Amy Chua on Superior Chinese Mothers

January 11, 2011

I’m sure that Amy Chua had no idea she was about to light a Baby Boomer fuse that would explode when she wrote her essay published in The Wall Street Journal about Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.

In 2000, Paul Begala, a political strategist for President Bill Clinton, wrote in Esquire, “The Baby Boomers are the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self aggrandizing generation in American history.”

Begala was right.

The Boomers also gave birth to the narcissistic, self-esteem generation.

Amy Chua’s memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother went on sale today (January 11, 2011), and my wife and I went to the local Barnes and Noble and bought a copy.

Nancy (not her real name), who works for Barnes and Noble, told us of an experience she had substitute teaching in a girls P.E. Class. She said there were about 150 girls. Half were Asian and half were Caucasian.  When Nancy told them to sit and read or do what they wanted, the Asians took out books and studied. The Caucasians started to text, do makeup and gossip.

Studies show that the average American Boomer parent talks to his or her children less than five minutes a day and more than 80% never attend a parent-teacher conference. Boomer parents are so self-absorbed with other interests that TV, the Internet, video games and other teens raised many of their children.

However, when Chinese mothers come together, their conversations focus on their children and education, which explains why studies show Asian students have the lowest incidence of STDs, teen pregnancy, illegal drug use and the highest GPAs, graduation rates from high school and highest ratio of college attendance.

What do you think Boomer mothers talk about when they get together?

A close friend of mine, who isn’t Chinese, read Amy Chua’s essay and many of the comments attacking Chua for her tough stance as a mother. He said it is obvious that Chinese mothers love their children and American mothers don’t because love means sacrifice.

The vicious responses I have been reading on Blogs and in some book reviews are obviously a guilt reaction for not being good parents. The truth hurts.

Learn about Education Chinese Style

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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 | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese women, cultural differences, education, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China Moving – Part 1/2

January 4, 2011

To put this topic in perspective, I’ll start by talking about poverty in the United States.

Business Insider says that 45 million Americans lived in poverty in 2009, which saw the largest single year increase in the U.S. poverty rate since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959.

U.S. household participation in the food stamp program has increased 20.28% since last year, and in June, the number of Americans on food stamps surpassed 41 million for the first time.

One of every six Americans is now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.

More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the U.S. government health care program designed principally to help the poor, and 20% of children now live in poverty.

The poverty in China you will now read and/or see is not unique. Poverty is a global challenge.

In fact, the World Bank says the poverty rate in China fell from 85% in 1981 to 15.9% in 2005, while in India, 421 million live in poverty.

In this 2007 video, Al Jazeera reported that 150 million people left rural China to find jobs in the country’s rapidly growing cities.

On the outskirts of Shanghai is an illegal shantytown built by migrant laborers. Most migrant laborers are farmers who left their land to find work in the city.

The migrants in this Al Jazeera report collect debris from construction sites, which they sell to recycling centers. Even though these workers earn little, it is more than double what they earned at home.

However, the narrator “does not” mention that on the farm, there may not be much money to buy luxury goods but the home they lived in was rent-free and as farmers, they grew enough food to feed themselves.

The World Bank says that one percent of the world’s population survives by collecting valuable trash and debris as the men depicted in the Al Jazeera video do to earn enough money to survive.

Trash collecting represents the first tenuous step to escape the poverty of rural China.

Professor Shi Ming-zheng, Director of NYU in Shanghai, says the urban people have mixed feelings about the millions of migrant workers flooding into the city to improve their lives.

He says, “On one hand, the urban people feel the migrants are necessary to provide cheap labor. On the other hand, they also despise them because they come from uneducated, poor rural backgrounds.”

For most migrant labors, the only hope for the future is with the children and education is the key.

In fact, China’s government sees the importance of raising the education levels of children so they become useful people for China.

But, according to Al Jazeera, of China’s 20 million migrant children less than half attend school.

Part 2 of “China Moving” will focus on what happens in the countryside when so many people left to find work in the cities.

Learn more about The Urban-Rural Divide in 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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Home Alone in Rural China

December 30, 2010

In rural China, millions have left their homes to find work in the cities.

However, not all have the money to take their children with them. Some children stay behind alone.

The children left behind  in China are estimated to be over 22 million. In the US, we call them Latchkey Kids.

In fact, Jareb Collins at Associated Content says as many as 77 percent of American youth are Latchkey Kids.

Xie Xiang Ling is one of those children in China that lives alone. She is twelve and tells her story to Al Jazeera.

Ling says she lives alone in rural Anhui Province.

Her parents work in the city and she takes care of herself.  Sometimes her parents come home on the weekend and sometimes are gone for months.

Ling said there are too many people in the city where her parents sell fruit, tea and nuts.

When Ling visited her parents in the city, she had trouble sleeping nights because the city is so loud and there are so many cars.

Back home, Ling does her own cooking and eats fruit.

At times, she helps on her aunt’s farm and pulls the vegetables from the ground.

In school, she loves language class and math but does not like the English class since the teacher always screams at the students.

Ling wants to go to college and earn good money but her family cannot afford to send her to college.

Learn more about 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 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

The Beast of too much Self-Esteem and Positive Language

December 26, 2010

The New York Times reported Top Test Scores from Shanghai Stun Educators. China’s students were number one globally while the US came in 23rd.

How did the United States fall so far behind?

The scapegoat is not bad teachers or their unions. Even the flawed and biased documentary Waiting for Superman says only 7% of the teachers were found to be considered bad. Since the average student has about 50 teachers kindergarten through high school, this means less than four might be poor teachers.

The real culprit is the “positive language” and the inflated “sense of self-esteem” movement that has plagued the US for several decades.

In fact, Rapid Net.com reports that Edward Wynne, Professor of Education at the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle campus), and Kevin Ryan, Professor of Education at Boston University, question the benefits of the obsession with self-esteem in America’s schools. In their recently published book Reclaiming Our Schools, they note: “The self-esteem movement puts a false and infectious pressure on teachers. They are more and more expected to keep students feeling good about themselves. In other eras, teachers were expected to provide pupils with an environment and educational opportunity to grow and achieve.”

Rapid Net.com says, “A 1990 study contrasting the performance of American students in mathematics skills with five other countries revealed that the math scores of American 5th-graders were the lowest of the six countries. The Koreans were first. The test asked pupils to say whether they felt they would be “good at mathematics in high school.” Of the Americans, 68% said “yes” while only 26% of the high-scoring Koreans gave that reply.”

The answer is returning to Aristotle’s idea of the “Golden Mean”, which means avoidance of extremes since building a false sense of self-esteem in children is an extreme.

However, Aristotle is not alone.

In Chinese philosophy, a similar concept, Doctrine of the Mean, was propounded by Confucius.

Buddhist philosophy also includes the concept of the Middle Way.

Reverend Dr. George C. Papademetriou at Goarch.org says, “The way of (Christian) Orthodoxy is to converge on the golden mean, carefully avoiding extremes and the pitfalls that can lead to destruction.”

The extreme self-esteem movement in the US is leading the country towards destruction.

In China and in most American-Chinese homes, when a child brings a poor grade home from school, the teacher is not blamed.  The parents accept the blame and tell the child he or she is lazy and stupid and must work harder. 

Then the Chinese parent enrolls the child in private night or weekend classes to help them succeed.  They may also hire a tutor for the child.

Maybe the Chinese concept of raising children explains the 2009 PISA test results from Shanghai and the economic miracle that has taken place in China since the early 1980s. 

Since the Chinese are not as perfect as most Americans born after 1960 believe they are, the Chinese are willing to work harder regardless of low or high self-esteem.

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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

Modern Romance in China – Part 1/2

December 10, 2010

There is a saying in China that, “Where there’s love, there is a way.”

However, for some, it isn’t that easy. High paid white-collar jobs in China are demanding and leave little time for romance.

However, with western style romance novels and romantic movies leading the way, hearing the word “love” is becoming common but there are other challenges to overcome.

Although China’s open economy has made many people rich, “love” is still a hard word to say since most Asians are more reserved than westerners are.

“Romance Chinese Style” is a film by first-time director Maggie Gu that takes a close look at the romance industry in China that is helping to overcome this shortage of time and abundance of shyness.

Al Jazeera English reports on Maggie Gu’s film and looks at on-line dating, blind dates, double dates, and speed dating that have become popular in China today.

Since China opened to the West, it is a country in a hurry. Where cars replaced bicycles, fashionable outfits replaced Mao uniforms, the pursuit of romance replaced Party loyalty.

Along the way, in 2007, China’s first speed dating club opened its doors.

In fact, speed dating originated in the US, but the idea traveled to China where for a small fee speed dating takes place over the Internet leading to digital love.

This service allows busy members of China’s growing upper-middle class to meet potential mates, and since many Chinese find it difficult to express their feelings freely, there are new schools where these wealthy professionals discover how to express themselves in the language of romance.

Go to Modern Romance in China – Part 2

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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

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese men, Chinese women, cultural differences, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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