A report by Melissa Chan for Al Jazeera reminded me of America’s political divide between red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) states.
If we look at the four US presidential elections between 1996 – 2008, we discover the political divide in America, and it is mostly between large urban population centers and rural/middle America as if America were two countries — not one.
A similar split may be growing in China, and Melissa Chan’s report, “China’s Youth Divided over Superpower Status” reveals the divide that parallels America’s split between old-world conservative values and new-world, compassionate idealism.
Chan reported from Beijing April 8, 2011 revealing China’s (middle-class urban) youth were living the wild life dancing the nights away as North American and European youth have been doing for decades.
For China’s form of new-world idealism, the music is heavy metal. “Stand up!” the musician sings. “Stand up! You are Chinese! Rise Up! You are the descendents of the dragon!”
“However,” Melissa Chan says, “this euphoria is qualified by a sense of duty missing in the West.”
Hu Song, the lead singer of Yakso, a popular heavy metal group, told Chan, “China most certainly has emerged as a power. But I hope with great power…people’s spirits will also rise up or else it is a problematic power.”
After watching the Al Jazeera newsreport, it was obvious that many rural youths do not agree with the middle-class urban youths that have the luxury to spend nights dancing to heavy metal, a lifestyle imported from the West along with American fast food, which brought an epidemic of diabetes and heart disease to urban China.
For some (mainly among China’s 700 million rural Chinese) this is expressed in pride and patriotism.
Others (mainly middle-class urban youth) are more skeptical of their leaders, raising their voices through the medium of a dynamic youth counterculture such as heavy metal music with long nights of dancing accompanied by increased drug use as in the West.
There is another difference between rural and urban China. The one-child policy, which focused mainly in urban areas while many peasants on farms in rural China were allowed to have more than one child so there were more hands to work the field. This helped most of rural China avoid raising little emperor/empresses— another explanation for the growing division in thought.
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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.
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No, this is not about looks or Botox or face-lifting creams or hairstyles, or tanning salons, or the desire to have a rounder, paler moon face—the standard of beauty to most Chinese.
What I am writing about is the meaning of “face” to the Chinese
Dr. Martha Lee wrote, “Nobody ever said what you do with those who have ‘disgraced’ the family name by getting divorced.” Dr. Lee was writing of the ‘hongbao’ dilemma.
In China, if you do something that is considered a disgrace, like getting divorced, that may be considered a “loss of face” for everyone in the family.
“The ‘face’ is psychological and not physiological. Interesting as the Chinese physiological face is, the psychological ‘face’ makes a still more fascinating study. It is not a face that can be washed or shaved, but a ‘face’ that can be ‘granted’ and ‘lost’ and ‘fought for’ and ‘presented as a gift’.”
When our daughter was a pre-teen, we went on weekend hikes in the hills behind our home. The end of the hike was a large park across the street from the La Puente Mall. On one fateful day, when she was nine or ten, she was the first to discover a dead man. She came running back with a shocked look.
It turned out the dead man was an architect from Taiwan and his company had gone broke. His “loss of face” for failing had driven him to take an extension cord from his mother’s house, find a suitable tree in an isolated portion of that park, and hang himself.
He was dead when we reached him.
Do not stereotype. The meaning of “face” may vary between Chinese. It depends on the balance between Confucianism and Daoism along with factors like Buddhism or belief in the Christian, Islamic or Jewish God.
“Face” is why most Chinese mothers ride their children hard to do well in school while telling everyone they know that their kid is stupid and/or lazy and has no chance to succeed.
Chinese mothers may often tell their children the same thing. However, if the child is accepted to a prestigious university, that Chinese mother has now earned bragging rights and “gained much face” for the job she did as a mother
To get a better idea, I recommend reading Amy Tan‘s “The Joy Luck Club” or watching the movie.
We had a house full of my wife’s Chinese friends over for dinner. After eating, the children gathered in our downstairs TV room to watch a movie. They picked “The Joy Luck Club“, and during one scene, when the Chinese mother was acting very Chinese, all the children looked at each other, nodded ‘yes’ and laughed ironically. Since my wife is Chinese, I knew why they reacted that way. They all had Chinese mothers.
“Face” is why the Chinese businessman will take great risks or take only a few risks and if given a chance may steal another person blind—that is if they believe they can get away with it. If they are caught and it is against the law, that is a “loss of face”—one reason for suicide.
Most Chinese men will wait until they are successful before they let others know. If they fail, it’s possible no one will hear about it beyond the family unit.
“Face” is why Chinese men often work twelve to sixteen hour days, seven days a week earning small but saving large. The Chinese will do without luxuries and save to pay for their child’s university education. Chinese women will work just as hard.
