Risking Gold Mountain

November 27, 2010

China still has millions of poor people — poor by U.S. standards where many that live in poverty often drive cars and have TVs.

However, contrary to the belief of many gloating China bashers and Sinophobes, the Communist Party did not create this situation and has been working hard since the early 1980s to solve this challenge.

The Guardian.co.uk says, “The report, by authors from the China Institute for Reform and Development and other think tanks, describes the nation’s progress over the past 30 years of reform as a miracle in the history of poverty reduction….“

In fact, in 1949, most of China still lived in an environment similar to Europe’s middle ages.

To escape this poverty, many Chinese still immigrate illegally to the US. The reason so many do this is because there is a myth in China that America is “Gold Mountain”.

Golden Venture, a documentary about the US immigration crises, says, “The first major waves of Chinese immigrants came to the U.S. after hearing of the “Golden Mountain” or “Gum Saan” when California’s Gold Rush began in 1848.”

However, the US is not the mythical Gold Mountain.

Steve Lendman says, “On September 16, the Census Bureau reported that US poverty rose to 43.6 million in 2009, an increase of 3.8 million in the past year – the largest total since the first 1959 estimates. It shows one in seven Americans are impoverished, the official 14.3% rate the highest since 1994, by the Bureau’s conservative measures.”

Of China, the United Nations says, “Both national and international indicators show that China has already achieved the goal of halving the number of people in extreme poverty by 2015 set by the UN as one of eight Millennium Development Goals.  Remaining poverty is however becoming increasingly difficult to address, as the rural poor are now concentrated in remote regions with difficult natural conditions.”

“China also accounts for nearly all the world’s reduction in poverty. Excluding China, (global) poverty fell only by around 10%.” Source: Global Issues

Discover China’s Stick People

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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

Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty – Part 3/4

November 27, 2010

The Yongle Emperor’s father, Zhu Yuanzhang (Emperor Hongwu) would have seen his son as unfilial, which means not observing the obligations of a child to a parent—even after the parent is dead.

When Yongle opened China, he demonstrated disrespect for his parent. Instead, he should have continued supporting the closed-door policy his father had instituted.

In Chinese society, to maintain a well-controlled country or a peaceful world requires the children to love and respect his or her parents even after death.

In fact, filial piety is not only a foundation of morality in China but also a fundamental basis of Chinese culture.

This also explains why each of China’s current presidents continues supporting the policies of the former president and Deng Xiaoping.

For change to take place in China, it usually comes slowly. Filial piety is the reason the People’s Liberation Army did not remove Mao during the Cultural Revolution and waited until he was dead to act.


Mandarin with English subtitles

However, when the Yongle Emperor acted against his father’s wishes, he demonstrated courage because he knew many in the imperial court would consider him unfilial.

Emperor Yongle commissioned building the great fleet that Admiral Zheng He sailed as far as Africa. 

Admiral Zheng He was selected to command because he was an organizer, a diplomat and could be trusted. He was not a merchant or a conqueror.

Although during this time, many Chinese immigrated to Southeast Asia, the Yongle Emperor had no interest in establishing colonies outside China.

In the north, it was a different story. Emperor Yongle had to deal with ceaseless attacks by the Mongolian tribes.

For the first time in centuries, an emperor sent a Chinese army of 100,000 beyond the Great Wall to end this threat and bring peace to China.

When the nomadic tribes retreated, a larger army was raised and sent after them.

Return to Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty – 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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Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty – Part 2/4

November 26, 2010

Emperor Hongwu wanted to stabilize the country and strengthen Confucian Piety in the family. To achieve this, Hongwu centralized the state’s power and used spies to watch his political rivals and supporters.

Hongwu founded the Jin Yi Wei, the secret spy agency and bodyguard of all the Ming Emperors responsible to watch public officials. Anyone caught talking about rebellion would be arrested.

The worst aspects of Chinese feudalism had Hongwu’s full support.

Before Emperor Hongwu died, he arranged for his oldest grandson to become emperor. To make sure this would happen, he had all potential enemies killed.

However, Hongwu’s grandson did not get the crown. Instead, Hongwu’s fourth son became the next emperor through drastic measures that resulted in many deaths.

Hongwu’s fourth son would become Emperor Yongle (ruled 1402 – 1424).


Mandarin with English subtitles

Emperor Yongle had been sent by his father to guard the north against the nomads and was given the title of King Yan. Due to his success at driving back the Mongols, he had the support of China’s nobility to become emperor.

