Five Ancient Chinese Myths and Science Proves One Was Real

June 10, 2020

Myth: 1) a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events

2) a widely held but false belief or idea.

Yin and Yang

“A popular creation myth from Daoism states that before the beginning of the world there were two opposite forces. Yin was the female element, representing softness, darkness and the earth; Yang was the male element, representing hardness, light and the heavens. Though the two forces were opposites, they were still dependent on each other to maintain the harmony of the universe.” ­– Study.com

Xi-Wang-Mu, the Queen of the West

The Ancient History Encyclopedia says, “She was the queen of the immortal gods and spirits, especially female spirits who lived in the mystical land of Xihua (“West Flower”), and goddess of immortality. She is also known as Xiwangmu or Xi-Wang-Mu and lived in a castle of gold in the Kunlun Mountains, surrounded by a moat which was so sensitive that even a hair dropped on the waters would sink. This moat served as protection for her Imperial Peach Orchard where the juices of the fruit of the trees gave immortality. She rewarded her followers with eternal life but punished those who angered her. During the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) the government built shrines for her popular cult.”


MULAN – Full Movie (not the latest Disney version; with no English subtitles)

The Myth of Mulan is based on a poem that “tells the story of a young girl who dresses as a man for a dozen years to wage war in her father’s stead. Though many people believe it was based on a true story, there is little evidence that the powerful young woman existed. And there are longstanding debates over where the story was to have taken place and about the family name of Mulan.” – Hartford Courant.com

The Yellow Emperor has a tomb, but he is still a myth

The Myth of Huang Di or the Yellow Emperor is about “a legendary Chinese sovereign and cultural hero presented in Chinese mythology. He is said to be the ancestor of all Huaxia Chinese. According to many sources he was one of the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. Tradition holds that he reigned from 2697–2597 BCE or 2696–2598 BCE. He is regarded as the founder of Chinese culture & civilization. His enlightenments include fundamental shifts in civilization: writing (on tortoise shells), politically formed government, the compass and silk woven clothes via the Empress, Lei Zhu (嫘祖).”

The Great Flood

“One of the Chinese legends explains that the flood was caused by an argument between a crab and a bird. Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters escaped a great flood and were the only people alive on earth. After the great flood, they repopulated the world.” – Ark Encounter

What’s interesting about China’s Great Flood Myth is that it has been verified by science. Culture Trip.com reports, “A dramatic 4,000-year-old Chinese myth known as the ‘Great Flood of Gun-Yu’ has underpinned Chinese culture for millennia. Historians have long debated the veracity of the story, but a startling new study published in Science says there’s archaeological evidence that the flood was real.” … “Using evidence from the sediments along the Yellow River, a team of geologists and archaeologists have verified that a devastating flood did indeed occur around 1900 BCE, approximately the date that the Xia dynasty is supposed to have begun. The catastrophe ranks as one of the largest freshwater floods in the past 10,000 years.”

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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The COVID-19 Warning

May 6, 2020

If it is possible to learn from history, the world may be fortunate that the stability of Chinese civilization for several thousand years left behind a well-documented historical record.

In 2017, Scientific American reported, “Records from Ancient China reveal link between Epidemics and Climate Change. By analyzing Chinese records throughout nearly 2,000 years of history, researchers have found that climate-driven disturbances like floods, droughts and locust outbreaks were associated with disease epidemics. …

“The new research underscores the idea that climatic changes may affect human health in a variety of ways. Present-day concerns about climate change and infection often focus on the potential of higher temperatures to facilitate the spread of disease vectors, like mosquitoes.”

Contagion Live reports on The Ripple Effect of Climate Change on Epidemic Risk. “Increases in extreme weather events, as predicted by climate scientists, may also lead to increases in infectious disease outbreaks. Epidemics have previously been seen in the wake of natural disasters, which can lead to displaced and crowded populations, hotbeds for infection transmission. Severe rainfall or flooding is particularly effective at creating environments suitable for the transmission and propagation of infectious diseases such as measles or cholera. Conditions, as currently seen on the devastated island of Puerto Rico, are often more amenable for mosquitoes to breed in flood-affected regions and as a result, may increase disease risk in those areas.”

What did China learn over the centuries?

The Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity reports, “Since ancient times, China has acquired a rich experience in both the prevention and cure of infectious diseases. As early as in the Warring States period (475 BC – 221 BC), China began to develop theories on epidemic diseases. In the Qin Dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC), an integrated response system, including prevention, diagnosis, and isolation, was established.

“Later, during the Han Dynasty (206BC – 220 AD), people began to pay attention to the control of infection sources. Whereas, vaccination methods were created in the Song Dynasty (960 – 1270 AD, composed by the Northern Song Dynasty and Southern Song Dynasty), they were popularized throughout the Ming (1368 – 1644 AD) and Qing (1644 – 1912) Dynasties.

“However, at that time, China had not established a biosafety prevention system based on modern microbiological studies on infectious diseases, lacking a comprehensive scientific understanding of them. It was in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, with the arrival of missionaries and the return of overseas students, that advanced western science and technology were introduced into China, allowing the implementation of scientific infectious disease prevention and control measures and giving rise to modern biosafety means.”

For modern civilization to survive, the world’s leaders must cooperate, and that includes the United States. However, current President Donald Trump is always looking for someone else to blame. For sure, Donald Trump is not a role model for how to survive a pandemic. That is not how to survive climate change and the epidemics to come. COVID-19 might be just the beginning. Are you ready? 

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Who Deserves Credit for the First Vaccine?

April 1, 2020

Worst Pandemics in History reports that “25 million died from Bubonic Plague in 541-542 AD, and 75-200 million died from the Black Death in 1346-1353.” … The next huge death toll from a pandemic equal to the first two was Influenza in 1918 killing “20 – 50 million people.”

Because of these earlier pandemics, eventually, the first successful vaccines were created, and as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread around the world, a global race is on to create a vaccine to protect us from this one, too.

While Edward Jenner, an English physician, developed the first successful smallpox vaccine in 1796, did you know that he wasn’t the first one to inoculate for a viral disease?

The history of vaccinations started centuries before Jenner was born.

“Several accounts from the 1500s describe smallpox inoculation as practiced in China and India (one is referred to in volume 6 of Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China). Glynn and Glynn, in The Life and Death of Smallpox, note that in the late 1600s Emperor K’ang Hsi, who had survived smallpox as a child, had his children inoculated. That method involved grinding up smallpox scabs and blowing the matter into nostril. Inoculation may also have been practiced by scratching matter from a smallpox sore into the skin. It is difficult to pinpoint when the practice began, as some sources claim dates as early as 200 BCE.” — History of Vaccines.org

However, Britannica.com tells us “China has one of the world’s oldest medical systems. Acupuncture and Chinese herbal remedies date back at least 2,200 years, although the earliest known written record of Chinese medicine is the Huangdi neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic) from the 3rd century bce.”

“Newly discovered documents reveal that 2,200 years ago, Qin Shi Huangdi, China’s first emperor, put out an executive order to search for a potion that would give him eternal live.” — Live Science.com

Is it possible that the first emperor of China’s search for immorality might have also led to those alleged early inoculation attempts as early as 200 BCE? After all, the same desperate search by Huangdi’s alchemists accidently led to the discovery of gunpowder.

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Surviving a Pandemic: China vs the United States

March 25, 2020

China is a collective culture and the United States is individualistic. FutureLearn.com says, “Individualism stresses individual goals and the rights of the individual person. Collectivism focuses on group goals, what is best for the collective group, and personal relationships.”

While it is true that China got off to a bad start when local officials in the city of Wuhan attempted to silence and punish Dr. Li Wenliang for sending out a warning about the COVID-19 virus, it didn’t take long before China’s central government acted aggressively to contain the spread of the epidemic.

On December 27, Wuhan health officials learned that a new coronavirus was making people sick. Four days later, China informed the World Health Organization’s office in China.

Then on January 7, China’s President Xi Jinping became involved. Eleven days later Beijing sends epidemiologists to Wuhan to determine what is happening.

On January 21st, the CDC in the United States confirmed the first COVID-19 case. Two days later, China, locked down Wuhan and three other nearby cities, days before Dr. Li Wenliang died on February 7 from COVID-19. The lockdown was not voluntary. It was mandatory.

By March 19, China Daily reported, “The lockdown of Wuhan, the city hardest-hit by the novel coronavirus in China, could gradually be lifted if no new cases are reported for two consecutive weeks, which may happen in April, a top public health expert said.

“However, strict disease control and prevention measures will still be needed to prevent a possible rebound of the outbreak, said Li Lanjuan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a senior adviser to the nation’s top health authority.”

Meanwhile, in the United States on January 22, President Donald Trump, a hard-core individualist, because almost every word out of his mouth or from his Twitter account is about how great he is or an attack on someone else or another country, said, “We have it totally under control.”

That was the same day it was confirmed that the first American had COVID-19.

February 2, Trump said, “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It’s going to be fine.”