Studies in today’s China show that the average family saves/spends a third of its income for a child’s education.
Regaining “face” may be one reason why Mao reoccupied Tibet for China in 1949. Look closely, and you may discover that even Taiwan claims Tibet for the same reason.
The other reason may have been tactical—to control the high ground as Israel controls the Golan Heights.
Having control over the Tibetan plateau was one of the tactical reasons Britain convinced the Dalai Lama to declare freedom from China in 1912.
“Face” may be why China’s leaders get so angry over Taiwan. As long as Taiwan is not ruled by the mainland, it may be seen as a “loss of face”.
It’s why the Chinese want to walk on the moon and reach the other planets before anyone else. In China, “face” is universal to most of the population and different for each person.
For the Chinese, taking risks is no stranger. It’s probably the reason the Chinese invented paper, the crossbow, the compass, the stirrup, developed a cure for scurvy, the printing press, gunpowder, and built multi-stage rockets centuries before anyone in the West did.
China’s list of revolutionary inventions is longer than this. Many of these inventions eventually appeared in the West where Westerners took credit for them.
Now you know the truth.
In “What the Chinese Want even More than Oil or Gold“, the focus was on Chinese gambling and about illegal lotteries going legal and national. Since I married into a Chinese family, I understand what the author of this piece was saying, but the topic is more complex than that.
To learn more, I suggest you read the Investoralist, “Where Curious Minds Meet”. The Investorilist piece says that gambling is China’s Achilles heel.
I disagree.
I believe it is risk taking that brought China to greatness in the past. It’s when most Chinese stopped taking risks that China lost its spot as a regional superpower. It’s all about ‘face’. Take a risk and win but make a mistake and get caught, you “lose face” and maybe your life too, which may explain many of the suicides in countries such as China, Japan and Korea.
This revised and edited post first appeared as a four-part series starting February 17, 2010 at Chinese “Face” – Part 1
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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.
To subscribe to iLook China, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.
According to Jewish tradition, the Torah was revealed to Moses more than thirty-three hundred years ago during the time of China’s Shang Dynasty (1766 – 1122 B.C.).
In fact, the Talmud is an organic interpretation through discussion and debate of what the Torah means and teaches.
In most of Asia, the perception of Jews as expert moneymakers does not have the religion-based antagonism that often accompanies the same stereotype elsewhere in the world. While both Christians and Muslims have persecuted Jews for religious reasons, China has not done this.
Instead, South Korea and China respect what may be learned from the wisdom of Judaism.
The Muqata says, “Close to 50 million people live in South Korea, and everyone learns Gemara (Talmud) in school.’We tried to understand why the Jews are geniuses, and we came to the conclusion that it is because they study Talmud,’ said the Korean ambassador to Israel.”
“In my country we also focus on family values,” The South Korean Ambassador said. “The (Jewish) respect for adults, respect and appreciation for the elderly parallels the high esteem in my country for the elderly.”
Another significant issue is the respect for education. In the Jewish tradition, parents have a duty to teach their children and devote lots of attention to it.
For South Korean parents, their children’s education is also a top priority.
How valuable is education to Jewish tradition?
Torah.org says, “Maimonides (1135 – 1204 C.E.) in his great code of Jewish law has an entire section devoted to teaching, teachers, students and the concept of knowledge and education. The basic value is that teachers are to be respected and given honor.
“One should rise before one’s teacher, speak respectfully to one’s teacher, and treat one’s teacher with greater probity than even one’s parent. The Talmud teaches, “parents bring a child into this world but a teacher can bring a child into the World to Come” – into a world of spirit, creativity, ideas and self-worth and ultimate immortality.
In fact, “the Talmud itself attributes to God, so to speak, the attribute of being a teacher – “He Who teaches Torah to His people Israel.” Even mortal teachers are viewed in Judaism as being engaged in holy work.”
These ancient Jewish values have also found a home in China.
Newsweek reported, “The apparent affection for Jewishness has led to a surprising trend in publishing over the last few years: books purporting to reveal the business secrets of the Talmud that capitalize on the widespread impression among Chinese that attributes of Judaism lead to success in the financial arts.”
Newsweek says, “Titles such as Crack the Talmud: 101 Jewish Business Rules, The Illustrated Jewish Wisdom Book, and Know All of the Money-Making Stories of the Talmud share the shelves with stories of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.”
“The admiration for Judaism stems from a history that goes beyond business,” Newsweek continues. “About half of the dozen or so Westerners active in Mao Zedong’s China were Jewish, and that also led to increased interest in Jewish culture among Chinese intellectuals, says Xu Xin, professor of Jewish studies at Nanjing University.
