The Chinese Year of the Dragon was in 2012 and the next time the dragon will come around is 2024.
In the West, the dragon has wings, spouts flames, eats women and young children and is often killed by knights in shining armor. Even in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the dragon is a monster that terrorizes, kills and hoards gold.
Not in China where dragons are seldom depicted as evil. To most Chinese, the dragon may be fearsome and powerful but the creature is often considered just, benevolent and the bringer of wealth and good fortune. Dragons also appear in ancient Chinese literature.
Nine Dragons in Beijing
Instead of flying, Chinese dragons are seen as water creatures that live in lakes, rivers and oceans. One quarter of the sky is called the Palace of the Green Dragon and the dragon constellation is said to predict rain. The dragon is also the fifth sign of the Chinese zodiac.
When Buddhism arrived in China, dragon symbolism was added to that religion, and in Beijing, there is the famous Nine Dragon Screen.
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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Ballantine Books sent me an advanced, uncorrected proof of Kim Fay’s The Map of Lost Memories. Because I’m not going to check or read the finished book, note that the final novel may have been revised.
After reading the uncorrected proof, I think Kim Fay’s novel is brilliant at times, average at times and sometimes falls flat then revives to be brilliant again repeating the cycle. In fact, Fay’s descriptions were so vivid they transported me to Shanghai, Saigon and Cambodia, and I could smell and see these exotic places—some I have visited and Fay’s descriptions rang true.
The main character in The Map of Lost Memories is Irene Blum, who in 1925 slams into the glass ceiling and is passed over for a job she deserves, the curatorship of the museum where she grew up and then worked. Instead, the job goes to a man who has the proper credentials even though he does not have Irene’s experience or global connections.
This leads Irene to steam across the Pacific to resurrect her career by finding several copper scrolls that record the lost history of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer Empire (802 – 1431 AD).
Irene’s first stop is Shanghai where she is sucked into the power struggle between the nationalists and communists and barely escapes with her life. Her next stop is Saigon and from there she travels to Cambodia with her motley crew, visits Angkor Wat and then is off to discover a lost temple in Cambodia’s rugged northeast near Laos that may be the rival of Angkor Wat.
Along the way, she collects a crew of dysfunctional allies each with his or her own agenda. There is the drug-addicted Simone Merlin, who appears to be a dedicated communist out to save the poor Cambodians from being exploited by the French colonial powers.
Then there is Louis, a world renowned scholar of the Khmer civilization and Angkor Wat, who was a childhood friend and former lover of Simone.
Irene also finds romance with the mysterious Mark Rafferty, who is linked to her mentor Henry Simms, a wealthy and powerful old man dying of cancer and another reason why Irene is racing to find the copper scrolls that will reveal the history of the Khmer empire ruled by Jayavarman VII (1125–1218), the last of the great Angkor kings.
At one time, the Khmer Empire was one of the most, if not the most, powerful empires in Southeast Asia. In fact, recent satellite images have revealed that Angkor Wat, the capital of the Khmer Empire, was the largest pre-industrial urban center in the world at that time.
However, history reveals there will always be empires that rise to flatten other cultures and countries and then fall. For example: the Aztec, Han, Inca, Roman, Spanish, French, British, Greek, Persian, and Egyptian. I doubt that the future will ever see Italy rise to equal the Roman Empire.
The Khmer Empire of Jayavarman VII was no different.
I enjoyed this novel and if you enjoy an Indiana Jones adventure, this book is for you. At the end of the novel, I had a feeling that we may see more of Irene in subsequent novels as the adventure continues.
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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We visited China and traveled during one of China’s national holidays in 2008.
My sister and her youngest daughter went with us—both are evangelical Christians and mentioned they didn’t believe in China’s one-child policy. I heard this more than once but after they arrived in China and experienced that migration, both stopped preaching about the one-child policy.
It was so crowded, it was as if we were swimming through an ocean of people.
That’s when I decided that my next trip to China will not be during any of China’s national holidays.
In fact, to deal with this migration, inhabitat.com says, “China has released a massive rail development program, which will expand the high-speed rail service to 42 more high-speed lines by 2012.”
This Al Jazeera report is about China’s annual New Year Migration of 2010. For readers who haven’t been to China, this may be your only chance to experience a taste of what it is like to live in a country with more than 1.3 billion people.