As Emperor, he reversed his father’s decisions and opened China to world trade. In 1404, Yongle decided to move the capital from Nanjing to Beijing since Beijing was situated in an important strategic position between Mongolia and the plains of northern China — 20 miles from the Great Wall.

Beijing had been the capital of the Yuan and Jin (1115 – 1234) Dynasties. Though Beijing was far from the areas of China with the most population and agriculture along the Yangtze River, Emperor Yongle was still determined to move his capital north.

He wanted to move so he would have more control over China’s northern minorities such as the Mongols and the Manchu.

Before moving from Nanjing, he had Beijing rebuilt with a new palace, The Forbidden City. The materials for this construction came from all over China with most being carried on barges along the Grand Canal, which stretched more than a thousand miles from Beijing to Hangzhou in the south.

Return to Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty – 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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty – Part 1/4

November 25, 2010

Zhu Yuanzhang, Emperor Yongle’s father, was born to a poor family that died of the plague and to survive he spent his youth as a Buddhist monk begging for food.

At the time, the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty ruled China.

After becoming the leader of the rebels, Yuanzhang led the fight against the Yuan Dynasty for twelve years. When he defeated the Mongols, he took the name Emperor Hongwu (ruled 1368 – 1398)

Hongwu was frugal because of his difficult childhood, and he was known to be suspicious of others and exploded in anger at the smallest things. Punishments were harsh and sometimes ended in death.

Yuanzhang’s capital was Nanjing on the south side of the Yangtze River.

However, Emperor Hongwu promoted agriculture, and he reestablished the competitive Imperial examinations of the Confucian classics.


Mandarin with English subtitles

Defeating the Yuan Dynasty did not end the Mongol threat, and the nomadic warriors continued to raid China’s north to loot and pillage.

To deal with this threat, Emperor Hongwu divided the Imperial Ming army among his sons and ordered them to defend the northern frontier. Then the Great Wall was rebuilt, extended and strengthened.

Since Hongwu came from a background of poverty and despised the wealthy, he raised their taxes.

However, to avoid paying, many wealthy southern Chinese families fled China with their gold and silver.

In Chinese history, the Ming Dynasty under Emperor Hongwu was probably the most conservative and the least forgiving of those who were perceived to have done wrong.

Hongwu practiced a closed-door policy with the world. To avoid conflicts with Japanese pirates, he ordered the people who lived along China’s coast to move inland and he forbid any trade with foreign merchants.

Emperor Hangwu also exercised strict control over the thoughts of the common people to preserve heaven’s rule and exterminate human desire.

Discover China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi

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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

The “Da Mo” and a “Concubine”

November 25, 2010

Late one recent afternoon, I checked an e-mail account I haven’t visited for weeks. To my surprise, I discovered good news—which in this case adds truth to better late than never.

On October 25, 2010, The National Best Books 2010 Awards sent me an e-mail letting me know that my second novel, Our Hart, Elegy for a Concubine, was one of eight Finalists in Fiction & Literature: Historical Fiction.

The winner was A Sudden Dawn, YMAA Publication Center, Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-594391989

A Sudden Dawn must be an incredible book. When I checked, it had 32 customer reviews on Amazon with an average of five stars.

I learned that the winning author was Goran Powell, 4th dan, GojuRyu Karate.

He is author of two martial arts books, a freelance writer in London and recipient of numerous advertising awards.

Powell is a regular contributor to martial arts magazines and has twice appeared on the cover of Traditional Karate magazine. This is his first novel. Powell resides in London with his wife and three children.

A Sudden Dawn is an epic historical fiction novel that opens with a young man named Sardili born of the Indian warrior caste in 507 AD.

Sardili realizes that he would rather seek enlightenment than follow his family’s military legacy and sets out on a life-long quest for truth and wisdom.

Sardili becomes the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, known as Da Mo in China.
 
He travels throughout India, brings Buddhism to China, and establishes the Shaolin Temple as the birthplace of Zen and the Martial Arts.

It’s ironic that the winning novel was set in India then China but centuries apart from the China where Robert Hart lived and worked for more than five decades.

Our Hart, Elegy for a Concubine, is the sequel to My Splendid Concubine, and continues the love story that Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

The woman was Hart’s concubine, Ayaou. She remained a mystery for more than a century.

Hart arrived in China in 1854. By 1908, he was the godfather of China’s modernization. The Qing Dynasty royalty called him “Our Hart”.

Both Powell’s novel and Our Hart are based on the lives of real men who had an impact on the history of China.

Then there is Ayaou, Hart’s Chinese concubine. Hart once wrote to a friend in England that Ayaou was the most sensible person he’d ever known and he was a fool.

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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

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