According to the History of Feng Shui, also known as Kanyu, the practice of Feng Shui began in the Western Han dynasty around the third century BC.
Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese belief that the laws of astronomy and geography may be applied aesthetically to improve the positive energy (chi) that surrounds our daily lives.
Feng Shui is also big business today.
In Asia, Feng Shui consultants charge astronomical fees to corporations who retain them to advise on architectural design, building location, interior decorations and grand-opening dates.
No matter how small, no business or shop in Eastern Asia would dare debut without having first consulted extensively with a Feng Shui practitioner.
Even on Amazon, there are literally hundreds of books written by Feng Shui “experts” seeking to capitalize on the resurgence of middle-class trends co-opting Feng Shui.
Ironically, one of the major themes of Feng Shui is in removing clutter, yet the endless piles of Feng Shui books that keep appearing on the literary market seems only to contribute to the clutter.
Detractors, however, have branded Feng Shui everything from an “occult superstition” to “new-age psychobabble.”
After all (they say), how could something as banal as the position of your bed and the color of a candle have any relation to the safety and welfare of a human being?
During the Cultural Revolution, Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong took his revulsion of Feng Shui one-step further during the 1970s by having the teenage Red Guard persecute Chinese citizens who dared follow this “old, evil ideology”.
Regardless of your beliefs, the fact is that it cannot hurt – and might help – your daily happiness and comfort by following at least the most basic principles of Feng Shui at your home and office.
If, perchance, the southeast part of your house were truly the Wealth Sector, as Feng Shui suggests, then why would you not want to keep it spotless and free of clutter?
If jars of coins around the house really do symbolize abundance and can attract wealth, then how hard would it be to fill some up with your old pocket change?
The first time I tasted boiled peanuts was in China in 1999. Since I was use to oil-roasted and salted peanuts, it took time for me to acquire a taste for the Chinese way of cooking peanuts.
Although archeologists have dated the oldest known domesticated peanuts to Peru back about 7,000 years, it was Portuguese traders in the 17th century who introduced peanuts to China.
Peanuts then became popular there and are featured in many Chinese dishes, often being boiled, which enhances the health benefits of the peanut.
What scientific studies have proven about the boiling process is that peanuts prepared this way are preserved and the presence of phytochemicals are enhanced having the same qualities as antioxidants, which are noted for protecting the body’s cells against heart disease, diabetes and several different forms of cancer.
In fact, a 1990 Harvard study determined that women who ate five ounces of more of nuts per week were only 65 percent as likely to suffer from coronary heart disease as women who avoided eating nuts.
Another study in 2007 at Alabama’s A&M University’s Department of Food and Animal found that the health benefits for boiled peanuts were far healthier than oil-roasted, dry or raw.
The Chinese boiling process brings out and enhances the health benefits of the peanut.
In fact, the Chinese eat more boiled peanuts than any country.
However, in the US, the states of Florida, Mississippi, George, Alabama, and North and South Carolina also have a tradition of eating boiled peanuts.
Today, China leads the world in peanut production with about 40% of the crop followed by India, which produces about 19% of the globe’s peanuts. Sources: ehowand tititudorancea
_______________
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.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
Corruption is a fact-of-life in Asia, and China may be one of the few countries in Asia doing something about it.
The Corruption Perceptions Index of 2013reveals most of Asia is “very” corrupt—the smaller number is better and 175 is the worst global ranking, and that infamy is shared between Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia.
Of 177 countries ranked for corruption, Myanmar (Burma) was ranked 157; Iraq 171; Laos 140; Cambodia 160; Vietnam 116, and Indonesia 114.
Even India, the world’s largest democracy, was ranked 94. Singapore, by comparison, is 5th—one of the least corrupt countries in the world and it’s tied with Norway. The countries with the least corruption in the world were Denmark tied with New Zeeland. Third place goes to Finland and Sweden, another tie.
Thailand, another democracy, was ranked 102, but China—you know—the country that gets so much bad press in the United States for corruption, was ranked 80th—55% of the world’s countries were rated worse.
The power of the Chinese peasant demonstrated in this video may have something to do with China’s improved score as one of the least corrupt nations in East Asia. Few were better than China. South Korea was ranked 46 and Japan 18 which is better than the United States at 19.
It may come as a surprise to many Western critics but in rural China, democracy’s ballot box has been active at the village level since the mid-1980s. In fact, in 1997, The Independentreported that China’s rural peasants were discovering the power of the ballot box.
“Under Communist Party rule, village elections are the only example of one-person, one-vote democracy in China. Launched in the mid-eighties, they were originally introduced to replace the village communes that were dissolved after the Cultural Revolution.”
Few outside China have heard of China’s rural democracy. Nearly one million villages with 600 million Chienese hold elections and each time there is an election, the peasants learn more about democracy in action.
_______________
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.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
USA Today said, “Crash data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that the number of fatal hit-and-run crashes (this means someone was killed) is trending upward, from 1,274 in 2009, to 1,393 in 2010, to 1,449 in 2011, the most recent year for which statistics were available.”
Now to China (which usually gets roasted in the US media without any balance or perspective)—ChinaSMACK said a foreigner driving drunk and without a license, hit a 23-year old Yiwu girl crossing a street in a crosswalk.
If you believe the Chinese media is completely controlled and censored, you may be surprised to learn that ChinaSMACK is a daily-updated collection of translated Internet content from the Chinese-language Internet.
ChinaSMACK (launched in 2008) covers stories, pictures, videos, and topics that have become very popular and have spread across China’s major BBS forums, social networking websites, or through forwarded e-mails sent between normal Chinese people every day.
ChinaSMACK attracts millions of visits and page views each month featuring a vibrant community of commenters.
