In the lead paragraph, the Times mentioned that China’s overall air safety record has been one of the best in the world for six years.
In China, “State media said Wednesday that the plane carrying 96 people overshot the runway on a fog-shrouded night…”
Let’s put this crash in perspective by looking at a list Wikipedia provides of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft around the globe.
Remember US Airways flight 1549 on January 15, 2009, which ditched in the Hudson River with no fatalities, or Cogan Air flight 3407 on February 12 that hit a house in Clarence, New York killing all 49 passengers on board.
Then there is Southwest Airlines Flight 2294 on July 13, 2009, that made an emergency landing in Charleston, West Virginia with no injuries.
How about October 21, 2009, when the pilot of Northwest Airlines flight 188 was distracted by his personal laptop computer and missed his destination in San Diego by 150 miles.
On December 22, American Airlines flight 331 overruns the runway in Kingston, Jamaica and there are 40 injuries and no fatalities.
Yet a crash in China, with a great safety record for six years, has Sinophobes leaping out of their swamps shouting in morbid joy as if they are celebrating.
An excellent post on Telos does a good job explaining why so many hate China. “China-bashing is the new anti-capitalism.”
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.
The “banned” 2005 Chinese movie Summer Palace (颐和园, Yíhé Yuán) directed by Lou Ye, has become popular movie among Westerners.
Every expat website that discusses this movie says, “It’s the kind of movie that really shows and expresses the real China and its people.”
This flattering talk kept me wondering what movie was like.
Was it great?
Does it tell some secret things about the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989 like the movie’s poster suggest?
I recently had an opportunity to finally watch Summer Palace, but after sitting for 140 minutes, the question was still there—what was movie good for?
The character Yu Hong says during the movie, “My college years were the most confused time in my life.”
However, for me, watching this movie was most confused time.
The story begins with the leading girl, Yu Hong (played by Hao Lei), having sex with her first lover at home in a North China village. Then she abruptly leaves for school at Beijing University.
We don’t know what she studies or if she is smart enough to get into “Beida,”, which is top university in China.
At school, a new girlfriend Li Ti takes her to bars and introduces her to boy named Zhou Wei, which turns into stormy relationship with constant love, sex and fighting.
In one scene, they are having naked sex and next scene are slapping and screaming then making love again.
Never does story tell why they act like this. Their love should be deeply hurt and touched inside.
However, all I saw was their cold, wild sex with different people. There was too much unnecessary nudity, like Yu Hong having a lesbian relationship in her dorm room, which cheapened movie.
In 1989, Tiananmen Square incident took place.
Movie poster for Summer Palace shows soldiers with guns and advertises that this story tells something about politics saying, it is “a powerful recreation of the Tiananmen events.”
However, they show few minutes of some students on campus singing songs, riding in the back of trucks and throwing bricks. That’s all.
This movie is definitely not about 1989 Tiananmen. I think director Lou Ye wanted to get commercial attention in the West by making story at the same time as 1989, an insincere marketing tactic.
Anyway, Yu Hong catches Zhou and Li in bed, so she leaves PKU without graduating.
Then she is working in some southern cities. Later, the movie say she is married, but we don’t see or know to whom.
Meanwhile, Zhou and Li travel to Berlin together. He has job there but movie doesn’t tell what job is.
Li Ti spends her time walking naked around her apartment. Then Zhou says he wants to go back to China, so Li Ti jumps off roof in front of him and dies.
Zhou then moves to Chongqing and seems successful but we don’t know why.
Then he is driving on highway and meets Yu Hong again at gas station.
Why is she in central China?
Why is she at gas station?
We don’t know. They go to hotel and have sex, which ends the movie.
Summer Palace is a little, blue sad story.
The director likes to show Yu Hong walking around with pouting, weepy face to get our pity or showing her having crazy sex to arouse us.
The director says it’s love story except there is no love. There’s no reason for anything that happens. There’s nothing to hold the story together.
There is only one scene after another without explanation as if director was confused and didn’t know what to do. With more than two and half-hours of this, imagine how boring that was.
Also, director made stupid, irresponsible mistakes. He shows students in 1980’s China wearing new designer clothes, high heels and sexy lingerie—even though none of these trends had arrived in PRC yet.
Then there are scenes at bars and nightclubs with PKU students drinking foreign liquor and listening to American pop music, which is also unreal.
None of these things came to China until the late 1990s, decade later.
It is obvious that Lou Ye just wants to make his movie cool and stylish so people will watch it. He forgets that as filmmaker, he has certain responsibility to keep story historically accurate.
What bothers me most about Summer Palace is that so many Westerners will think this movie tells some real, true things about Chinese student culture, which is mostly unreal as depicted in movie.
