese medicine beg for a question. Why do Western drug companies reserve the right to use the word “cure” and no one else may use it legally?

“As many of you [may not] know the word “cure” is reserved for use of the [Western] medical/pharmaceutical industry only. To use this word in the West is to risk prosecution.” Source: Hulda Regehr Clark, Ph.D., N.D.

“The word “cure” is reserved exclusively for pharmaceuticals; it can never be used with herbs or other nutritional therapies.”  Nick Adams, the Health Ranger at Natural News, says, “I find that to be an interesting double standard.”

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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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The Founding of China’s Republic – a Movie Review

May 4, 2011

The Founding of a Republic was produced to coincide with the 60th anniversary (in 2009) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) winning the Civil War in October 1949. I first saw this movie March 2011.

The film has the largest number of Chinese movie stars in one movie. Many of the top stars were invited to star as leads, supporting characters, or to appear in cameos, such as internationally well known Jackie Chan and Jet Li, whom appear briefly in the film.

The film covers the period between 1946 and October 1949 — well before the infamous failed Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which are the events most people in the West identify with Mao.

There is seldom any mention in the West of how Mao won the hearts and minds of the hundreds of millions of Chinese that supported the CCP, while distrusting and spurning the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT). This film (regardless of any propaganda that may exist) provides a glimpse of how Mao accomplished this feat.

The mild dose of propaganda that does appear in the film is nothing compared to the propagandized, anti-bourgeois PRC movies of the early 1950s or 60s.

It was because of how Mao won the Civil War (1926 to 1949 with a pause during a portion of World War II) that despite the deep collective scars left by the catastrophes of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, that he retains a strong measure of popular affection in China to this day.

In fact, many born in China prior to the 1980s still consider Mao to be China’s George Washington.

Directors Huang Jianxin and Han Sanping provide glimpses into the key moments during the final stages of the Chinese Civil War and the film was not just glorified propaganda since the Communists are given only one third of the screen time.

More time was given to people like Zhang Lan and Li Jishen, and key members of the China Democratic League. Until I watched this film, I only knew of the KMT and the CCP. I didn’t know there were other Chinese political parties involved.

In addition, Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-Kuo, who later guided Taiwan’s government to become a multi-party democracy (the first direct presidential election was held in 1996 eight years after Ching-Kuo’s death), are not demonized but are played as characters trapped between their responsibilities towards their country and pleasing political factions in the KMT.

The film suggests that the KMT lost because of the political agendas of these factions within the KMT, and not because of the power of the Communists, which was unexpected in a pro-Communist film.

After all, in war there are few if any saints and politics are more complex than most people ever know.

I urge everyone interested in modern Chinese history to see this film especially students in Chinese history classes and/or those majoring in East Asian studies. People that cannot understand Mandarin will be pleased that the movie has English subtitles.

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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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Changing History through Theft

April 23, 2011

When I typed “China intellectual property theft” into Google, there were about 1.5 million hits.

Innovators Network, the first hit, said, “China is known in some circles as a bastion of rampant product piracy and intellectual property theft…”

The second hit was from Canada Free Press, which published a piece on Foreign Companies Concerned Over Intellectual Property Theft in China.

When did this cycle of theft begin?

You may be surprised to learn that the British Empire started this cycle of theft in the 19th century.

In the 18th century, China was the most advanced nation on the planet. In 1793, China’s Qianlong Emperor sent a letter to King George III of Britain. The emperor made it known that, “As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures.”

Then the Industrial Revolution started in England but wasn’t felt until the 1830s or 1840s.  After almost two thousand years, the West had an advantage and used it.

For All the Tea in China: How England stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History, a March book buyers’ pick for Costco, reveals one of the steps the British took to change the balance of global power.

The author, Sarah Rose, tells the story of how, before 1848, China was the only country that knew how to grow and make tea. The British sent botanist Robert Fortune deep within China to steal plants to grow on British plantations in India.

In addition, by the 1830s, the English had become the major drug-trafficking criminal organization in the world; very few drug cartels of the twentieth century can even touch the England of the early nineteenth century in sheer size of criminality.

By the 1840s, the British and French fleets sailed into China’s rivers and destroyed its fleets forcing China to bend to the will of the West. Besides Western opium trade and the theft of China’s tea, Britain and France forced China’s emperor to allow Christian missionaries free access to Chinese everywhere.

Today, with China’s rise as a major economic and military power, it seems that theft may be changing history again but this time the wind blows from the East to the West.

However, in an attempt to keep the power, Europe and America came up with a new set of rules making the kind of theft they used in the 19th century wrong.

Discover The Opium Wars or the magic of Puer Tea

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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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