Poverty and China’s Peasant farmers – Part 3/3

September 12, 2010

In rural China, the peasants do not earn much money.  They live in what the West calls poverty, but they have a home and a roof over their heads.  They are not homeless and seldom are hungry as the poor in India, which is touted as the largest democracy on the earth.

The peasant farmers in China grow most of the food they eat and sell what they do not need as the Amish do today in America and as 90% of Americans did before the Industrial Revolution.

If Chinese peasants, go to school, eat a nutritious diet and have access to basic medical care as China’s central government has promised, health will improve and life spans may surpass urban China where the air pollution is bad.

China is extending the electric grid and improving public transportation so rural China will have access to the same luxuries that urban people have. Before 1980, rural Chinese lived as most Americans did before the Industrial Revolution.

For thousands of years, the backbone of China has always been the peasant farmers and their collective lifestyle. What will happen to China if they all join the consumer oriented middle class?

Rural America must have been a collective culture before the Industrial Revolution. Consumerism and credit cards changed most Americans, except the Amish, into an individualistic culture where “I” is more important than “We”. 

The Amish are still a collective culture with free will to leave and become a modern American consumer. Why don’t they?

See Climbing the Dragon’s Back

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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.

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Leave a Comment » | capitalism, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, cultural differences, education, family values, food, health care | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Poverty and China’s Peasant farmers – Part 2/3

September 11, 2010

Before the industrial revolution, there was no public education as it exists today and few could read and write.  Due to poor nutrition and living conditions, people didn’t live long.

However, there is nothing wrong with the rural peasant farmer lifestyle.  Who needs money to survive when you grow your own food and make all the things you need?

With a small community of family and close neighbors that work together for survival, what else is needed?

For example, there are the Amish in America, who live as people did before the Industrial Revolution. The Amish choose to live a simple life based on their religious beliefs.

The Amish seriously follow the Biblical commands to separate themselves from frivolous material things that many take for granted and can’t live without.

In addition, the Amish don’t have electricity and do not drive cars.

Why doesn’t the media report on how deprived the Amish are as they report on the poor, peasant farmers in China?

Does this mean the Amish are poor and live in poverty because they don’t have consumer products like computers, iPads or iPods, and expensive cars or trucks and all the other junk that we cannot eat?

See 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 this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Poverty and China’s Peasant Farmers – Part 1/3

September 11, 2010

If you read about China, you may have heard that hundreds of millions live below the poverty level.  After all, many peasant farmers in rural China do not earn much money.

Are they poor?  Are they starving?  Are they homeless?

How do we measure poverty in an industrialized, electronic, virtual Internet nation? The answer is that poverty is measured by the lack of money and/or credit.

In the above video, the narrator says that the way people lived in America before the Industrial Revolution was different from the way we live today.  Nine out of ten people in rural areas.

There was a large, mostly poor lower class, a small rich upper class and not much of a middle class.

Rural people raised most of their food on small farms. They didn’t have to leave home each day to work at a job in a town or city. There were families and small village communities that depended on each other in a collective lifestyle.

Back then, there were no electric lights, no movies, no telephones, no recorded music and no cars (and not much pollution).

Ordinary people used their hands to make most of the things they needed. 

The world was quiet because there were no noisy machines.  The pace of life was slower.

See China’s Changing Face – Farmers’ Friend the Organic Way

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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 this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Translating “We Do Chicken Right”

September 9, 2010

中學老師把 KFC 肯德基店裏的廣告 A middle school English teacher in China asked her students to translate China’s Kentucky Fried Chicken advertisement “We do chicken right”, and she received twenty-eight different translated answers.

Please keep in mind that the word “chicken” also means “prostitute” in modern Chinese slang depending on context.

[ We do chicken right!]（烹雞專家）     發給學生練習翻譯，結果有以下答案：

Here is what the students wrote:

1. 我們做雞是對的！                    It’s correct that we be prostitutes,

2. 我們就是做雞的！                    We are cut out to be prostitutes.

3. 我們有做雞的權利！               We have the right to be prostitutes.

