When it comes to World Heritage Sites, China and Italy are tied for First Place

June 17, 2020

When it comes to World Heritage Sites, China is tied with Italy for first place. Each country has 55 World Heritage Sites.  China has 14 natural and 37 cultural sites vs Italy’s five natural and 50 cultural.

A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area, selected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for having cultural, historical, scientific or other form of significance, which is legally protected by international treaties. The sites are judged to be important for the collective and preservative interests of humanity.

To be selected, a World Heritage Site must be an already-classified landmark, unique in some respect as a geographically and historically identifiable place having special cultural or physical significance (such as an ancient ruin or historical structure, building, city, complex, desert, forest, island, lake, monument, mountain, or wilderness area). It may signify a remarkable accomplishment of humanity, and serve as evidence of our intellectual history on the planet.

The sites are intended for practical conservation for posterity, which otherwise would be subject to risk from human or animal trespassing, unmonitored/uncontrolled/unrestricted access, or threat from local administrative negligence. Sites are demarcated by UNESCO as protected zones. The list is maintained by the international World Heritage Program administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 “states parties” that are elected by their General Assembly.

The reason Italy and China are tied for 1st place is because Italy was home to the Roman Empire (27 BC to 1453 AD) and China to the Han (206 BC – 280 AD), Tang (618 – 907 AD), and Qing (1368 – 1644 AD) Dynasties.

National Interest.org says, “Contrary to the common perception of China being historically isolated and weak, many Chinese dynasties were very powerful and have had a profound impact on global history. … The Han Dynasty ruled China for a solid four centuries, from 206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E. Although the preceding Qin Dynasty unified China, it was the Han Dynasty that kept it together and developed the institutions that characterized most of Chinese history since. …

“After the Han Dynasty collapsed due to civil war, China entered a period of disunity until being reunited by the Sui Dynasty, which was subsequently succeeded by the Tang Dynasty, which ruled China from 618-907 C.E. The Tang Dynasty was one of China’s most cosmopolitan and urbane dynasties, opening China up to a period of foreign influences. The Tang Dynasty was also likely China’s largest and most powerful dynasty in history and is considered the golden age of imperial China.”

The Qing Dynasty was China’s last and one of its greatest from 1644 to 1911. The National Interest explains why, “The Qing were the first Chinese state to effectively control regions like Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria, and Mongolia, peripheral regions that were inhabited by people that had always harassed China.”

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Five Ancient Chinese Myths and Science Proves One Was Real

June 10, 2020

Myth: 1) a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events

2) a widely held but false belief or idea.

Yin and Yang

“A popular creation myth from Daoism states that before the beginning of the world there were two opposite forces. Yin was the female element, representing softness, darkness and the earth; Yang was the male element, representing hardness, light and the heavens. Though the two forces were opposites, they were still dependent on each other to maintain the harmony of the universe.” ­– Study.com

Xi-Wang-Mu, the Queen of the West

The Ancient History Encyclopedia says, “She was the queen of the immortal gods and spirits, especially female spirits who lived in the mystical land of Xihua (“West Flower”), and goddess of immortality. She is also known as Xiwangmu or Xi-Wang-Mu and lived in a castle of gold in the Kunlun Mountains, surrounded by a moat which was so sensitive that even a hair dropped on the waters would sink. This moat served as protection for her Imperial Peach Orchard where the juices of the fruit of the trees gave immortality. She rewarded her followers with eternal life but punished those who angered her. During the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) the government built shrines for her popular cult.”


MULAN – Full Movie (not the latest Disney version; with no English subtitles)

The Myth of Mulan is based on a poem that “tells the story of a young girl who dresses as a man for a dozen years to wage war in her father’s stead. Though many people believe it was based on a true story, there is little evidence that the powerful young woman existed. And there are longstanding debates over where the story was to have taken place and about the family name of Mulan.” – Hartford Courant.com

The Yellow Emperor has a tomb, but he is still a myth

The Myth of Huang Di or the Yellow Emperor is about “a legendary Chinese sovereign and cultural hero presented in Chinese mythology. He is said to be the ancestor of all Huaxia Chinese. According to many sources he was one of the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. Tradition holds that he reigned from 2697–2597 BCE or 2696–2598 BCE. He is regarded as the founder of Chinese culture & civilization. His enlightenments include fundamental shifts in civilization: writing (on tortoise shells), politically formed government, the compass and silk woven clothes via the Empress, Lei Zhu (嫘祖).”

