I enjoy reading historical fiction. I also watch movies and TV series based on history. For instance, I recently watched the BBC’s Season 2 for The Last Kingdom (this one doesn’t take place in China).
Back in 2008, I bought the first version of the TV series for The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (1995), an epic about China’s history that has 84 episodes (45 minutes each for 63-hours). Based on the classical novel by Luo Guanzhong, this epic series covers the end of the Han Dynasty.
This episode with English subtitles is from a remake (2010) of the TV series.
Don’t let the title fool you. This story is not about romance as Westerners define that word. This historical fiction, based on fact, is about the romance of politics, war, and conquest. But don’t be disappointed, because there’s even a love story that comes with the ultimate sacrifice.
The novel was written in the 14th century and was more than a thousand pages long with 120 chapters. The translated English version is longer. After the Han Dynasty collapsed (206 BC to 219 AD), China shattered into three warring kingdoms.
This story is about how China was reunified as one nation again a few decades after the collapse of the Han Dynasty (205 B.C. – 220 A.D. I’ve seen the entire series once and plan to watch it again. When Jesus Christ was born, the Han Dynasty was more than 200 years old and had more than two hundred years left before it came to an end.
Early this year, Time Magazine reported How China Is Remaking the Global Film Industry. “Chinese companies have snapped up Hollywood studios, theaters and production companies. Last year Dalian Wanda Group, the Chinese real estate and entertainment conglomerate, announced it was buying Legendary Entertainment studio — producer of blockbusters like Jurassic World — for $3.5 billion …”
For instance, The Great Wall, starring William Dafoe, Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal and produced by China’s Zhang Yimou cost $150 million to make, but only made about $45 million in the United States while raking in more than $289 million outside of the U.S. The money for this film came from China. I saw the film, and I enjoyed it. If you know about China’s Great Wall, imagine what it must have been like when it was still being used long before it became a tourist attraction. This film gives us an idea of what that must have been like even if the film was based on fiction.
There are more videos on YouTube with other segments from the film.
It also appears that the Chinese government has done some forgiving. RealFilmCareer.com reports, “Zhang Zhao fled China for the U.S. soon after the crushing of the 1989 student democracy movement. But Mr. Zhang returned to China in 1998, and now he’s the man with the money: As head of Enlight Pictures, a unit of Enlight Media and one of the new film companies aspiring to tell Chinese stories to a rapidly expanding domestic audience, he has plans for an initial slate of 40 movies, and no problem with financing.”
Then there is Huayi Brothers Media, which the May issue of “The Hollywood Reporter” says raised $160 million in an IPO on the Zhenzhen stock exchange. The Huayi brothers have already released over 50 films, most of them huge box office hits in China.
“Five years ago,” Wang Zhongjun said, “we hoped (the Hollywood studios) could bring us support and investments. Now we’re helping them,” reports The Hollywood Reporter. In 2016, China’s box office total was $6.58 billion.
However, whenever I’m in Shanghai, I enjoy visiting this shopping area. Go early; it gets crowded.
The Huxinting Teahouse has been around for a long time, and the last time this pavilion was restored was in 1784. Then it was turned into the tea house in 1855.
The area in Shanghai around the Huxinting Teahouse is a good place to shop. Hint, do not pay asking prices. Be willing to bargain. Start low and meet in the middle. Don’t be too cheap either, because the business you are buying from has to earn enough money to survive too.
North Korea is frozen in time, but South Korea and China have evolved and adapted to the global economy. It is in China’s interest to see North Korea merge with South Korea and become a capitalist nation, but achieving that goal will not be easy and a nuclear war with North Korea is not the answer.
The Independent, another publication in the UK, explains what nuclear war between the U.S. and North Korea might look like. “The most immediate reaction would likely be massive artillery fire on Seoul and its surroundings. North Korean artillery installations along the border can be activated faster than air or naval assets and larger ballistic missiles that can target South Korean, Japanese or American bases in the region with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Those countries have ballistic-missile-defence systems in place but can’t guarantee they will shoot down everything. Japan has begun offering advice to its citizens on what to do in the event a missile lands near them — essentially try to get under ground — and US firms are marketing missile shelters. While it’s unclear if North Korea can successfully target US cities like Denver and Chicago with a nuclear ICBM, it’s similarly unknown if US defence systems can strike it down — adding to American anxieties.”
