From Fast-Food to Killing – You Decide

April 13, 2010

I read Man Sentenced to death over China school stabbings and thought, “Is this another Columbine Copy Cat—but in China, the Middle Kingdom. where harmony rules?” Then I read in another piece that McDonald’s plans to double the number of fast-food restaurants in China from about 1,100 to 2,000 by the end of 2013.

Fast Food in China

It’s a fact that a fast-food diet has been observed to aggravate asthma, move mood swings, provoke personality changes, muster mental illness, nourish nervous disorders, deliver diabetes, hurry heart disease, grow gallstones, hasten hypertension, and add arthritis. Source: Healing Daily

Without making any claims that fast food might be connected to that man stabbing those children in China, I’m going to point out a few facts and let the reader decide.

America leads the world in violent assaults on school children of all ages. Prior to 1950, when the fast food industry took off and spread like a cancer, there were a total of forty-five recorded school-related attacks in the United States (over a time span of almost two centuries).

After 1950, the number of school-related attacks soared to about two hundred.  In China, recorded school-related attacks didn’t start until May 14, 2000. Since then, there have been more than a dozen. Source: List of school-related attacks

Here are two timelines for the growth of the fast-food industry in American and China. Study the dates. Compare to growth of school-related attacks. Decide.

History timeline of fast food in America

History timeline of fast food in China

See “An Invasion of Fat” http://wp.me/pN4pY-hb

 

3 Comments | American culture, Chinese Culture, crime, economy, food | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Twin Disasters Shine a Light on Bias

April 10, 2010

In China, a coalmine is flooded and traps more than a hundred. The Huffington Post reports this and says, “The real issue for the government (China’s) is to learn the lessons from this…The fundamental issue is, the miners should never have been put in this situation in the first place.”

In another piece, “A West Virginia coal mine explosion demands action”, Washington Post. “A huge explosion at the Upper Big Branch coalmine…claimed the lives of 25 miners.” This happened even after Congress passed the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response act to make it safer.

After the US Congress passed this tougher law, the company that owned the West Virginia mine was cited with several safety violations prior to the explosion but was allowed to continue operating.

It seems the miners didn’t speak out for fear of losing their jobs. True Slant.com said, “Interesting how the West Virginia state police are necessary to allow the mining company CEO to speak now. He probably wouldn’t need them if the miners had been allowed to speak months ago.”

The US Bill of Rights protects freedom of speech but that freedom was written to protect US citizens from the government—not to protect people from corporations. The Huffington Post was right about one thing, “The miners should have never been put in this situation in the first place.”

See Human Rights the Chinese Way http://wp.me/pN4pY-m7

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Leave a Comment » | America, business, China, economy, environment, government, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Xu Xiao-dong’s Gallery and Art Studio

March 31, 2010

When visiting Zhouzhang, China’s #1 Water Town for Tourists, we stopped at Xu Xiao-dong’s gallery and art studio (e-mail: longyu8@126.com).

Xu-Xiao-dong

 The artist trained under a master and keeps a newspaper clipping that mentions it.


We bought several watercolors from Xu Xiao-dong, and he gave me written permission to use his art for the cover of My Splendid Concubine. I cropped the photo of the original and added the title and my name.

Xu Xiao-dong's gallery

There’s a narrow, steep stairway in the back (left) that goes to another floor and more art. The artist also paints his art on the second floor.

Zhouzhang, near Shanghai, is more than a thousand years old. Unlike most tourist attractions in America, this town is still lived in.  The town’s population makes its living from the tourists who cannot enter unless they pay a fee.

Discover more of Zhouzhuang-China’s Venice

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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 » | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese men, economy, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Evil Tobacco in Big China

March 30, 2010

Cigarettes are evil.  The person smoking the cigarette may not be evil but the pain and suffering that cigarettes cause is. I watched a father-in-law, a neighbor, an aunt and my father die from the ravages from tobacco.  The last few years of my father’s life, he wore a breathing mask attached to a tank of oxygen.  His freedom was limited to the fifty-foot hose connected to that tank.

Smoking Kills

Margie Mason (Associated Press) wrote about smoking and listed some frightening statistics.

  • Thirty percent of the world’s smokers are in China.
  • In the next 15 years, an estimated 2 million will die from it.
  • The largest tobacco grower in the world is in China.
  • Heart disease, linked to smoking, is already killing a million a year.
  • China has more cases of diabetes than any country.

Dr. Judith Mackay said, “You have to price them (cigarettes) out of the hands and pockets and the mouths of children.”

Hong Kong may be showing the rest of the mainland how to cut back on tobacco use by putting high taxes on cigarettes as we have done in America. The Chinese government may be watching and hoping that this cycle of doom can be slowed.

Learn more from Smoking Gun

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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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1 Comment | business, capitalism, China, Chinese men, economy, health care | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

From the Bottom Up

March 29, 2010

America may be learning something from China’s stimulus plan—spending hundreds of billions of dollars from its cash reserves to keep people working. This is called bottom-up economic growth and the gap between the rich and working poor shrinks instead of expands. The opposite is trickle-down economics from the Reagan era where the gap widens.

Chinese jobs

China’s bottom-up plan makes sense. After all, how much can one rich person consume compared to hundreds of millions of people—a little spending from each person at the bottom adds up and is better for long-term economic survival instead of short-term corporate profits. Who cares if the wealthy grow their fortunes slower? Well, the rich do. I’m sure they love having that money filling Wall Street vaults.

It appears that President Obama has the same idea. During the presidential campaign, he said.  “The project of the next president  is figuring out how you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth.” It seems that with the passing of the health care bill (that has upset so many of the trickle-down people), President Obama is putting his words into action and following China’s example.

To learn more about China’s economy see “Why China is Studying Singapore” http://wp.me/pN4pY-2z

Leave a Comment » | America, business, China, economy, government, politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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