The Great Flood

“One of the Chinese legends explains that the flood was caused by an argument between a crab and a bird. Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters escaped a great flood and were the only people alive on earth. After the great flood, they repopulated the world.” – Ark Encounter

What’s interesting about China’s Great Flood Myth is that it has been verified by science. Culture Trip.com reports, “A dramatic 4,000-year-old Chinese myth known as the ‘Great Flood of Gun-Yu’ has underpinned Chinese culture for millennia. Historians have long debated the veracity of the story, but a startling new study published in Science says there’s archaeological evidence that the flood was real.” … “Using evidence from the sediments along the Yellow River, a team of geologists and archaeologists have verified that a devastating flood did indeed occur around 1900 BCE, approximately the date that the Xia dynasty is supposed to have begun. The catastrophe ranks as one of the largest freshwater floods in the past 10,000 years.”

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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If we knew who the real Shakespeare was, we should call him the UK’s Du FU

June 3, 2020

The BBC reported, The Story of China – China’s Shakespeare – Du Fu “Du Fu (712-770 AD) is regarded by many Chinese as their greatest poet. He was well known in his day, and made friends with other poets such as Li Bai, another famous poet in the Tang dynasty. As a member of the elite in society he lived in the capital at Chang’an, now known as Xi’an. Later he was dubbed the ‘Poet Historian’, for writing down what he saw with his own eyes during the An Lu Shan rebellion. Du Fu saw the terrible time that war-torn China suffered, especially the pain and suffering amongst the ordinary people, and the court running away from the capital.”

Why did the BBC say Du Fu was China’s Shakespeare when he was born 851 years before Shakespeare’s birth in April 1564?

In fact, Shakespeare is often called England national poet and the “Bard of Avon.”  Has anyone ever called him the poet historian of the UK?

History.com even asks, “Did Shakespeare really write his own plays?”

In fact, “nothing has been found documenting the composition of the 37 plays and 154 sonnets attributed to him, collectively considered the greatest body of work in the history of the English language.” … “Since the 19th century, a roster of famous people–Henry James, Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Charlie Chaplin and many others—have voiced their doubts about the man from Stratford. Thousands of books and articles have been devoted to the subject, many of which propose their own candidates for the true author of the Shakespeare canon.”

Is there any doubt that Du Fu wrote his poems? No, because anyone that wants to fact-check will discover that he was born in 712 in Henan province China and died in 770 AD on a riverboat, and many literary critics consider him the great poet of all time. – Britannica

How can anyone compare Du Fu, who we know wrote his poems, to Shakespeare when the world doesn’t know who he really was and if he even wrote the work that bears his name?

The Atlantic even ran a piece that asked, “Was Shakespeare a Woman?”… “Theories that others wrote the corpus of work attributed to William Shakespeare (who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 and died in 1616) emerged in the mid-19th century. Assorted comments by his contemporaries have been interpreted by some as suggesting that the London actor claimed credit for writing that wasn’t his.” … “Who was this woman writing ‘immortal work’ in the same year that Shakespeare’s name first appeared in print, on the poem ‘Venus and Adonis,’ a scandalous parody of masculine seduction tales (in which the woman forces herself on the man)?”

Comparing the work of Shakespeare to Du Fu is also interesting. Absolute Shakespeare.com says, “For now at least, it is still safe to say Shakespeare did indeed write the 37 plays and 154 sonnets credited to him.”

Total History.com reveals, “His (Du Fu) best poetic works were written during his stay in Kuizhou. He was a wonderful writer and wrote almost 400 poems. The poems written in Kuizhou are amongst his greatest works. Most of his poems are based on nature. The famous poet’s work failed to be recognized in his time. It could have been because his poems were not given much exposure. Like most famous poets, Du Fu’s poems became popular and were appreciated only after his demise. Today Du Fu’s work is much appreciated and has been translated into many languages. The world regards Du Fu as a great poet. His contributions to the literature world have been immense.”

