The Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven

July 4, 2013

Due to the Mandate of Heaven, many of China’s people see rebellion as a birthright under the right circumstances. The Mandate of Heaven has been traced back to 1753 B.C. or earlier.

Click on image to make larger.

With the Mandate of Heaven, the right to rule from divine legitimization to one based on ‘evenhanded’ rule was born. Whenever a dynasty fell, the reason offered by China’s wise men was the loss of the moral right to rule given by Heaven alone—on a good government, Heaven sends down all blessings; on the evildoer Heaven sends down all miseries.

However, humans in China were free to rule unjustly and could harm the people they ruled but their rule would come to a swift end as Heaven passed its mandate to another family or group. Heaven blessed the authority of a just ruler, but would be displeased with a despotic ruler and would withdraw its mandate. In addition, severe floods or famines might be considered evidence of divine repeal of the Mandate of Heaven.

The time an individual or family or a political group like the Communists rules China is based on a fair and just performance. As long as the ruling family or party rules fairly and justly, the majority will see no need for change.

______________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

2015 Promotion Image for My Splendid Concubine

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, cultural differences, government, history | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Cheating is a Global Problem

June 11, 2013

I guess I’m naïve or stupid or something. During the nine years I attended colleges and universities to earn my BA in journalism and MFA in writing, I did all my own work. It didn’t even occur to me that I could pay someone else to do the work for me.

And when I read, “Rampant cheating hurts China’s research ambitions” (Yahoo news), I was disappointed at the lack of balance. There was no mention that cheating is a problem globally—not just in China.

Was this another example of China bashing?

I taught journalism and was an adviser for an award winning high-school newspaper for several years, and the student reporters learned to write balanced pieces—even for the opinion page. I taught that both sides of an issue should be heard even if the balance isn’t perfect and one side is not politically correct.


Listen to the first few minutes to get the idea.

Since Yahoo’s headquarters are in Sunnyvale, California, I’m going to focus on cheating in America to correct this imbalance.

ABC News/Primetime published “A Crisis in America’s Schools — How It’s Done and Why It’s Happening“.  “…according to a 2002 confidential survey of 12,000 high school students, 74 percent admitted cheating on an examination at least once in the past year…. Lifting papers off the Internet is one of the newer trends in plagiarism — and technology is giving students even more ways to cheat nowadays.”

Then there’s “High-Tech Cheating in College” about cheating at MIT, California Polytechnic State University at San Louis Obispo, and Stanford University. “Many colleges offer no comprehensive approach to minor academic cheating (the exceptions are institutions with honor codes, though few have them according Tracy Mitrano, Cornell University’s director of information-technology policy.”

Then there is Lance Armstrong and the US cycling team.

Discover Education Chinese Style

_______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

His latest novel, Running with the Enemy, was awarded an honorable mention in general fiction at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

Leave a Comment » | America, business, China, crime, family values, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Voice of Shanghai Dies—Shocking Fans

June 6, 2013

Cheng Naishan, a mainland Chinese author and writer known for her work about life in Shanghai, died recently of leukemia.

The Blue House, a novel that is also available in English, French and Spanish, is about the world of romance, business and family life in Shanghai during and after The Cultural Revolution.

Image of Cheng Naishan

Her work is known for the history, culture and legacy of Shanghai in the 1930s before World War II when the city was known as the “Paris of the Orient”.

Cheng was born in 1947 into a family of bankers. The family moved to Hong Kong in 1949, and returned to Shanghai—out of patriotism—in 1956. Her first story was published in a literary magazine in 1979 launching a literary career in China that spanned more than three decades.

“I know some people say I always write about the old Shanghai and try to keep the flavor of old Shanghai and that makes my writing look less modern,” she said in a 2012 interview with an official publication run by the government-backed Shanghai Federation of Literary and Art Circles. “I am not concerned about what those people say about me because in my heart the old Shanghai is just an endless story and I won’t stop writing about it.”

