Shanghai Scams, Beggars and/or Cell phone Scam – Part 2/3

January 27, 2011

Serpentza relates a story of having had a few drinks and being in a good mood. While walking down the street, a middle-aged woman told him she had come to Shanghai looking for work and was hungry. She asked him to buy her something to eat.

He decides to buy something inexpensive at a local store. Then she asks him to phone her relatives in her rural hometown to let them know she couldn’t find work.

He says if a stranger asks you to phone someone for him or her, never give away your phone. The odds are the beggar will run away with it.

I have also had incidents in China of beggars approaching me. Since I know begging is illegal in China, I ignore them.

The Shanghai Scams Website says, “Tourists are sometimes approached by beggars or see them with small children on the street. Large underground networks sometimes take kids from villages, then put them on the street to beg, and will even physically deform a child in the hope of generating more sympathy money. So don’t feed this negative cycle by giving them money.

“Beggars may also approach tourists in outdoor dining areas on Nanjing Road (for example, outdoor bars, coffee shops, cake shops etc). These children may not really be poor but are just looking for an easy way to make money. These kids will often beg by standing near a table, then get down on one knee to beg, and as a last resort, will ask for food instead of money. The quickest way to get rid of these kids is to inform the restaurant staff, or to call the police.”

In fact, while shopping in an upscale shopping area near our home in California, I’ve been approached by an entire family of US beggars.

In Berkeley, if I walk several blocks, I’ll always run into several beggars. Some have even become nasty when I wouldn’t give them money. However, in China, days may go by without sight of a beggar.

Due to my experiences in the US, I learned to ignore beggars first in the US—not China.

From what I’ve read and been told, beggars in India are much worse and there are actually beggar cartels where the beggars are crippled and maimed to elicit sympathy.

Return to Shanghai Scams 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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Shanghai Scams – Assisted Shopping – Part 1/3

January 26, 2011

While researching another topic, I discovered the Shanghai Scam Series produced by a 30-year-old expatriate that goes by the on-line name of Serpentza.

Although I’ve been to China many times, I’ve never experienced the scams the narrator of this series talks of.

However, to be fair, the reason I haven’t experienced these scams is that I don’t drink (gave it up years ago) and do not frequent the popular nightclubs and bars.

In fact, my wife is Chinese and usually warns me of suspicious behavior. It also helps that I’m the distrusting sort.

In Serpentza’s video, he takes us for a walk in the rain in Shanghai to show us how the”assisted shopping scam” works.

He says, while shopping, you will be approached by a number of people who speak English that will tell you where the best bargains are.

Hmm, this has never happened to me. Do I look that forbidding? While in China, my wife isn’t always with me. I have gone shopping alone and no one has asked if I needed help and I do not buy anything from street vendors.

However, I have been approached by street vendors selling watches, which Serpentza warns of, but I don’t wear a watch and don’t want one.

On one trip, a Shanghai street vendor followed me for several blocks trying to sell me watches, wallets, dark glasses, etc.  He didn’t know what the word “NO” meant even when I used the word in Mandarin my wife taught me. Maybe he didn’t speak Mandarin. After all, there are about 60 different, spoken languages in China.

Had to go into a bank to get him to leave me alone.

I even found a trip advisor Website warning of Shanghai Scams, which says, “The majority of these scams happen at tourist spots around People’s Square, on Nanjing Pedestrian Street and at the Bund.”

General rule: Shanghainese are very friendly and always willing to help if you ask them, but they would seldom approach a foreigner without being asked (as probably anywhere in the world).

On his Blog, Serpentza calls himself “forever an expatriate”.

Discover Shanghai

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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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Combating Virtual Pornography in China

January 14, 2011

I had a good laugh when I read a BBC report on China rewards online porn surfer. A Chinese college student’s addicted to on-line porn ruined his chances of getting into a top university and ended in a junior college.

Now, this student is getting even with those that feed his addiction.

Since this unnamed student from northern Shanxi province couldn’t control his addiction, he decided to wage war against the porn industry by reporting porn sites to China’s censors and ended up being rewarded with 10,000 yuan ($1,465US or £913UK).

Just how serious is China’s government in combating porn? Back in February 2010, I reported China’s Stylish Assault Against Pornography. In fact, in the war against pornography, China recruited mothers.  Now China is recruiting Chinese addicted to porn.

Since that report almost a year ago, what have been the results of China’s war against porn?


Google warned to cut links to porn.

According to Politik Ditto, a Website claiming to be fighting Liberal Terrorism, “Around 1,330 people (in China) received punishments for producing, duplicating, publishing, selling and spreading pornographic and vulgar information from December 2009 to October 2010, and among them five were given prison sentences of five years or more…”

In fact, the Supreme People’s Court issued a judicial interpretation on crimes of spreading obscene content via Internet…

If you believe China is a country without morality, you are wrong! Instead of coming from the pulpit of a church since china has no established national religion as most countries do, China’s morality is measured by the government.

However, this isn’t new and has nothing to do with Communism. The measure of morality in China has “always” come from the family and the government and is often Puritanical. Under Mao during the Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976), a forbidden teen romance could end in an execution.

If you read my post of Gwyneth Paltrow Popular in China, you would know that guidelines on movies in China are strict: “No sex.  No religion. Nothing to do with the occult. Nothing that could threaten public morality or portray criminal behavior…”

Being “somewhat” Puritanical myself, I applaud China’s war against pornography.

