Change Comes to China’s “Granite Women”

November 7, 2010

Change taking place in China is not happening as fast as many Western critics want it to. To these critics, China should flip the feudal switch to democracy and the light should come on without effort.

However, in spite of Western pressure to speed things up, changes are taking place as planned by China’s government.

For example, foot binding was around for several centuries when the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1911) first attempted to end a practice that would continue for several more centuries.

Even the Nationalists failed to end foot binding in the 20th century. In fact, foot binding wouldn’t end until after 1949 when the Communist Party ruled China.

After a long period of nothing happening, which was due to Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, new approaches to education were encouraged after 1977.

In 1976 when Mao died, twenty percent of the population was literate. Today more than 90% can read with a goal to reach 99%.

In 1985, school reform was implemented making nine years of education mandatory for all children. Academic achievement became the new priority over the political consciousness of Mao’s era.

An example of how China’s education policies have brought about change may be seen among the “Granite Women”, who live near the coast in southeast China.

For centuries, these women carried the blocks of granite from the quarries where their husbands, brothers and fathers worked cutting the stone.

However, today, China’s economic reforms along with education are changing the old ways.

Younger women, who have now had enough education, know what they don’t want for their lives.

For centuries, others like the Qing Dynasty and the Nationalists failed to bring about change in China. Where these others failed, the Party appears to be succeeding.

Discover more about China’s Modern Women

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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

Exemptions in China’s ‘one-child policy’

November 5, 2010

We often hear criticism in the West about China’s one child policy but seldom hear about the exceptions to that law.

There is an exception to the ‘one-child policy’ for China’s ethnic minorities. However, population control must be explained to everyone anyway.

For example, to slow population growth, China asks the Islamic Imams of the ten million Hui Muslims in China to talk to the people who worship in their temples.

Many Hui live in one of the autonomous regions in Ningxia, between southern Gansu and Inner Mongolia.

We often hear of the Uighur Muslims since they have a separatist movement and sometimes protest, but the Uighur are not the only Muslims in China.

The Hui are unique among the fifty-six officially recognized minorities of China in that Islam is their only unifying identity. They do not have a unique language and often intermarry with Han Chinese.

In fact, many live outside the Hui autonomous area.

After the Imam reads from the Quran, he explains the need for population control.  The single-child policy is actually a one, two or three child policy for the Hui depending on where they live.

Even though the Hui may have more than one child, many stop after having only one.

Since minorities in China are a small segment of the population, China’s government has exercised flexibility with the birth rate in order to keep the minorities an important part of China’s culture—sort of like affirmative action in the US.

In addition, in the countryside, having more children provides more hands in the fields with the hard agricultural work.

Learn more about China’s One Child policy.  How would you like to be responsible to feed more than 1.3 billion 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.

3 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese minorities, Chinese women, family values, Islam, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Striking Differences

October 18, 2010

In Psychology Today, I read a post by Christopher Peterson.

I wrote a comment to his post, but addressed it to the wrong person. Since I couldn’t edit the comment, I have no way to fix the mistake.

Peterson writes about how much he enjoyed his recent August trip to China. He said, “I loved the Chinese people I met! We did not talk politics with anyone…”

In fact, I’ve been to China about ten times since 1999 and have never talked politics to anyone there.

There is no reason for that. After all, in China, the government runs the country and doesn’t ask the people for advice.

I sometimes wonder who is running America since there are so many opinions and so much anger.

Peterson also said, “China is not only a highly collectivist culture but also one that takes a very long time perspective on things. We often heard mention of the ‘seven generation’ view, which means that the Chinese take into account the consequences of policies for at least seven future generations.”

Peterson also mentioned, “the Chinese want their people and especially their children to be happy… There are of course cultural differences in what constitutes legitimate happiness.”

Then I read a post in the Democratic Underground, which was striking in its darkness and inferred unhappiness and anger.

The Democratic Underground said, “in the past week or so, at least 29 candidates (running for political office in the U.S. November midterms) have unveiled advertisements suggesting that their opponents have been too sympathetic to China and, as a result, Americans have suffered.”

Evan B. Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising, said that “China has sort of become a straw-man villain in this election” in a way that elicits comparisons to the sentiments toward Japan in the 1980s over car manufacturing and Mexico in the 1990s over the North American Free Trade Agreement. Source: Democratic Underground

It’s common in America for politicians to turn the people’s anger and unhappiness on a scapegoat. It helps win elections.

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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

Superior versus Civilized

September 17, 2010

In The American Spectator (11-25-09), George H. Wittman wrote China Wins saying, “The Chinese believe they are superior to the United States – and every other country.”

I admit that there may be some truth to Wittman’s opinion. 

However, he uses the wrong word.  The Chinese believe they are more civilized and there may be some truth in that too since most Westerners do not follow the teachings of Confucius, which after 2500 years is embedded in China’s DNA.

If you have read the Qianlong Emperor’s letter from 1793 to King George saying China needed nothing from the rest of the world, you might understand better.

“Should your vessels touch the shore, your merchants will assuredly never be permitted to land or to reside there, but will be subject to instant expulsion. In that event your barbarian merchants will have had a long journey for nothing.”

The key is the word “barbarian”.  When you call someone a barbarian, you are inferring that they are not civilized.

In fact, the Chinese did consider the rest of the world barbarians because Westerners did not behave properly according to the way most Chinese are taught.

A Difference of Opinion

Answer these questions correctly and you may understand why the Chinese might believe they are more civilized.

1. Who started two wars with China in the 19th century to even a trade imbalance by forcing the emperor to allow opium to be sold to his people?

2. When Sun Yat-sen asked for help from the Western democracies at a time when China was in chaos and anarchy while millions starved and died, what was the response?

3. Who invented gunpowder, paper, the printing press and the compass?

4. Who values gaining an education more than most cultures on the earth?

The final answer depends on your point of view. Many westerners may see abortion and the death sentence as a sign of barbarity even though most Chinese do not.

On the other hand, the Chinese tend to stay out of debt and save money while younger Chinese show respect for the elders.

See The Opium Wars

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

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Homeless

September 16, 2010

The East Asia Forum (EAF) reported September 1, 2010, on the impact of the global financial crises on China’s migrant workers.

It turns out that the impact wasn’t as significant as first thought in 2009 as most laid-off workers went home to the rural, collective village farms.

Two years after the world economy collapsed, the EAF was surprised to discover that migrants who stayed in the cities suffered very little.

Instead, workers who stayed in the cities continued to work while about 15 million migrants, about 10% of the workforce, went back to the farm, where they had already worked on average 52% of the year helping grow the food China eats.

The EAF suggested that small landholders, since most Chinese in rural China cannot own or sell the land they farm, should be allowed to sell their land and that China should move toward a universal welfare system.

Huh?

In America, which has a universal welfare system, when a worker loses his or her job, he or she collects unemployment benefits until those benefits run out. The next choice is to become a homeless beggar.

A report on PBS says that since 2007 there has been a 12% increase in homelessness and that about 2.3 to 3.5 million people in the U.S. experience homelessness.

The suggestion from the EAF that China must allow rural peasants to sell the land they farm is wrong.

As long as those farms exist, few people have to go homeless in China. Being a poor peasant farmer may not offer many choices in life, but it has to be better than sleeping in an alley in Shanghai and going hungry.

It was difficult to discover how many homeless people there are in China.  It appears that most who are homeless lost their homes through floods, earthquakes and other acts of nature and live in tent cities while the government has new homes built.

See China’s Stick 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 this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

1 Comment | America, American culture, capitalism, China, Chinese Culture, Communism, cultural differences, family values | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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