The first time I tasted boiled peanuts was in China in 1999. Since I was used to oil-roasted and salted peanuts, it took time for me to acquire a taste for the Chinese way of cooking peanuts.
Although archeologists have dated the oldest known domesticated peanuts to Peru back about 7,000 years, it was Portuguese traders in the 17th century that introduced peanus to China.
Peanuts then became popular there and are featured in many Chinese dishes, often being boiled, which enhances the health benefits of the peanut.
What scientific studies have proven about the boiling process is that peanuts prepared this way are preserved and the presence of phytochemicals are enhanced having the same qualities as antioxidants, which are noted for protecting the body’s cells against heart disease, diabetes and several different forms of cancer.
In fact, a 1990 Harvard study determined that women who ate five ounces of more of nuts per week were only 65 percent as likely to suffer from coronary heart disease as women who avoided eating nuts.
Another study in 2007 at Alabama’s A&M University’s Department of Food and Animal found that the health benefits for boiled peanuts were far healthier than oil-roasted, dry or raw.
Boiled peanutshave higher levels of natural Resveratrol than red grapes
The boiling process of China brings out and enhances the health benefits of the peanut.
In fact, the Chinese eat more boiled peanuts than any country.
However, in the US, the states of Florida, Mississippi, George, Alabama, and North and South Carolina also have a tradition of eating boiled peanuts.
Today, China leads the world in peanut production with about 40% of the crop followed by India, which produces about 19% of the globe’s peanuts. Sources: ehow and tititudorancea
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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This three part series will focus on three Asian Republics — South Korea, Singapore and Thailand, which will be compared to China. All three are staunch allies of the United States.
With US support, Syngman Ree was the President of the “Republic” of South Korea in the 1950s until April 1960. His government was autocratic and the country had limited political freedom.
In fact, South Korea would be an autocratic state with limited political freedom (fancy words for a dictatorship) from 1948 to 1987.
There was a military coup in 1961 and General Park ruled until he was assassinated in 1979.
Mao ruled China eight years longer than Park Chung Hee ruled South Korea.
In 1980, martial law was declared after the army killed 200 during student demonstrations. Recently, South Korea’s constitutional court upheld a controversial military ban (censorship) on 23 books considered subversive. Source: Time
However, the Western media seldom reminds us of those democracy demonstrations in South Korea.
Instead, we are annually reminded of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident in China.
Of course, it helps to forget the 1980 killings when South Korea is now the world’s second largest source of Christian missionaries (after the United States) with a government that favors Christianity.
I wonder if China’s government suddenly decided to favor Christianity, would we stop hearing about the students killed in Tiananmen Square.
It wouldn’t be until 1986 that South Korea’s constitution was changed and in December 1987, Roh won the first direct presidential election since 1971. The first free parliamentary elections took place in 1988.
China revised their Constitution in 1982. Instead of becoming a democracy that favors Christianity, China remained a one-party Republic with tight controls over the political influence of religions, which remains very unpopular with the Christian majority in the West.
South Korea ranks 39th among 178 countries when it comes to corruption. China ranks 79th and we often hear about corruption in China but little about South Korea and the hundred countries with more corruption than China. Source: Transparency.org
Discover more about the Two Republics of America and China.
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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.
“Tinpot dictator” are the two key words in the title of this opinion piece, as if the United States or the UK has never hosted and/or supported “tinpot” dictators. Before we discover China’s history with Burma/Myanmar, first we should look a little closer at the United States.
A well-written criticism of the U.S. government from Sri Lanka sets the record straight.
“I wish the spokesman of the (U.S.) State Department … would explain how Washington’s concern for democracy in Sri Lanka squares with US support for repressive regimes such as the one in Uzbekistan or the autocratic rule in Saudi Arabia, both countries in which the U.S. has military facilities.
“In post-World War II period, Washington has militarily propped up such dictators including several in South Korea, Ferdinand Marcos who was ousted by the Filipino people, Indonesia’s Suharto also thrown out by the people, Vietnam’s Dinh Diem, various military governments in Thailand, Singapore’s autocrat Lee Kwan Yew, the military dictators in Pakistan from Ayub Khan to Pervez Musharraf, all of them from our part of the world…” The Ugly Americans Once More (Lankaweb, Sri Lanaka’s first Social Media website)
The Economist only mentions a half century of history between China and Burma/Myanmar, yet, China’s history with Burma and then Myanmar goes back about two thousand years, and we will explore that later in this series.
The opinion piece also does not mention that China, since 1982, has not been into nation building as the U.S. has since 9/11, when President G.W. Bush launched wars against Iraq and Afghanistan with threats to Iran and North Korea.
Until doing research for this post, most of what I had read about China in The Economist had been educational, but this piece was stilted and biased—an example of China bashing.
What does the Beijing based unnamed critic writing in The Economist expect—that China, with its Communist, Taoist, Buddhist, Confucius culture, adopt America’s evangelical, neo-conservative role to spread “democracy” and “Christianity” to the world through nation building?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the critic writing in The Economist suggest that he or she expects China to spread “democracy” to countries like Burma and North Korea, which are by definition dictatorships, which the U.S. has a long history of supporting. See Cold War Origins of the CIA Holocaust to learn more.
If you haven’t read this opinion piece in The Economist, I suggest you do before going on to Part 3. Did you know that at the same time that the United States sells or gives weapons to dictatorships and authoritarian governments, it also hasprograms through the U.S. State Department to support religious freedom in many of the same countries?