The editor of the Shanghai Dialect column for Xinmin Evening News, Lyu Zheng said, “She can write adeptly about the lower-class life experience of dumping the chamber pot, as well as upper-class social life between coffee cups.”

funeral of Cheng Naishan

Her husband, Yan Erchun, said, “Naishan has great love for the city of Shanghai, especially the district of Jing’an. She was born and raised here. There are endless stories she wanted to write about Shanghai.”

Cheng was diagnosed with leukemia in the winter of 2011, and she continued writing until near the end.

Discover Life is a Miracle, a movie review

_______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!

Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

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

Making the Hajj from China: Part 1/2

May 27, 2013

This two-part post may come as a surprise to many in the West that think there is no religious freedom in China.

In fact, China handles religious freedom similar to how Singapore does, and Singapore is seldom if ever criticized in the Western media for this practice.

The U.S. Department of State says that Singapore’s government has broad powers to limit citizens’ rights and handicap political opposition, which it uses. One of those restrictions is a limited freedom of religion.

However, the Constitution for the Republic of Singapore offers the same fundamental liberties China and the US does, which includes freedom of speech, assembly and association and freedom of religion.

For example, Singapore bans the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Unification Church by making public meetings illegal. The Falun Gong has also had problems in Singapore.

China, on the other hand, recognizes five religions — Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism but has banned certain new religious movements that are considered cults. China does not recognize cults as religions.

In the video embedded with this post, Al Jazeera follows Chinese Muslims as they prepare to undertake the hajj pilgrimage.

The ancient city of Xian in Shaanxi province is home to about 60,000 ethnic Chinese Muslims.

Xian claims it has a Muslim history going back more than thirteen hundred years when Islam was first introduced to China in 650 AD.

In fact, the oldest mosque in China was built in 685-762 AD in Xian during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty.

Chinese Imam Ma Yi Ping speaks both Chinese and Arabic. He studied at the Islamic University of Medina and has made the hajj several times. He was taught to be a devout Muslim by his parents during Mao’s time when the mosques in China were closed.

Despite the persecutions that took place during the Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976), Islam survived in China.

Ma Yi Ping says that after Mao and the Gang of Four were gone and China opened for trade with the world, he did not have to study the Quran in secret anymore.

Since the 15th century, Xian Muslims have been going to Mecca in Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

In the past, during the ancient days of the Silk Road, these journeys started and ended in Xian’s Muslim quarter. Today is no different.

Continued on May 28, 2013 in Making the Hajj from China: Part 2

_______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

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

2013 San Francisco Book Festival Award Winners

May 6, 2013

Running with the Enemy by Lloyd Lofthouse was awarded an honorable mention in general fiction at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival.


Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000035_00034]

The winner of the general fiction category went to John Irving’s In One Person published by Simon & Schuster, and the grand prize was awarded to The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen & Live Without Regret by Richie Norton with Natalie Norton — Shadow Mountain Publishing.

John Irving won the National Book Award in 1980 for The World According to Garp, and he received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for the short story “Interior Space. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules.

Richard Norton, the grand prize winner of the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival, is the CEO of Global Consulting Circle. He is a sought after speaker and consultant for the corporate growth and personal development industries. Norton has shared the stage with bestselling authors such as Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Kevin Rollins, former CEO of Dell Computers.

Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning My Splendid Concubine and Running with the Enemy. His short story, A Night at the ‘Well of Purity’ was named a finalist in the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. Anchee Min, Lloyd’s wife, is the author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year—in addition to national bestsellers Becoming Madame Mao and Empress Orchid, which was a finalist for the British Book Awards. Min’s memoir, the sequel to Red Azalea—The Cooked Seed—will be released May 7, 2013.

The award winners for the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival will be honored on May 18, 2013 at a public free festival and a private awards ceremony held at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco.

_______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

4 Comments | Anchee Min, book promotion, book review, history, Lloyd Lofthouse, military, My Splendid Concubine, United States | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »