Circular Thinking and Arrows

June 10, 2010

The school where I taught had students from more than a dozen nationalities. For that reason, I attended in-services to become aware of cultural differences.  I learned that Westerners think as an arrow flies—straight.  However, those from the Middle East and Asia think in circles as in figurative language with possibly more than one meaning.

This means that when someone from the Middle East or Asia says or does one thing, he or she may mean something different.

North Korea Map

Recently, China has been under global pressure to condemn North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean warship on March 26 that killed 46 sailors. The Christian Science Monitor reported on June 8 that China has  blamed North Korea for killing three of its citizens and arrested a North Korean government official for drug trafficking—something unheard of before.

Could this be China’s circular way to pressure North Korea to admit sinking the South Korean ship or to stop threatening war and return to the peace table? North Korea relies on China for food and financial aid and if China has a reason to limit or stop that support, the stability of Kim Jon-il’s government would be threatened.

See China and North Korea

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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China: The Roots of Madness – Part 4/8

June 10, 2010

In Part 4, Chiang Kai-shek’s army is not ready when Japan invades Manchuria. He doesn’t have tanks, the artillery is old and the Chinese are learning about airplanes.

Meanwhile, the Communists that Chiang thought he had destroyed are back. Mao knew the peasants lived in horrible poverty. He promised land reforms and by 1932 has millions of supporters.

The language describing Mao is not flattering. Yes, when Mao ruled China, he was a brutal dictator. However, Chiang Kai-shek was also a brutal dictator. But Chiang converted to Christian in 1929, and the West still refers to him as the president of China—not a dictator.

Instead of fighting Japan, Chiang’s army bombs villages that Mao controls killing tens of thousands of noncombatants. Mao takes his ninety thousand troops on the famous thousand-mile Long March. A year later, only a few thousand remain. Mao calls for unity to fight Japan.

One of Chiang’s generals, Zhang Xueliang, forces him to sit down with the Communists where Chiang Kai-shek agrees to fight Japan. As soon as Chiang returns to his capital, he breaks the agreement and throws Zhang in prison.

Continued in The Roots of Madness- Part 5 or return to Part 3

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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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Speaking English Means Waging War

June 10, 2010

The American Conservative Daily, with air between ears, says this about the fact that learning English is mandatory in China’s public schools, “A nation planning to invade and occupy another nation would learn that nation’s language.”

Republican Elephant

Did the Japanese make learning English mandatory in Japan before bombing Pearl Harbor?

Did Nazi Germany require citizens to learn English before starting World War II in Europe? 

Since when has any nation required its citizens to learn the language of a nation they are planning to invade and conquer? 

When the US waged war against American indians, many indian children were sent to Christian boarding schools and forced to learn English and forget their native language. US citizens were never required to learn any American indian languages.

When the US won the Spanish America war and acquired territories like the Philippians where Spanish was spoken, did the US make Spanish mandatory in the US schools?

When I was in the US Marines and fought in Vietnam, I didn’t have to learn Vietnamese.

The reason China made English mandatory is because America is China’s largest trading partner and China has invested more than a trillion dollars in America.  If you ever visit any of China’s major cities, like Shanghai or Beijing, you may notice that the street signs are in English and Chinese.  On the subways, the voice that announces the next stop says it first in English and then Chinese.

The Chinese are not stupid.  English, thanks to the British Empire (not the United States), is the most spoken language on the planet and is the language of business and science.  If China wants to be successful in a world where business and science are dominated by the English language, the Chinese people must speak English.

See Education Chinese Style

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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China: The Roots of Madness – Part 3/8

June 9, 2010

In Part 3, death claims Sun Yat-sen (1866 – 1925) after he has accepted support from Soviet Russia. Soon, General Chiang Kai-shek (1887 – 1975), with help from the Communists, consolidates power in southern China.

Chiang is known to Westerners as a fiery nationalist and revolutionary.  He mobilizes an army under Sun Yat-sen’s flag and marches north with a few divisions. Meanwhile, the warlords have gathered a half-a-million troops to stop him. Outnumbered, Chiang sends an advance group of nationalists and communists to call the peasants and workers to join his army.

Among those peasants and workers is Mao Tse-tung (1893 – 1976).  While moving north, Chiang’s army raids foreign concessions, burns foreign buildings and tears down foreign flags.  Leftist leaders of the Kuomintang start to distrust Chiang Kai-shek and some want to assassinate him but others disagree.

In Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek, now a dictator, strikes first on April 12, 1927. His troops kill anyone suspected of being a Communist. In December, there is a Communist uprising in Canton. A battle rages for two days between the Communists and Kuomintang ending in the executions of most of the Communists, but Mao escapes and goes into hiding.

Continued in Part 4, The Roots of Madness or return to Part 2, The Roots of Madness.

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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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Red Dawn Remake

June 9, 2010

Cinematical reports that a remake of “Red Dawn”, a 1984 move about the US being invaded by the Soviet Union, is scheduled to be out later this year.  However, since the evil Communist Soviet Empire does not exist anymore, the remake needed another bad guy to invade the US, so they made Communist China the villain.

This resulted in Chinese newspaper headlines saying the “U.S. Reshoots Cold War Move to Demonize China.”

Judging from at least one comment on Cinematical, I’d say the Chinese have a reason to be upset.  Some person (who can’t spell or punctuate) called “Buzz” said, “Guys china is not our friend or allie.  They are still very bad people (gov’t) who want to dominate the world. Let them grip and complain. Who cares? Their newspapers are full of anyi American propaganda so why should we care what they think.” 

If “Buzz” didn’t grow up in Kentucky or Tennessee, he must be a Tibetan or Uyghur refugee.

Here are a few reasons why the Chinese might be sensitive when demonized in the West.

1. The Opium Wars (1839 and 1860) invaded by France and England
2. Taiping Rebellion (1851 to 1864) led by a Christian convert
3. Burning of the Summer Palace (1860) by a Western allied force
4. Dungan Revolt 1862 (a Muslim rebellion)
5. Yangzhou riot 1868
6. Tianjin Massacre 1870
7. Panthay Rebellion 1856 to 1873 (another Muslim rebellion)
8. Sino-French War (1884 -1885)
9. Sino-Japanese War (1894 – 1895)
10. The Boxer Rebellion followed by a Western invasion
11. The collapse of the Qing Dynasty followed by forty years of civil war and anarchy as warlords fought for control of China and the West did nothing to intervene.
12. World War II (1937 – 1945) invaded by Japan
13. The Korean and Vietnam wars, which to the Chinese were seen as threats to China considering the century that came before those two conflicts. Mao said that Vietnam was the lips to China’s teeth. What happens to the teeth when the lips are gone?

How many times has China invaded America, England, France or Japan with a military force? Has a Chinese Buddhist or any Chinese raised in Confucian tradition started a rebellion anywhere in the world?

See Christianity and Islam in China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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