Sinophobia and the Nation With the Soul of a Church

July 1, 2010

An old friend of mine once wrote in an e-mail that Communism was evil and if China didn’t do what America wanted, the US would spank them. That and his endless born-again preaching bruised about five decades of friendship. Now, we don’t communicate much.

The definition for Sinophobia is one who fears or dislikes China, its people or its culture—in other words, an ignorant, brainwashed bigot (my opinion).

This morning, I finished reading  An Exceptional Obsession by John Lee, which was published in The American Interest. On page 42, Lee wrote, “Above all, Chinese leaders are anxious about having to deal with a society so different from their own, and by different we don’t mean a superficial contrast between communism and capitalism.  China’s is a communal culture; America’s is individualist. China is rooted in its land longer and more deeply than any society on earth. America is an immigrant society and an unprecedentedly mobile one at that. China has never institutionalized the rule of law; America is fundamentally based on it. China has never experienced deistic religions; America, as Chesterton once said is “a nation with the soul of a church.”

Lee’s comparison reminded me of the few shallow Communist haters and Sinophobic people I’ve run into on the Internet, who live in this nation with the soul of a church. Occasionally, one crawls out of the woodpile on a thousand legs.

Discover Power Corrupts

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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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Conversation—Sung Dynasty Philosophy

June 28, 2010

China may be the only ancient culture that survived the spread of Islam and Christianity and managed to hold onto its identity.

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“Guan-jiah,” Robert said, “before I came to China I read The Travels of Marco Polo. Do you know who he was?”

“No, Master,” Guan-jiah replied.

“He came to China from Europe more than six hundred years ago and served under Kublai Khan during the Yuan Dynasty. Polo wrote that Hangzhou was the finest and noblest city in the world.”

“Hangzhou was the capital of the Southern Sung Dynasty, Master,” Guan-jiah said. “I’ve heard it is beautiful. Sung philosophy says that we have the power in our minds to overcome our emotions.”

“Marco Polo believed it was God’s will that he came back from China so others in the West might know what he’d seen.” Robert turned to his servant, who was the last in line. “Do you believe in this Sung philosophy, Guan-jiah?”

Guan-jiah and Robert Hart - 19th century China

“The Sung said that if you know yourself and others, you would be able to adjust to the most unfavorable circumstances and prevail over them.”

“That’s admirable, Guan-jiah. You never mentioned you were a scholar. If the Sung Dynasty was that wise, I want to see Hangzhou one day.”

“I am no scholar, Master, but I must believe in the Sung philosophy to survive. I have read and contemplated much literature. However, I am like a peasant and have never mastered calligraphy. It is a skill that has eluded me.”

“How old were you when you studied this philosophy?”

“I was eleven, Master, two years after I was sent to Peking.”

Source: From Chapter 4, My Splendid Concubine
See The Influence of Confucius

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Lloyd Lofthouse,
Award winning author of Hart’s concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Working Conditions in China

June 17, 2010

The Editors in Room for Debate express varied opinions about “What Do China’s Workers Want?”

Worker strikes at Honda plants and suicides at a PRC Foxconn facility, a Taiwan owned company, have made splashes in the global media lately. I read what the five editors had to say and sided with Leslie T. Chang, author of Factory Girls. Her experience speaks for itself and lends weight to her opinion. Chang spent three years following the successes, hardships and heartbreaks of two teenage girls, Min and Chunming, migrants working the assembly lines in Dongguan, one of the new factory cities that have sprung up all over China.

Chang says, “It is important not to interpret the recent spate of worker suicides as protests against factory conditions. In my experience, the greatest pressure on workers comes from interpersonal and emotional concerns rather than conditions inside the factory, which workers tend to take for granted.” 

I recommend clicking on the link for “Room for Debate” and reading what Chang and the others editors say. I agree with Chang’s assessment because of the importance of family in a culture heavily influenced by Confucianism.

See Middle Kingdom Wages Rising

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning My Splendid Concubine and writes The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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China’s Middle Class Defined

June 1, 2010

I finished reading “China’s New Middle Class: Constants and Variables” by Tom Doctoroff in the Huffington Post, and I agreed with most of what he wrote.

Doctoroff said that in Confucian society the burden on men to be the providers is very absolute and very heavy…, as a man, you are responsible for the overall wellbeing of your clan/family.

I agreed when Doctoroff wrote that the Chinese middle class would never become Westernized. They are becoming modern, they are becoming internationalized, but they are not becoming Westernized.

Shopping in China

There is one underlying truth in Chinese society that says the only absolute evil is chaos and the only absolute good is stability and order and this is a prerequisite for progress on a national and individual level…

Every strand of Chinese thinking reinforces the supremacy of stability and order, and this is learned from a young age, which comes from Confucianism. Doctoroff wrote that in Japan, this conflict is not nearly as severe, but in China, this conflict defines the topography of the Chinese heart. The Chinese see the central government as there for them to advance and to make order from chaos. They would never trade in the Chinese system for a Western style democracy.

One thing that wasn’t mentioned by Doctoroff was the earning power of the clan/family and how that collective earning and savings allows families to buy into the Chinese middle-class lifestyle.  When the mother of a friend of my wife wanted a better Shanghai flat, both children—a son and a daughter—came up with the cash. Most Chinese work hard and avoid squandering money.

Learn more about China’s Middle Class Expanding

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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God, Ancient Astronauts and China’s Yellow Emperor

May 29, 2010

“And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.”  Exodus 19:17, 18

No one knows for certain where the Yellow Emperor came from.… He was known as the Yellow Emperor in honor for his contributions to agriculture and the Chinese calendar. In addition to farming, his wife, Lei Zu, is credited for developing the idea of growing silkworms and creating silk.  The Yellow Emperor is also noted as the creator of Chinese medicine, and the origins of Taoism and Confucianism trace their roots back to this mythical Emperor, who may have lived 4000 years ago.

Then one day, a yellow dragon descended from the sky to take the Yellow Emperor back to heaven…. Myth says, he ruled for a hundred years before leaving.  Source: The Yellow Emperor

Is the Old Testament’s description in Exodus a space ship descending to Mount Sinai, and is the Yellow Emperor returning to heaven a myth or reality? In addition, consider that the Biblical Adam and the Yellow Emperor were both on the earth about 4,000 years ago.

Discover ShangDi – China’s God of Creation

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves.

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