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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

Liu Xiaobo’s Manifesto, Charter 08 – Part 3/3

December 19, 2010

If you wish to learn more about Liu Xiaobo, there is a brief but flawed and biased biography that was written by Jean-Philippe Beja of Reporters Without Borders. The most revealing comments paint a portrait of Liu Xiaobo as a self-centered individual influenced by Western thought and literature.

Beja says, “Liu practiced a Nietzschean cult of the individual and took little interest in politics.” To understand Liu’s motives, one should understand how Nietzsche influenced the world.

Nietzsche was an influential German philosopher remembered for his concept of the superman and for his rejection of Christian values (he claimed God was dead); considered, along with Kierkegaard, to be a founder of existentialism (1844-1900).

In fact, Nietzsche’s ideas not only inspired Liu Xiaobo, they inspired Hitler since Nietzsche offered a philosophy for the Nazi ideology of a superior race, which exercised its power as the Nazi’s saw fit. 

Other warmongers also took up Nietzsche’s superman, God is dead philosophy, as well as other philosophers, artists and poets.

As you can see, Nietzsche’s widespread influence persists to this day. Source: Existential Murder: The Nietzsche Syndrome

When the 1989 Tiananmen Incident took place. Liu was a guest professor in Norway at Columbia University when the so-called “pro-democracy” movement (which was never a democracy movement) took place.

To learn what really caused the Tiananmen protests, I suggest you read and watch Part 7 of the BBC’s documentary of China’s Capitalist Revolution.

In fact, the BBC says, “The demonstrators did not begin by demanding democracy. Corruption, inflation and the hardship caused by economic reforms drove students and workers to confront the government and the army.”

Since China was shutting down the state-owned factories that were not productive and earning profits in the new capitalist economy, many workers lost their jobs. China was in transition from the old economy of Maoism to the new socialist capitalism of today’s.

Unrest was inevitable as was the violence that ended with the Tiananmen incident.  To allow the demonstrations to continue might have led to an insurrection and worse bloodshed and millions could have died.

Liu, with a PhD in literature from Beijing Normal University (influenced by the lies in the Western media) hurried home from Norway believing in the “so-called” pro-democracy demonstrations.

Bija writes that soon after Liu returned to China he took charge of the (student) negotiation to prevent greater bloodshed.

Without much evidence to support his claims, Bija writes that during the violent part of the (so-called) democracy movement, Liu took refuge in the Australian embassy but a sense of guilt drove him into the streets because “citizens and students who had taken part in the movement were being hunted down, arrested and executed.”

While cycling around Beijing Liu was arrested then spent 20 months in Qincheng prison. If the “citizens and students” that took part in the movement were being executed, why did Liu Xiaobo survive?

Return to Liu Xiaobo’s Manifesto, Charter 08 – Part 2 or start with 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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Liu Xiaobo’s Manifesto, Charter 08 – Part 2/3

December 18, 2010

If you read the demands of Liu Xiaobo’s Manifesto, you will know that he wants China to become a mirror image of the democracy that exists in the US, which even America’s Founding Fathers were against since the men who founded the US Republic in the late 18th century believed democracy led to mob rule and chaos, which is true.

If China were to implement the reforms Liu Xiaobo calls for in his Manifesto, most of the work China’s centeral government has accomplished in the last thirty years to improve literacy and the lifestyles of the Chinese would end and possibly be reversed.

What Liu Xiaobo did with his Manifesto is illegal in China and he had to know it.  All schoolchildren in China are taught the meaning of China’s 1982 Constitution, which opened doors to more freedom than most Chinese had ever experienced before.

There are three articles in China’s 1982 Constitution, which explain why Liu Xiaobo went to prison.

However, most in the West have no clue.

From China’s 1982 Constitution:

Article 51 — The exercise by citizens of the People’s Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.

Article 53 — Citizens of the People’s Republic of China must abide by the constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property and observe labour discipline and public order and respect social ethics.

Article 54 — It is the duty of citizens of the People’s Republic of China to safeguard the security, honour and interests of the motherland; they must not commit acts detrimental to the security, honour and interests of the motherland.

Prior to December 2008, Liu Xiaobo gathered 350 signatures of Chinese intellectuals and human rights activist to promote his ideas of political reform and democratization in the PRC.

Liu Xiaobo’s manifesto was published on December 10, 2008. Since then, more than 10,000 people inside and outside China signed Liu Xiaobo’s manifesto.

I live in the US in California.

In California, we have a process to get an initiative on the ballot to change the laws in California. 

However, in the U.S. currently, less than half the states permit the initiative process.

In California, Ballot.org says the number of qualified signatures needed is 433,971 for a statutory initiative and 694,354 for a constitutional amendment, which is what Liu Xiaobo and his supporters are calling for in China where there is no initiative process.

California has more than 37 million people. China has more than 1.3 billion.

 In 1949, when the Communists won the Civil War, most of China lived lifestyles similar to Europe’s Dark Ages. However, since the early 1980s, the standard of living and the literacy level in China has continued to improve at an impressive rate for about three decades.

Why does Liu Xiaobo want to change something that still works? In Part 3, you will learn something about Liu Xiaobo and what he believes.

Return to Liu Xiaobo’s Manifesto, Charter 08 – Part 1 or go to Part 3

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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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