Eating turkey in China

November 22, 2010

Turkey is a fowl the Chinese seldom eat. However, eating duck and chicken is common. Duck is even considered a delicacy. In fact, the Unvegan says, “No trip to Beijing is complete without eating some Peking Duck.”

Since I am a vegan, I didn’t eat Peking Duck, but I watched my wife eat it at Quan Ju De (Peking Duck) in Beijing.

The Virtual Tourist says, “It is thought that Beijing roast duck, like the tradition of roast turkey in America and the UK, owes its origin to the roast goose that is still popular in Europe on festive occasions.”

Most Americans do not celebrate the Chinese New Year (the Spring Festival) and most Chinese do not celebrate Thanksgiving. After all, Thanksgiving is an American holiday that Canadians celebrate too but on the second Monday in October.


Thanksgiving in Beijing with Peking Duck

China.org says, “From 2001 to 2005, China imported 486,000 tons of turkey, with all of the whole turkeys and 90 percent of Turkey parts coming from the US…. Currently, 70 to 80 percent of the consumers are Westerners.” 

I’m assuming that Westerners eating turkey in China are there working, as tourists or are expatriates living in the Middle Kingdom and can’t do without turkey on Thanksgiving in October or November.

If you are from North America in China during Thanksgiving, you have a choice between Peking Duck, which is easy to find, and turkey.

Go China says, “Just head to your local international grocery store (Jenny Lu’s in Beijing, Cityshop in Shanghai) and stock up on all the fixings: frozen Butterball turkeys, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie makings. But you better do it fast, there tends to be a run on these items so if you’re shopping on the last Thursday in November, you’ll be out of luck.”

Learn more about China’s Eating Culture

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

Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese food, cultural differences, expatriates, food, history, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Hit-and-Run and the “Free” Virtual News

November 11, 2010

A friend sent me two e-mails about hit & run killings in China.

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 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.

Since starting in July 2008, ChinaSMACK now attracts over 930,000 visits and over 2,300,000 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 yelled, “My father is Li Gang!” 

Li Gang is 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.

Arab News and the Washington Post both reported that the fathers met and Li Gang offered compensation to the victim’s father. The other choice was to have a trial, which may result in a death sentence for Li Gang’s son.

Now that the hit-and-run by Li Gang’s son is international news and all over the Internet in China, there are people in the Communist Party with more power than Li Gang that may want to see justice done. I am thinking of people such as Bo Xilai, a member of China’s Central Committee, and a man famous and popular for cracking down on crime.

However, the rich, powerful and famous often escape punishment for horrible crimes. For an example, I offer you Senator Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick incident of alleged drunk driving that caused the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.

Then there is a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle about Dominick Dunne and his 22 year old daughter that was murdered by her estranged boyfriend.

“When I attended the trial of the man who killed my daughter, what I saw was appalling,” said Dunne. “I realized that the rights of the defendant on trial exceeded the rights of the victim who had been killed…”

If you want to learn more about the rich, powerful and famous escaping punishment for horrible crimes, read about Claus von Bulow or William Kennedy Smith.

Is there a difference between China and America when it comes to justice for the rich and powerful?

Learn more about Growing China’s Legal System

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

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China Bookworms

November 9, 2010

There are hundreds of thousands of expatriates in China. They come from all over the globe, as the Middle Kingdom is becoming the center of the world again.

Alexandra Pearson, one of those expatriates, originated from the south coast of England, and she has lived in Beijing for about 16 years.

Pearson is the daughter of a British diplomat and first lived in Beijing in 1982. She speaks fluent Mandarin and has traveled extensively in China.

In fact, Pearson earned a degree in Chinese at the University of Westminster then returned to Beijing in 1992 to study at the Central Conservatory of Music.

However, in 2004, she opened The Bookworm in Beijing—a bookstore, lending library, literary venue and restaurant. Today, there are locations in Beijing, Chengdu and Suzhou.

In 2006, Pearson gained a business partner in Peter Goff, an Irish journalist and another expatriate. He opened the Chengdu and Suzhou Bookworms. In recent years, there have also been literary festivals organized by The Bookworms in all three cities.

Discover more about China from another expatriate with Tom Carter’s China: Portrait of a 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 iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | business, China, Chinese literature, expatriates | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China Considering Changes to Immigration Laws

November 7, 2010

America is known as a nation of immigrants. There is even an Immigrants in the USA Blog.

I also found “Why do immigrants come to the United States of America, a post by Elizabeth Arizaga.

She says, “Immigrants chose to come for various reasons, such as to live in freedom, to practice their religion freely, to escape poverty or oppression, and to make better lives for themselves and their children.”

Then why are people immigrating to China?  After all, according to the Western media and millions of Sinophobes, China is an oppressive, brutal, totalitarian dictatorship.

In fact, President Obama’s half-brother, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, lives and works in Guangzhou and nearby Shenzhen. Source: Time Magazine

However, he isn’t China’s only immigrant. There are others—thousands. The city of Guangzhou has become home to about 100,000 African immigrants, and some are marrying Chinese woman and raising families.

According to Al-Jazeera news, many Africans have immigrated to China happy that China’s booming economy offers them opportunities to work, do business and prosper.

However, China has inconsistent Visa rules and there are problems. Beijing is now working on the law to improve it.

Learn about China’s Labor Laws

 

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

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Jack London in China

November 1, 2010

This October at the Northern California Independent Booksellers Trade Show (NCIBA), I stopped at the University of Georgia Press booth searching for a book about Jack London (1876 – 1916).

In fact, Jack London, Photographer (ISBN 978-0-8203-2967-3) by Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Sara S. Hodson and Philip Adam was there, and I have a copy in front of me as I’m writing this post.

It is a beautiful book and proves that London had talent beyond writing stories such as White Fang or Call of the Wild.

London took photos in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War in Korea and Manchuria.

On page 57, the caption says, “London had his camera confiscated in Japan and was often detained by Japanese officials when he got too close to the front lines, especially as the war spread to the Yalu River, the boundary between Korea and Manchuria.” 

The experiences London had in Korea and China would lead to an essay and a story that ignited a debate that he was a racist.


Jack London, Socialist-Capitalist

He wrote the The Unparalleled Invasion, which takes place in a fictional 1975, when the West decides to destroy China (for no good reason) by using biological warfare. I guess the West couldn’t sell opium to China anymore.

While at the NCIBA, I had two conversations about London. One editor said she had heard that London was a racist and she had trouble believing that.  Later, another editor from the University of George Press also said he didn’t believe London was a racist.

London’s 1904 essay, The Yellow Peril, may have contributed to the claim that he was a racist. Using Google, I found sites that support this theory.

However, after seeing the pictures in Jack London, Photographer (Amazon link), it is hard to believe he was a racist.

There have also been rumors that London committed suicide but there is no evidence to support that theory either.

If London were a racist, why did his Japanese servant Tokinosuke Sekine stay loyal to the end even after London was bankrupt and his “fair weather” friends had abandoned him?

See China: Portrait of a 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 iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, expatriates, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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