4. 我們只做雞的右半邊！           We want only be the right side of a chicken.

5. 我們只作右邊的雞！               We want to be chickens on the right side

6. 我們可以做雞，對吧？           We can choose to be prostitutes, right?

7. 我們行使了雞的權利！           We perform a chicken’s right.

8. 我們主張雞權！                        We call for chicken’s rights.

9. 我們還是做雞好！                    It’s better that we be prostitutes.

10. 做雞有理！                               It makes sense to be prostitutes.

11. 我們讓雞向右看齊！             Let’s ask the chickens to look right.

12. 我們只做正確的雞！             We only want to be the correct chickens.

13. 我們肯定是雞！                      We are prostitutes–no doubt.

14. 只有我們可以做雞！             We are the only one who could be prostitutes.

15. 向右看！有雞！                      Look at your right, there are chickens.

16. 我們要對雞好！                      We must be kind to chickens.

17. 我們願意雞好！                      We wish chickens all our best.

18. 我們的材料是正宗的雞肉！ We use real chickens.

19. 我們公正的做雞！                 We must feel justified to be prostitutes.

20. 我們做雞正點耶∼∼               Time is right to prostitute.

21. 我們只做正版的雞！             We only want to be original prostitutes.

22. 我們做雞做的很正確！        To be prostitutes is to be correct.

23. 我們正在做雞好不好？        We’re making chickens – will that be okay?

24. 我們一定要把雞打成右派！We must turn the chickens into rightists.

25. 我們做的是右派的雞！        We are right-winged prostitutes.

26. 我們只做右撇子雞！            We are right-handed prostitutes.

27. 我們做雞最專業！                We are professional prostitutes.

28. 我們叫雞有理！                    The chickens and prostitutes are always correct.

China is a tonal language. There are four tones for each Chinese written symbol.  Each tone has a different meaning. Say something in the wrong tone, and you could insult someone.

Sir Robert Hart, the main character in the “Concubine Saga”, knew the importance of translating English into Chinese properly. Translation mistakes turn into insults that end in bad feelings that may lead to war.

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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.

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2 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Changing Names

September 9, 2010

It was suggested in a Reuters news piece that because of 200 people, China should change hundreds of millions of computer keyboards.

Let’s examine the logic behind this suggestion, which I see as another example of Western meddling in China.

Due to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the U.S. bends over backwards and spends billions to make bathrooms and sidewalks usable for people who may be blind or use wheel chairs.

This happened in an individualist culture that puts the individual above the whole. To improve one life, twenty may be ruined or sacrificed—even the national debt may be increased.

The Braille Institute reports that there are 15 million blind and visually impaired people in the United States. That’s about 5% of the population.  What did it cost the U.S. to add that chirping noise to crosswalks for that segment of the population?

In my life, I’ve seen less than a handful of blind people with red tipped canes walking on sidewalks let alone crossing intersections.

Then according to AskJan.org, there are an estimated 1.4 million wheelchair users in the United States—that’s less than half-a-percent of the population, yet America spent billions converting sidewalks so there are ramps for wheelchairs to roll down to cross streets.

At the high school where I taught, there was one wheelchair bound teacher, who worked there for a few years.

He complained that there were no handicapped restrooms near his classroom. He had to go too far to pee.

The school district, because of the law, had no choice and spent about $30,000 to convert the nearest teacher’s restroom. A few years later, that handicapped teacher left the high school to work elsewhere.

One example I found estimated that providing free paratransit service to people with disabilities in Illinois would cost between 141.5 and 202.9 million. That’s one state of fifty and one service, which doesn’t include crosswalk conversions. Source: Transportation Research Board

Now, those values that have contributed to America’s national debt have cropped up in a Reuters piece that says about 200 villagers in Eastern China are being “forced by the country’s unbending bureaucracy” to change their family name as the character is so rare it cannot be typed.

How many millions or billions would it cost to add a symbol to the Chinese language and replace all those keyboards so 200 out of 1.3 billion would be able to spell their last name as they have for centuries? Aren’t there better things to do with that money?

See China Bashing

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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. 

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1 Comment | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, disabilities | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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