The number of confirmed victims in the U.S. had climbed to 8.

February 24, Trump said, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

But the number of confirmed infected individuals was increased by 27, and CNBC reported, “Stocks plunge for a second day as the DOW lost more than 800 points on Tuesday.”

February 25, Trump said, “CDC and my administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”

Eighteen more victims of COVID-19 were confirmed in the United States.

February 26: Trump said, “The 15 cases within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” He also said, “We’re going very substantially down, not up.”

Six more cases were reported by February 27.

On March 4 (Source: The White House), Trump said. “If we have thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work – some of them go to work, but they get better.” Trump made this comment during an interview on Fox News. At the time, the CDC was urging employers to have workers stay home. Later that day, Trump defended himself, “I never said people that are feeling sick should go to work.” Source: CBS News

By the end of March 4, another 51 confirmed cases had been added to the list.

Meanwhile, many of Donald Trump supporters, individuals that seem to think like him, refused to self-quarantine. “Trump supporters have been warned incessantly not to trust mainstream journalistic coverage of the issue.” Source: The Atlantic.com 

Between March 4 and March 18, another 7,078 confirmed cases had been added to the list. — Statista.com

“Though President Trump said March 7 that ‘anyone who wants a test can get a test,’ the United States’ limited testing capacity means that in practice, only a fraction of people who have symptoms are being tested.” – LiveScience.com

To see the list of Trump’s lies from January 22 to March 13, click on Snopes.com.

 

I started my self-quarantine on March 13th and have gone out once to buy supplies. I was gone for about an hour on March 19. While out, I saw two shoppers (of dozens) wearing masks and they were a young Asian American couple. Later, while at Trader Joes, I saw one cashier (Caucasian) with a face mask, but it was hanging around her neck and wasn’t covering her mouth or nose.

Time.com reported, “Why Wearing a Face mask is Encouraged in Asia, but Shunned in the U.S.”

What do you think – Do collectivist cultures like China have an advantage over an individualist country like the United States when it comes to dealing with a pandemic like COVID-19?

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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What are Trees Good for

February 26, 2020

Trees are vital. As the biggest plants on the planet, they give us oxygen, store carbon, stabilize the soil and give life to the world’s wildlife. They also provide us with the materials for tools and shelter.

The UN’s 2006 Billion Tree Campaign was inspired by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement. When an executive in the United States told Professor Maathai their corporation was planning to plant a million trees, her response was: “That’s great, but what we really need is to plant a billion trees.” The campaign was carried out under the patronage of Prince Albert II of Monaco.

As of November 2019, 13 years since the campaign’s launch, its website The Trillion Tree Campaign registered over 13.6 billion trees planted across 193 countries.

China planted 2.8 billion of those trees, after already planting 63.2 billion before 2006. India was in 2nd place with 2.5 billion trees and Ethiopia was third with 1.7 billion. The United States, a distant 12th place, only planted 315 million.

While China has been planting trees for “the past 40 years, the Earth has lost a third of its arable land to erosion and degradation.” – National Geographic

You might ask, “What is arable land?” Arable land is any land capable of being plowed and used to grow crops. That means in the last 40 years, our planet has lost thirty-three percent of the land capable of growing the food we need to keep from starving and dying off.

National Geographic reports, “in 1978, the Chinese government implemented the Three-North Shelterbelt Project, a national ecological engineering effort that called for the planting of millions of trees along the 2,800-mile border of northern China’s encroaching desert, while increasing the world’s forest by 10 percent. Also known as the ‘Great Green Wall,’ the project’s end date isn’t until 2050; so far, more than 66 billion trees have been planted.” …

“Beyond the Great Green Wall, China has taken other measures against encroaching deserts. A series of laws starting in the early 2000s also targeted the problem, including efforts to return some farm and grazing lands to a more natural state of forests or grasslands.”

Since China’s Great Green Wall is being planted in an arid desert without enough water, Chinese engineers are planning to build a 1,000km tunnel, the longest in the world, to carry 10 – 15 billion tonnes of water each year from the Yarlung Tsangpo River to the Taklimakan Desert in the north.

“The proposed tunnel, which would drop down from the world’s highest plateau in multiple sections connected by waterfalls, would ‘turn Xinjiang into California”, one geotechnical engineer said.” – South China Morning Post

China currently leads the world in planting trees, photovoltaic solar power use, the most wind energy produced, the most hydroelectric power, and Lithium-Ion battery production. Ancient China also built The Great Wall (13,170 miles long) and the longest canal in the world.

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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