Tony Birtley of Al Jazeera, reports from a train heading south from Beijing to Hebei province.
Birtley says, “Welcome to the Chinese New Year and to the world’s biggest annual migration.… There’s something like 2,000 people on this train and you can hardly move.”
The rail system in China barely manages to move the average 220 million people traveling home to celebrate the Chinese New Year with family. But the Chinese lunar New Year is on Sunday, February 10, 2013. That’s when you want to avoid visiting China unless you want to experience this holiday with the Chinese. If so, pick a city and avoid traveling.
It is possible that a passenger will have to stand for a trip of 16 to 48 hours to reach their destination.
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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I’m always looking for information about China, and I learned something new from The Economist’s May 6, 2010 issue. Click the link to read the entire piece or read this summary. I bought the magazine.
China has two classes—rural and urban. The urban people have prospered for the last thirty years as China built a middle class. Most rural Chinese have not been able to benefit from the booming economy and are getting restless.
Rural land outside China’s cities usually belongs to collectives. When Mao won China, the Communists divided the land among villages—not individuals. Individuals do not hold title to farmland and cannot sell land that no one owns.
China saw what was happening in India when farmers sold their plots to developers. Rural people in India flocked to the cities and built sprawling slums. To avoid that, the Chinese government created a system to keep rural people on their farms. Another motivation was fear of another famine like the one that struck China from 1959 to 1961 killing millions from starvation. If farmers left the fields for a better lifestyle in cities, that nightmare might return.
An experiment was tried in rural areas outside Chongqing to see if the land can be divided among individuals while increasing food production. Since the government still hasn’t figured out how to make the transition smoothly, don’t expect rural land reforms to happen quickly.
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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China was making tofu from soybeans more than two thousand years ago. But mention it to most Americans and it is “yuk” time. American prejudices for tofu are so strong, most will not taste a morsel. Horror fills faces and complexions turn green.
That’s why we never mention to the beefy McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, KFC, cancer and heart attack generations that eat at our house as guests that the ice cream we serve is made from tofu or the chocolate pie is made from tofu or that …
They never know the difference. We reveal the truth after they eat.
When we are in China, I get up early to go the the nearest market that makes fresh soy juice and I buy it without sugar or sweetener added. There is no comparison. It’s warm. It’s fresh. It’s China. It’s different from the genetically altered, American, factory-farmed soy juice sold in American markets. That stuff is “yuk” and I don’t touch it.
There are thousands of foods that humans eat. Most Americans eat about a half dozen. Maybe soy and tofu is the secret explaining why there are more than 1.3 billion Chinese.
And, if you are curious enough to overcome your prejudices, visit one or all of these Websites and Blogs to learn more:
The Chinese invented tofu, but some Americans are reinventing it. I was introduced to Chocolate Tofu Pie at Mother’s Market in Costa Mesa, California. Then I figured out how to make it at home by experimenting.
Ingredients:
Two 10-ounce containers of soft or silken organic tofu
Two four-ounce packages of baker’s, unsweetened chocolate—but use only six of the ounces. This chocolate has no milk or sweeteners added. Use six ounces of the eight.
One bag of malt-sweetened chocolate bits. There are no dairy or refined sugars in this chocolate. Use half of this bag. If you skip this ingredient, add more of the baker’s, unsweetened chocolate.
Agave nectar. This low absorbing sweetener is absorbed into the body slowly.
One package of readymade whole-wheat piecrust (recommended for fiber).
Use one tablespoon of arrowroot for a thickener
Directions:
Mix the tofu in a blender with the arrowroot or another natural thickener.
Heat the chocolate in a pan (double boiler hopefully) until melted and pour into blended tofu and mix.
Add the Agave nectar.
Taste to make sure it is sweet enough and that the bitterness from the baker’s chocolate is gone. Add more Agave if desired. Our daughter enjoys this step the most, since she is the taster.
Blend until it is all one smooth color.
Pour equally into the pie pans.
Put pies in oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
Let pies cool after cooking; put in refrigerator after they are cool.
The pies will be ready the next day.
Note: I usually shop at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s for the ingredients used in the tofu chocolate pie.
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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