The New Yorker reports, “The Obama Administration studied the potential costs and benefits of a preventive war intended to destroy North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Its conclusion, according to Rice, in the Times, was that it would be ‘lunacy,’ resulting in ‘hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of casualties.’ North Korea likely would retaliate with an attack on Seoul. The North has positioned thousands of artillery cannons and rocket launchers in range of the South Korean capital, which has a population of ten million, and other densely populated areas. (Despite domestic pressure to avoid confrontation, South Korea’s President, Moon Jae-in, has accepted the installation of an American missile-defense system called Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or thaad.)”
And we shouldn’t forget this fact also reported by The New Yorker. Some two hundred thousand Americans live in South Korea.
The New Yorker correctly called this lunacy the Madman Theory, but isn’t that who Donald Trump is: a madman, a serial liar, a failed businessman, and a bully?
Who do you think China fears more Donald Trump or Kim Jong-un and his brutal regime? And the answer is simple. All you have to do is compare how many nuclear weapons the U.S. has vs North Korea. The Independent reports North Korea has 60 compared to 6,800 for the United States.
If you have watched the two videos in Part 1 and 2, you will know what is at risk for all of us on this planet called Earth. There is hope. Trump might also be a barking dog that doesn’t bite.
UPDATE
The Telegraph reports, “China ‘detains North Korean assassins seeking Kim Jong-un’s dissident nephew Kim Han-sol’
“It is possible that Kim Han-sol and his family remained in China under the protection of Beijing, which also extended protection for his father when he was in the country. There have been suggestions that Beijing saw Kim Jong-nam as as a potential North Korean leader should his half-brother be overthrown.”
The Telegraph in the UK asked, “Did Kim Jung-un kill his uncle and brother over a ‘coup plot involving China’?” From what I’m hearing from my sources in China, the answer is yes. China did try to get rid of Kum Jung-un. For more details about this alleged and failed coup attempt, click the link in this paragraph and read what The Telegraph says.
In the past, when the United States and North Korea threatened each other, China’s response has been for the “relevant parties” to “calmly and properly handle the issue and avoid escalation of tension.”
What has changed? The answer is simple. The current president of the United States is a serial liar, a racist, a bully, a malignant narcissist and a psychopath-sociopath (if it is possible to be both at the same time). Donald Trump is clearly more dangerous, unstable, and insane than Kum Jung-un is. Kim Jung-un is more like the barking dog who might never bite, because he knows if he bites, he will die and so will most of the people that live in his little kingdom.
In the past, China has been reluctant to be sucked into North Korea’s problems with the United States, because China has a history with Korea going back to the Tang Dynasty in 688 AD, when there was an alliance with Silla, a Korean state.
It’s also because Chinese culture, written language, and political institutions have had an influence in Korea since the 4th century and in the 14th century, Korea came under the influence of Confucian thought influenced by Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism). Even today, China has more in common with the people of North Korea and their culture than China has with the United States.
But that 1,700-year old relationship between China and Korea might not be enough to protect North Korea now that the United States has an unpredictable madman and lunatic for its president.
Why did China allow itself to be bullied by Trump to tame a beast it cannot control? The answer is simple and it is Donald Trump and his insane tweets threatening to nuke North Korea.
Professor Lee is an adjunct assistant professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and an associate in research at the Korea Institute at Harvard University.
Professor Lee says, “It is important for Washington to hold quiet consultations with Beijing to prepare jointly for a unified Korea under Seoul’s direction, a new polity that will be free, peaceful, capitalist, pro-U.S. and pro-China.”
But Donald Trump has clearly demonstrated that he doesn’t have the patience or intelligence to be part of a quiet consultation with Beijing to fix the North Korean problem. Even after the alleged and failed plot that China was willing to risk to get rid of Kim Jong-un, Donald Trump’s lunatic Twitter raving hasn’t stopped.
When Mao ruled China, North Korea and Communist China looked like evil twins, but today that is not the case because Mao died in 1976 and so did the China he was building. In the 1980s, China emerged as a hybrid one-party republic with term and age limits for its political leaders, so one man would never rule China like Mao did for 26 years.
In fact, China has a lot to lose because China’s middle class is more than 300-million people with an estimate that by 2030 that number will be more than 700-million.
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
iLook China 