ChinaSMACK did not identify the foreigner (laowai), who was driving drunk without a license. The victim was thrown over 20 meters (more than 65 feet), and she died in the hospital.
The laowai sped away from the scene to avoid being caught, but the Chinese police tracked him down and arrested him. The victim’s family is poor and her father died three years ago.
The first two comments to the ChinaSMACK post said, “If you had hit a person, you too would be arrested and administratively detained first and then what should be done will be done. Laowai cannot escape Chinese legal punishment.”
“Our country’s criminal law does not put foreigners outside of our country’s criminal law. As long as the foreigner does something that matches a crime in our country’s criminal law, then the foreigner cannot escape the criminal laws punishment.”
This news clip talks about drunk driving and hit-and-run accidents in China
The next story is about the killing of a 20-year-old college girl in another hit-and-run. When confronted, it was reported that the drunk driver (Li Qiming) yelled, “My father is Li Gang!” Li Gang was a high-ranking police officer and a member of the Communist Party. The victim was the daughter of a 49-year-old peasant from rural China.
The father of the victim said in an interview, “I’m just a peasant. If it is unfair, let it be.”
However, an angry Chinese public on the Internet overruled the victim’s father and refused to “let it be.” Although there have been many hit-and-run accidents in Hubei province, there was anger at China’s powerful elite and the arrogance of some children of money and power.
Matt Clarke writes: “There are two criminal justice systems in the United States. One is for people with wealth, fame or influence who can afford to hire top-notch attorneys and public relations firms, who make campaign contributions to sheriffs, legislators and other elected officials, and who enjoy certain privileges due to their celebrity status or the size of their bank accounts. The other justice system is for everybody else.”
And then ask: Is there a difference between China and America when it comes to justice for the rich and famous?
You be the judge: In January 2011, Li Qiming was arrested for the hit and run and sentenced to six years in jail and ordered to pay the equivalent of $69,900 in compensation to the family of Chen Xiaofeng. Li was also ordered to pay $13,800 to the injured woman.
In addition, to crack down on corruption, in 2004, the CCP enacted strict regulations on party officials assuming positions in business. In 2009, for instance, 106,000 CCP officials were found guilty of corruption, an increase of 2.5% from the previous year.
How about the United States? During the entire eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, for instance, one member of his White House staff was convicted of obstruction of justice and sent to prison, but Bush commuted the sentence. In Congress, during that time, three Democrats and five Republicans were convicted of crimes of corruption. Meanwhile, the average wealth of members of the U.S. Senate went from $1.5 million in 2004 to $2.6 million by 2010 with a slight setback during the 2007-08 global financial crises that was caused by corruption on Wall Street and from U.S Banks thanks to legislation overwhelmingly passed by Congress during the Clinton presidency. And former Vice President (2001 – 2009) Dick Cheney’s Halliburton made $38.5 Billion off the Iraq War. When Cheney became vice president under Bush, he was given a $34 million dollar bonus from Halliburton.
_______________
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.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
Night in Shanghai by Nicole Mones kept me reading late into the night until I finished the book in record time. It’s all there: love, intrigue, suspense, drama, music and history masterly woven through the story.
Thomas Greene is an African American classical pianist who is recruited by Lin Ming—the illegitimate son of the powerful leader of Shanghai’s Green Gang, Du Yue-Sheng—to leave the United States and lead a jazz band of fellow African-Americans in Shanghai. It’s in Shanghai where Thomas discovers a life that isn’t plagued by the poverty and the racial discrimination he knew in America, and he falls in love with the city and people with no intention of going home.
Thomas has a lusty affair with a beautiful Russian refugee and makes friends with Jews fleeing the madness of Hitler’s Germany. Then Thomas meets the woman who will fill his life with passion and love. Her name is Song Yuhua, but she is the property of Du Yeu-Sheng. Song’s father gave her to the gangster to pay off a gambling debt.
In addition, you’ll discover the story of the Chinese Schindler, who risked his life while working in Europe as a Chinese diplomat to save more Jews than the real Schindler did—there should be a film about his courage but at least we now have this novel.
You’ll also discover the efforts by both some Chinese and China’s Japanese invaders to protect the Jews who escaped to China. Hitler pressured both Chiang Kai-shek and Japan’s leaders to kill all the Jews in China, but they refused. Instead, they did something no other country on the earth—even the United States—did. Chinese leaders and Japan’s military leaders in China protected the Jews and offered them a safe haven during the horrors of World War II.
And I learned something new—that Chiang Kai-shek admired Adolf Hitler. This kicked my curiosity into high gear and I did some Google research to discover that Chiang Kai-shek and Hitler were friends who admired each other. The two first met in 1912. In 1913, they even rented a room together in Munich. After Japan invaded China, Chiang asked Hitler’s for help with the Japanese but he didn’t know that Hitler was already forming a military alliance with Japan. In fact, The Nationalist Chinese led by Chiang Kai-shek cooperated with the Nazis from the late 1920s until the late 1930s.
“Night in Shanghai” also makes it clear that the Chinese Communists under Mao were nationalists first and communists second. In my Google research I discovered that the communists proclaimed: “There is the ‘patriotism’ of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler, and there is our patriotism. Communists must resolutely oppose the ‘patriotism’ of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler.”
The first character we meet in the novel is Song Yuhua. Near the end of the story, as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is imminent, she must choose between her loyalty to the Chinese Communists and her love for Thomas Greene. You’ll have to read the book to discover her choice.
I received an advanced reading copy of this novel through Amazon Vine and this review is my own opinion of the novel.
_______________
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.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
A guest post by Tom Carter
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