For instance, Saudi Arabia, a country that prohibits any religion other than Islam and has a long history of human rights violations (Human Rights Watch World Report 2013). On October 20, 2010, the US State Department notified Congress of its intention to make the biggest arms sale in American history—an estimated $60.5 billion purchase by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The IAGS says this about Saudi Arabia: “Much has been reported about the complex system of terrorist financing and the money trail facilitating the September 11 terror attacks. Individuals and charities from the Persian Gulf—mainly from Saudi Arabia—appear to be the most important source of funding for terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda.”
Enough said about The Economist, Christianity and differences between dictatorships, democracies and republics, and back to the long history between China and Burma/Myanmar, which started during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – 220 A.D.).
Due to deposits of jade in Burma/Myanmar and that region, Chinese merchants have been involved in mining and trade there for more than two thousand years.
Then during the Qing Dynasty, there were four major invasions (1765-1769) of Burma by China’s Manchu leaders. In 1784, the long struggle between Burma and China ended and regular trade started up again.
In November 1885, Sir Robert Hart favored a proposal that China, as Burma’s overlord, stand aside and allow the British Empire to pursue her own course there provided that Britain allow Burma to continue her decennial tribute (once every ten years) missions to China. Source: The I. G. In Peking, Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs 1868-1907, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, page 614, 1975.
Instead, the British Empire made Burma a province of India in 1886.
Since independence from the British Empire, Burma has generally been impartial to world affairs but was one of the first countries to recognize Israel and the People’s Republic of China.
Territories such as the autonomous regions of Tibet, Xinjiang and countries like North Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Burma, Vietnam and others along China’s long borders were considered vassal states by some Chinese dynasties, and these vassal states often sent lavish gifts and delegations to China’s emperors on a regular schedule.
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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.
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Starting with the I Ching, The Book of Changes, almost five thousand years ago, the central focus of Chinese philosophy has been how to live an ideal life and how best to organize society.
When the Communist Party of China gained power in 1949, previous schools of Chinese philosophy, except Legalism, were denounced as backward and purged during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
However, their influence on Chinese thought did not vanish since China’s Central Committee continues to plan and organize modernization and changes to China’s five thousand year old culture and society.
Most Chinese believe that true advancement and growth should only happen slowly, at a steady, measured pace, which means to grow but grow slow like a tree while following a well thought out plan to bring about the changes.
Even the United States doesn’t change quickly.
In fact, it took almost ninety years to free the slaves, and women first sought the right to vote in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention.
Then seventy-two years later in 1920, American women finally earned the right to vote when the Nineteenth Amendment was adopted by Congress and was ratified by the states becoming a national law.
The last time women had relative freedom in China was in the seventh century during the Tang Dynasty when Emperor Wu Zetian, a woman, ruled the country.
Since 1982, when China ratified its Constitution, women in China have gained more freedom, power and rights than at any other time in China’s history including the Tang Dynasty.
Anyone that does not consider this progress is stupid, blind and deaf.
Critics in the West might point out that under the Communists, no woman has ruled China, but I could say the same of the United States and many other countries.
Today, The most likely woman candidate for Politburo status — and a remote possibility for the Standing Committee — is Lin Yandong, a senior Party official responsible for winning over non-Communists.
In fact, Chinese women’s participation in politics has grown since 1982. There are now 230 or more women provincial and ministerial officials, 670 or more are mayor, which is twice the number of 1995.
“Chinese women leaders have much in common. They generally all have a good education background, being mainly science majors, and solid experience in government. They are of a caliber equal to that of their male counterparts,” an All-China Women’s Federation expert said.
If you hear anyone demanding quick changes in China, be cautions. Moving fast may result in tragedy.I suggest that China continue to change steadily and slowly like an oak tree.
Why do so many of China’s critics expect China to move faster than the US did? Is it because they want to see China fail?
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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.
Almost half a century after her death, Anna May Wong (1905 to 1961) has not been forgotten.
As a child, Anna loved going to the movies and even cut school to go to the show.
Between 1919 and 1961, she acted in 62 films. The Internet Movie Data Base says she was the “first Chinese-American movie star”.
However, to act, Anna had to play the roles she was given. The Western stereotype cast her as a sneaky, untrustworthy woman that always fell for a Caucasian man. The dark side of achieving her dream of acting in movies was that Anna had to die so the characters she played got what they deserved.
Anna often joked that her tombstone should read, “Here lies the woman who died a thousand times.”
Until Chinese started to emigrate to the U.S. in the mid-19th century, they had never encountered a people who considered them racially and culturally inferior.
The discrimination against the Chinese in America was only exceeded by the racism and hatred directed at African-Americans.
In fact, in the 1960s, many of the anti racist laws enacted during the Civil Rights era focused on protecting African-Americans, which created a protected class.
Since the Chinese—due to cultural differences often did not complain—they were left behind.
In many respects, this racism toward the Chinese still exists in the US today and manifests itself through the media as China bashing, which supports the old stereotype.
When Anna May Wong visited China in 1936, she had to abandon a trip to her parent’s ancestral village when a mob accused her of disgracing China.
After her return to Hollywood, she was determined to play Chinese characters that were not stereotypes, but it was a losing battle. To escape the hateful racism, she lived in Europe for a few years.
Since U.S. law did not allow her to marry the Caucasian man she loved, and she was afraid that if she married a Chinese man he would force her to give up acting since Chinese culture judged actresses to be the same as prostitutes, she never married.
Anna May Wong smoked and drank too much. She died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California at age 56.
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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