“You must matter,” she tells the girls that are her students. “You must be independent.”
The teacher wants her students to know the alternatives so they have choices. She says, “You don’t change overnight. It takes time. The ideas have to sink in.”
The students are schoolteachers from China’s rural areas. They have come to Beijing for workplace training and to learn more about themselves.
Moreover, this is happening in Communist China and most Western critics have no idea what is going on.
The rural teachers study the Chinese Constitution to learn about their rights and responsibilities.
After all, men and women are equal under the law in China, but there is a long way to go to change the old ways of thinking to achieve that equality.
As in the US, women in China are not paid the same as men for the same jobs.
One of the schoolteachers from rural China said, “You come to believe that you are not as good as men. But I hope when I return to my town that I will have the strength to stand up for myself.”
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.
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Change taking place in China is not happening as fast as many Western critics want it to. To these critics, China should flip the feudal switch to democracy and the light should come on without effort.
However, in spite of Western pressure to speed things up, changes are taking place as planned by China’s government.
For example, foot binding was around for several centuries when the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1911) first attempted to end a practice that would continue for several more centuries.
Even the Nationalists failed to end foot binding in the 20th century. In fact, foot binding wouldn’t end until after 1949 when the Communist Party ruled China.
After a long period of nothing happening, which was due to Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, new approaches to education were encouraged after 1977.
In 1976 when Mao died, twenty percent of the population was literate. Today more than 90% can read with a goal to reach 99%.
In 1985, school reformwas implemented making nine years of education mandatory for all children. Academic achievement became the new priority over the political consciousness of Mao’s era.
An example of how China’s education policies have brought about change may be seen among the “Granite Women”, who live near the coast in southeast China.
For centuries, these women carried the blocks of granite from the quarries where their husbands, brothers and fathers worked cutting the stone.
However, today, China’s economic reforms along with education are changing the old ways.
Younger women, who have now had enough education, know what they don’t want for their lives.
For centuries, others like the Qing Dynasty and the Nationalists failed to bring about change in China. Where these others failed, the Party appears to be succeeding.
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.
According to historical accounts, foot binding appeared in China during the Sung Dynasty (960-1276 AD).
The process of foot binding usually started between the ages of four and seven. Feet were soaked in a blood and herb mixture. Toes were broken. Then the arch was broken. There was extreme pain since no pain relief was used. It is estimated that in a thousand years about two billion women went through the process.
What would you do for beauty?
The Manchu leaders of the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1911) tried with little success to stop foot binding, and Manchu women did not bind their feet. Mostly Han (the majority in China) women continued the practice.
In 1928, the Nationalist government announced plans to do away with foot binding. This attempt to end foot binding met with mixed success. In rural areas, large feet were still considered unattractive and unacceptable and the practice continued.
While working in China for National Geographic on a three part Marco Polo series, Michael Yamashita, a veteran photographer, went in search of women who had bound feet. He found them living in remote urban villages.
In most of China, social and sexual customs resist rapid change. For millions of women, the practice would continue until 1949 when the Communists came into power.
Then the popularity of foot binding to enhance a woman’s beauty ended.
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.
Deng Xiaoping was China’s George Washington. What he did was what Dr. Sun Yat-sen wanted. China is a republic that combines Western thought with Chinese tradition.
However, the task to create China’s Republic fell to the Communist Party so China is a Socialist Republic.
In China, Piety is important and advice from elders is often followed as if it is law. Due to this, elder statesmen such as Jiang Zemin have great power in the government even after they no longer have a political title.
After all, this is Chinese tradition.
The Economist mentioned disagreements among Chinese leaders over what the country’s priorities should be—both on the economy and on political reform.
Whatever the final decisions will be after 2012, the consensus will allow Chinese tradition to guide them and not Western thought.
The changes “some” want will not arrive in a hurry if the wisdom of the I-Ching, The Book of Changes, is followed, which says change should come slowly.
In fact, China has proven it is a republic because none of China’s first four presidents are the sons of previous presidents and eventually death removes the elders. China’s presidents did not inherit that title due to heredity as kings do or the leader of North Korea.
As Deng Xiaoping died, so will Jiang Zemin, who is the elder statement today.
If Hu Jintao lives longer than Jiang Zemin, he will be the elder statesmen offering advice from behind closed doors, which Deng Xiaoping must have done up until his death.
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.
Martin Petty at Reuters writes an interesting piece about Suu Kyi in Myanmar (Burma) — not interesting as you might think but interesting in that it reveals an alien point-of-view.
China is mentioned four times and is referred to as Burma’s ally, a neighbor, between China and India, and that Myanmar could become “a province of China”.
However, Petty only mentions briefly (nine paragraphs into the piece) that Western sanctions on the Myanmar regime have failed because Myanmar’s neighbors China, Thailand and India and other Asian nations have been pouring investments into the resource-rich country.
Why didn’t Petty mention that one of those other Asian nations pouring investments into Myanmar is Singapore — one of America’s staunchest Southeast Asian allies and trading partners.
Singapore is also rated by Transparency.org as one of the world’s least corrupt nations tied with Denmark and New Zealand for the number one spot, while the United States is ranked twenty-two with a score of 7.1 ( a C-) to Singapore’s score of 9.3 (an A).
It isn’t as if Reuters didn’t know what was going on.
A 2007 Reuters piece says that Singapore was one of Myanmar’s biggest foreign investors with more than one billion dollars in trade that year.
Then later in the 2007 piece, Reuters says that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) admitted Myanmar as a member in 1997 even with international criticism.
Just what does “international” mean when the nine founding members of ASEAN do business with Myanmar.
Is “international” another way of saying “Western” or “America”?
Here’s the ASEAN list — Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. I didn’t see China or India on that list, and India is often touted as the biggest democracy on the planet — both trade with Myanmar.
In fact, South Korea, another democracy, also trades with Myanmar. In 2009, South Korea granted imports duty free and quota free on 253 goods from Myanmar. Source: People’s Daily
Then The Myanmar Times reported that trade between Myanmar and Japan (another democracy) increased about 33% in 2006-07.
Not wanting to miss out on the potential profits, Australia is on that trade list too (up 160%). Source: Democratic Voice of Burma
It is a fact that all of these Asian nations that trade with Myanmar were either occupied or victims of Western Imperialism going back to the18th century and lasting until the middle of the 20th century.
During this era, Western nations imposed Western values and religions on all of Asia and China.
However, all of Asia (except for Australia) has roots reaching back more than two millennia to Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Taoism.
Western nations and the Middle East have roots to the three Abrahamic Religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Is it possible these different cultural trees are worlds apart on the same planet?
Instead of trying to understand those differences, the West keep thumping its hairy chest and roaring when the other world doesn’t behave with Western moral expectations and beliefs.
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.
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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