The New York Times review says, “remarkable for its candor.”
The Shanghaiist, a popular website for foreigners in China, says, “This is the only honest piece of Chinese filmmaking we’ve seen in a long time”
Ha! Are they serious?
On the other hand, maybe they have never watched another Chinese movie except Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I know of at least twenty, sixth-generation Chinese moves better than Summer Palace.
Even director’s first movie, Suzhou River, was better than this rubbish.
Maybe this movie is popular with foreigners because there’s so much sex and nudity and because it’s “banned by government”, which really seems to make Westerners excited.
Any movie banned by Communists is automatically “cool” to Westerners, even if movie sucks.
So why was Summer Palace banned and director Lou Ye censored for next 5 years?
Actually, it’s not because of politics because this movie tells nothing about Tiananmen Square incident. And it’s not because nudity since those scenes can easily be edited out.
It’s only because Lou Ye took the movie to Cannes Film Festival in France without permission from China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, which is necessary for all Chinese filmmakers.
Lou Ye did this expecting he would be censored, so he could proudly say his movie was “banned in China” on his movie poster and get instant praise from Western audiences.
However, for me, I think this movie should be banned just because it sucks.
It’s big disappointment and waste of 2.5 hours.
Sixth-Generation Chinese filmmakers are trying hard to be shocking without telling good stories, and Western audience praises these filmmakers because they think Chinese who show nudity are “brave”.
How can anyone call this trash art as confusing as it is?
Lloyd Lofthouse, the host of the Blog, 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.
For a Western photo journalist to be featured in the China Daily says a lot when the topic he writes about is China. For Tom Carter, who has written guest posts for iLook China, it is like a coming of age for a journalist to receive such recognition for his work.
The China Dailyis the English language edition of the state-run media. In China, it is comparable to the London Times, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times or the San Francisco Chronicle. When I say it is comparable, the key to that description is “in China”.
The China Daily says of Tom’s work, “There is no single image that can adequately represent the diversity that is China. This is partly why Tom Carter’s 638-page tome of photographs taken during his tour of the country between 2006 and 2008 works so well.”
Photo of Tom Carter in China
“The goal was to portray China as it portrayed itself to me,” Carter says of his travels with his trusty Olympus Camedia C4000, a no-frills four-megapixel camera.
It seems both foreigners and Chinese are hungry for what Carter has to say about “all” of China.
Recently, Carter had an author event in Shanghai at a bar on the Bund where more than a hundred people came to hear him (paying a 65 yuan cover charge to boot) talk about his journey across China. There was standing room only with a line out the door.
Tom Carter’sbook is China: Portrait of a People and is available in the United States through Amazon.
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.
The China Daily is the English language edition for one of China’s state-run newspapers. The editorial office is in Beijing and there are branch offices in most major cities of China as well as several foreign capitals. The paper is published by satellite in Europe and the United States. You may also access it on-line (click above link).
The paper is regarded in the West as the English-language mouthpiece for China’s central government.
However, don’t see it as only a source for propaganda. It’s a serious newspaper and the people on the staff are professionals who see that the content of the paper fits the collective culture of China.
Any censorship usually does not come from the leadership of the central government but from the reporters and editors of the paper.
There have been times when the paper has been called from the central government and asked to cover a topic considered too sensitive by the staff.
Since China is changing at a rapid pace, any opinions you hold about China may be obsolete. The country, culture, and lifestyles of the people are changing as fast as the economy.
If you have trouble accepting that, discover China’s Sexual Revolution. Much of the behavior you will witness wouldn’t have been tolerated in the 1970s.
Hear Stephanie Griest
If you are interested in hearing from an insider who worked at the China Daily in 1997, I recommend reading “Around The Block” by Stephanie Elizondo Griest.
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.
Larry talks about Chinese currency and how the Western media says it is too cheap and isn’t a fair price. The media says this exports American jobs to China.
Many Americans believe that having China revalue its currency is important to America.
However, experts say that if China’s currency were allowed to flow, it would be about 1 to 5 and maybe 1 to 4 instead of 1 to 6 or 1 to 7.
What that means is that all goods manufactured in China would become more expensive in America and Europe. Prices for products from China could quickly go up 20%
Source: ShiWoLarry
Instead of jobs returning to the US, Western companies that manufacture in China would find cheaper labor elsewhere like in Vietnam.
In addition, changing the way China values its currency will not cause most customers from other nations to buy from the US, because labor costs in America are too high due to unions.
Larry asks, “Will Chinese goods become more expensive and hurt the US?” He says, “Yes.”
If anything, this currency issue is more political than economical.
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.
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
iLook China 