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Who was the Real Anna May Wong?

April 22, 2020

Anna May Wong was born an American citizen on January 3, 1905, and died February 3, 1961. She was the first Chinese-American movie star and the first Asian-American actress to gain international fame.

On March 1, 2003, Bill Moyers reported, Anna was American-born, confident in ways her father’s generation could never be, still she lived suspended between two countries, starting with how people saw her.

“Americans regard [us] as a dark, mysterious race,” Anna May once said, “impossible to understand. Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain? And so crude a villain — murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass. I was so tired of the parts I had to play.”

In fact, because if the films she appeared in, she became known as The Woman that Died a Thousand Times.

By the time she was 32, and an established Hollywood star, in August 1937, Japan invaded Shanghai. Anna’s younger sister was living there at the time and managed to escape, but their family couldn’t get out. In 1938, Anna managed to get her family back in the United States. Then she started working with Chinatown communities to get rid of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Five years later in 1943, this racist legislation that targeted Chinese was repealed.

The Exclusion Act (1882 – 1943) made it virtually impossible for Chinese to have a normal family life inside the United States. The Exclusion law applied to Chinese laborers. It exempted merchants, travelers and students. What this meant to the Chinese who could not become a merchant, and what it meant was not a student or a traveler what it meant was that he could not bring his wife. – Stanford Lyman (Historian)

As a young girl, Anna skipped school to watch silent films at local theaters. By the time she was 9, she had set a goal to become a movie star.  She hung around the studios, including MGM, asking for extra work instead of going to school. Eventually, she landed some rolls. At 17, it’s rumored that she had an affair with an older but married director.

In 1924, at 19, Anna had her first success when she played a Mongol slave in the classic film “The Thief of Bagdad” cast alongside Douglas Fairbanks.

According to Cal Van Vechten’s daughter, Anna May had a brief affair with co-star Vincent Price. – Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend, page 164. While acting on stage in Turandot, she also had a brief affair with her costar. – Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography, page 77.

The first Chinese film star in Hollywood, the rolls she could play were limited. The Hays Code did not permit the portrayal of interracial relationships on-screen. However, Anna’s rumored lovers, from Vincent Price to Marlene Dietrich, were white, and Douglas Fairbanks called her the “Chink in my amour”. Her most famous movies were denounced as “ghost films” and banned in China. – The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Who Deserves Credit for the First Vaccine?

April 1, 2020

Worst Pandemics in History reports that “25 million died from Bubonic Plague in 541-542 AD, and 75-200 million died from the Black Death in 1346-1353.” … The next huge death toll from a pandemic equal to the first two was Influenza in 1918 killing “20 – 50 million people.”

Because of these earlier pandemics, eventually, the first successful vaccines were created, and as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread around the world, a global race is on to create a vaccine to protect us from this one, too.

While Edward Jenner, an English physician, developed the first successful smallpox vaccine in 1796, did you know that he wasn’t the first one to inoculate for a viral disease?

The history of vaccinations started centuries before Jenner was born.

“Several accounts from the 1500s describe smallpox inoculation as practiced in China and India (one is referred to in volume 6 of Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China). Glynn and Glynn, in The Life and Death of Smallpox, note that in the late 1600s Emperor K’ang Hsi, who had survived smallpox as a child, had his children inoculated. That method involved grinding up smallpox scabs and blowing the matter into nostril. Inoculation may also have been practiced by scratching matter from a smallpox sore into the skin. It is difficult to pinpoint when the practice began, as some sources claim dates as early as 200 BCE.” — History of Vaccines.org

However, Britannica.com tells us “China has one of the world’s oldest medical systems. Acupuncture and Chinese herbal remedies date back at least 2,200 years, although the earliest known written record of Chinese medicine is the Huangdi neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic) from the 3rd century bce.”

“Newly discovered documents reveal that 2,200 years ago, Qin Shi Huangdi, China’s first emperor, put out an executive order to search for a potion that would give him eternal live.” — Live Science.com

Is it possible that the first emperor of China’s search for immorality might have also led to those alleged early inoculation attempts as early as 200 BCE? After all, the same desperate search by Huangdi’s alchemists accidently led to the discovery of gunpowder.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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