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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.
More than two billion Christians believe Jesus Christ was the son of God and is God.
About 13 million Jews see Christ differently. Some Jewish scholars note that though Jesus may have used the phrase “my Father in Heaven” (cf. Lord’s Prayer), this common poetic Jewish expression may have been misinterpreted as literal.
In fact, Rabbi Jacob Emden considered Jesus a righteous man, who brought the light of faith and morality to the world, but not as a Messiah.
One and a half billion Muslims, on the other hand, see Jesus as a savior and a reformist. Mission Islamsays, “Jesus is known to the Muslims as ‘Issa – this is the name for Jesus that we have been given in our scriptures.
“To Muslims, Jesus – or ‘Issa – is a savior, a reformist, the Messiah (the anointed one), the ‘Word of God’. He was elevated to heaven. He could cure the ill, raise the dead, fashion inanimate objects and blow life into them, all by the Will of God.
“We believe that the one who disbelieves in Jesus is not a Muslim, because the person who disbelieves in one of the prophets disbelieves in all of them. So Muslims believe in Jesus and in his message. His message was one with all the other messengers. In the Qur’an, it is said that God never sent a messenger to mankind except that he was sent with one warning: Worship Allah alone.”
There are even atheists that recognize Jesus Christ as an important historical person. In Atheists for Jesus, we learn that Ken Schei has a goal to rescue Jesus from the Religious Right then from the Bible.
Schei says, “I have come to have a great deal of respect for the teachings of Jesus. My respect for Jesus is not based on the Cross, but rather on the Mount—not on His death and supposed resurrection, but on His teachings as exemplified by the Sermon on the Mount.”
Now that I have established the wide variety of people and beliefs that recognize the importance of Jesus, John 8:7 in the New Testament says, “So when they continued asking him (Jesus), he lifted up himself, and said unto them, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’.”
With John 8:7 in mind, what are we to say of critics that continue to cast stones at Amy Chua, the Tiger Mother.
At Amazon.com, in some of the one-star reviews, critics often cast brutal stones heavy with opinions at Amy Chua accusing her of child abuse, being a narcissist, a psychopath, a liar and a backstabber all because Chua spent hours each week with her daughters setting high expectations and following through sometimes using insults and threats to achieve her parenting goals.
China is another example of critics casting stones, and the Western media often casts these stones at China without telling the whole story.
One example of a “stone thrower” is an anonymous Blogger that writes Understanding China, One Blog at a Time—An American in China.This Blogger mostly writes criticisms of China such as the most recent one, “Irrational Chinese and Crazy Nationalism”.
This anonymous Blogger often judges all of China based on his or her personal experiences while living and working there and this Blogger has attracted fans with similar opinions that enjoy criticizing China without much evidence and/or understanding of China, its people and its history to support those opinions.
Would Jesus Christ have approved of these individuals that so easily cast stones?If He were here today, what would He say?
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.
Against all odds, since the 1960s, the average Asian-Americans parent (including Chinese-Americans) held on to traditional parenting methods more in line with the Old Testament and old-world values.
Why is this?
Nicholas D. Kristof, writing for the New York Times, says, “Perhaps as a legacy of Confucianism, its citizens have shown a passion for education and self-improvement — along with remarkable capacity for discipline and hard work, what the Chinese call “chi ku,” or “eating bitterness”.
In Time magazine, Amy Chua said, “‘I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too.’ The tiger-mother approach isn’t an ethnicity but a philosophy: expect the best from your children, and don’t settle for anything less.”
In 2003, 49.8% of Asian-Americans over age 25 had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 27.6% of whites and 17.3% of blacks.
Also according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2008 Asian-Americans had per-capita incomes of $30,292, whites had per-capita incomes of $28,502, and blacks had per-capita incomes of $18,406.
For thousands of years starting well before the birth of Jesus Christ, old word values, as defined by the Old Testament, guided parents and there was a reason for that.
There’s an old saying that there is “nothing new under the sun”.
Some will argue that were no jet planes, cell phones, laptop computers, fax machines, and mp3 players during ancient times.
However, the saying that “nothing is new under the sun” refers to the intangibles of life as defined by human behavior, not specific inventions and gadgets. The reason why most parents around the globe (such as Amy Chua) still raises children using old-world values was that time proved those methods worked best while rejecting what didn’t work.
In the 1960s, when the “average” American parent rejected those old-world parenting values for the soft, self-esteem building approach to parenting, they turned their backs on what worked best for millennia.
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.
This post first appeared on March 26, 2011, at Crazy Normal, a blog about education, parenting and coming of age.
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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