The Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End

January 10, 2018

China is the oldest, continuous civilization on Earth. Ancient records date back to about BC 2500 and agree with the Old Testament’s timeline that the great flood took place around 2344 B.C.

Ancient Chinese myth has their first king, Fu-hi or Fohi (Chinese Noah) making his appearance on the Mountain of Chin surrounded by a rainbow after the world had been covered with water.  Myth says this Chinese Noah also sacrificed animals to God.

The Miao tribe of Southwest China has a similar myth. According to the Miao, God destroyed the world by flood because of the wickedness of man. The myth also says Nuah (Noah) had three sons: Lo Han (Ham), Lo Shen (Shem), and Jah-hu (Japheth).

In ancient China, ShangDi was considered the high God.  He was worshiped as the creator God for thousands of years. ShangDi was known as the Heavenly Ruler and the Chinese emperors were known as the Sons of Heaven.  No other god was higher or more powerful.

Evidence supports that the ancient Chinese understood the nature of God as the ancient Hebrews did after Abraham (1812 B.C. to 1637 B.C.), who is considered the father of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

One of the earliest accounts of the Border Sacrifice is found in the Shu Jing (Book of History), compiled by Confucius (551 to 479 B.C.), where it is recorded that Emperor Shun (2256 to 2205 B.C.) sacrificed to ShangDi.

While the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans worshiped many gods, the Chinese also worshipped many but worshiped a high God called ShangDi. If true, that would mean the Chinese believed in God longer than the Jews, Christians, or Muslims.

What’s interesting is the many in China believed in ShangDi for more than four-thousand years without an organized religion to guide them. Is ShangDi the same God that the Hebrews, Christians, and Muslims worship?

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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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Subscribe to my newsletter to hear about new releases and get a free copy of my award-winning, historical fiction short story “A Night at the Well of Purity”.

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Does China have Biblical Myths too?

January 9, 2018

Daniel Miessler alleges that the Bible is Fiction. He writes, “The similarities between the stories and characters in the Bible and those from previous mythologies are both undeniable and well-documented.”

For instance, “And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.”  Exodus 19:17, 18

No one knows for certain where China’s Yellow Emperor came from. … He was known as the Yellow Emperor in honor for his contributions to agriculture and the Chinese calendar. In addition to farming, his wife, Lei Zu, is credited for developing the idea of growing silkworms and creating silk.  The Yellow Emperor is also noted as the creator of Chinese medicine, and the origins of Taoism and Confucianism trace their roots back to this mythical Emperor, who may have lived 4000 years ago.

Then one day, a yellow dragon descended from the sky to take The Yellow Emperor back to heaven…. Myth says, he ruled for a hundred years before leaving.

Is the Old Testament’s description in Exodus a space ship descending to Mount Sinai, and is the Yellow Emperor returning to heaven a myth or reality? In addition, consider that it is believed that the Biblical Adam and the Yellow Emperor were both on the earth around the same time, about 4,000 years ago.

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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.

Where to Buy

Subscribe to my newsletter to hear about new releases and get a free copy of my award-winning, historical fiction short story “A Night at the Well of Purity”.

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Did a silkworm fall into a cup of tea more than 7,400 years ago: Part 2 of 2

January 4, 2018

Chinese trade with the Roman Empire started in the 1st century BC. Ships from the Roman Empire first sailed to India and bought silk, which became very popular in Rome. In fact, purple silk was worth its weight in gold.

JSTOR tells us in an article titled Greece & Rome that the Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire took place between A. D. 90 – 130. The silk trade started earlier than that but, “Precisely how long ago the Chinese began to export their silk westward along the trade routes of Cantal Asia we do not know.”

Eventually the Roman merchants set up trading posts all the way to China and reached Canton; then traded in Chang-Cheou near today’s Shanghai.

Until 73 AD, the sea route was the only one open since the caravan routes along the Silk Road were closed at the time.

Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar (31 BC to 14 AD) earned credit for establishing trade between Rome and China.

In 166 AD, Roman travelers arrived at the Court of the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 219 AD). These Romans met powerful representative of the Han Dynasty.

About the same time, Buddhist missionaries arrived in China by ship from India and introduced Buddhism to China.

Romans spent recklessly [does this sound familiar?]. Gold left Rome and flowed to the East at such a rate that the government had to restrict imports. After a long period of prosperity in Rome, the empire entered a serious economic crisis.

This overspending ended up bankrupting the Roman Empire and the Romans couldn’t maintain the hundreds of thousands of troops needed to protect their empire contributing to the collapse of the empire and ushering in the dark ages.


From the history of silk, we learn how much wealth [today’s billionaires] shapes governance.

Return to or start with Part 1

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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.

Where to Buy

Subscribe to my newsletter to hear about new releases and get a free copy of my award-winning, historical fiction short story “A Night at the Well of Purity”.

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Did a silk worm fall into a cup of tea more than 7,400 years ago: Part 1 of 2

January 3, 2018

I’ve often read about the Silk Road, but I was curious and wanted to know more about the history of silk.


Inside a Chinese silk factory

Silk has a long history in China. In 1984, silk fabric dating back more than five-thousand years was found in Henan Province.


Making cloth from a silkworm

According to legend, Lei Zu, the queen of China’s legendary Yellow Emperor, was drinking a cup of tea beneath a mulberry tree one day when a silkworm cocoon fell into her cup. Further investigation revealed that the unraveling fibers were light and tough, ripe for spinning.

And that is allegedly how China’s silk industry was born.


How silk is made

Then I learned that merchants from the Roman Empire sent ships by sea to China and traded directly with the Han Dynasty for silk. We’ll discover more about this in Part 2.

Continued in Part 2 on January 4, 2018

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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.

Where to Buy

Subscribe to my newsletter to hear about new releases and get a free copy of my award-winning, historical fiction short story “A Night at the Well of Purity”.

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Several thousand years ago in China there was Music

January 2, 2018

The first few weeks of 2018 will focus on China’s long history starting with the earliest known musical instrument found in China.

Music in China is traditionally associated with ritual observances and government affairs.

In 1999, Chinese archeologists unearthed what is believed to be the oldest known playable instrument, a seven-holed flute fashioned about 9,000 years ago from the hollow wing bone of a large bird.

To establish the age of the flute, a U.S. chemist at the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory analyzed data from carbon-14 dating done in China on materials taken from the site. “The flutes may be the earliest complete, playable, tightly-dated, multinote musical instruments.”

The 9,000-year-old flutes were “exquisitely-crafted” from the wing bone of a red-crowned crane.

In The Book of Songs, an ancient collection of Chinese poetry from the 11th to the 7th century BC, the three-hole Yue is the most frequently mentioned wind instrument, but by the Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD), the Yue had all but vanished.

Discover China’s First Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi,
the man that unified China more than 2,000 years ago.

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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.

Where to Buy

Subscribe to my newsletter to hear about new releases and get a free copy of my award-winning, historical fiction short story “A Night at the Well of Purity”.

About iLook China

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese history | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
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