Shanghai

March 15, 2010

The first time I flew into Shanghai, the jet landed at Hangqiao Airport.

There was no Pudong with its Maglev Train, which can move 150 to 200 km/h, running eighteen miles to the city.

Even with the larger Pudong, Hangqiao still handled 25 million passengers in 2009, but more fly into Pudong.

Model of Shanghai

China’s leaders are finishing the job Qin Shi Huangdi started twenty-two hundred years ago, and it’s not easy.

The first emperor unified China with one written language.

Now, the country is being stitched together with one language, Mandarin. It may take several generations.

People are used to speaking the language they grew up with.

There are fifty-six with more dialects, like Shanghainese. Learning English is also mandatory in the public schools.

Old Shanghai – I’ve shopped here.

One-hundred-fifty years ago, Shanghai was a sleepy fishing town.

Then England and France started two opium wars with China to force the emperor to allow them to sell the drug to his people.

The treaty that ended the first opium war made Shanghai a concession port and part of the outside world bringing expats, who are still arriving.

Today, there are twenty million residents and 4,000 high-rises with more on the way. They sprout like mushrooms.

The 101-story World Financial Center is China’s tallest building.

Visit the Shanghai World Expo

The next four Shanghai photos are courtesy of Tom Carter, photo journalist and author of China: Portrait of a People

Tom Carter, photo journalist

See the Shanghai Huangpu River Tour

See more at National Geographic, Shanghai Dreams

See more about Shanghai at Eating Gourmet in Shanghai

Discover Hollywood Taking the “Karate Kid” to China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Hitting Endless Home Runs

March 15, 2010

First home run—China is becoming the world leader in green energy. You may read about it in China Going Green.

Second home run—Although America has ample supplies of rare earth elements (in the ground) needed for high-tech products, China is the only country processing these elements. The cost to build a processing plant in the United States runs between 500 million and one billion. Source: Holding a Vital Key to Humanity’s Future

“U.S. Rare Earths’ Chief Executive Officer Edward Cowle explained that rare earth elements have become increasingly common in high technology equipment including:

  • computer hard drives and cellular phones
  • MRI machines
  • environmental products such as electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels
  • military weapons, including the electronic controls and electric motors used in missiles

“U.S.-based production for these important manufacturing and military applications may be in jeopardy because China currently supplies the majority of rare earth elements that are used in these applications.” Source: Technology Metals Research

High speed rail in China

Third home run—Now, using French, German and Japanese technology, China plans to bid for contracts to build high-speed rail for the U.S. market and is already exporting this technology to Europe and Latin America. The White House recently announced $8 billion in grants for rail projects including the high-speed systems in California, Florida and Illinois. Source: The Huffington Post

See China’s Fast Track Growth

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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

 

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Mao Weitao and Yue Opera

March 14, 2010

Mao Weitao is considered a living treasure in China. She imitates men in the opera roles she plays—a reversal from Imperial China when women were not allowed on stage so men played female roles.

Mao Weitao is on the left

I was introduced to Yue Opera in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province about a decade ago. Mao Weitao and her husband have their own theater company near the shores of the famous Westlake. My wife translated while I watched the live-opera performance in fascination.

The costumes were lavish and the acting and opera was dramatic with a backdrop of classical Chinese music.

The challenge today is to keep this form of Chinese opera alive. The audience for opera is shrinking dramatically in China while remaining popular with the older generation. Television, movies and the Internet are claiming the shorter attention spans of the younger people.

Mao Weitao, considered an innovative genius on stage, adapts and works to keep the art form alive. According to her husband, no two performances are exactly alike.

Discover The Orphan’s Life

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
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China’s Modern Women

March 6, 2010

The changing role of Chinese women has been dramatic since Mao won China in 1949. Prior to that time, China was ruled by the Kuomintang—a dictatorship. There were never national elections held in China. There wasn’t much that changed under the Kuomintang leadership regarding the role of women. When my wife was born in the late 1950s, her grandmother had bound feet.

Chinese girl with bound feet

Before Mao, women were grass to be stepped on. Their role was to serve men.

The changes ushered in by Mao set the stage for his wife to become China’s leader after her husband’s death. The only reason she did not assume the leadership was because she was arrested as a member of the Gang of Four and sent to prison for crimes committed during the Cultural Revolution.

Modern Chinese woman

Since Mao, the changes have been even more dramatic.  Woman own businesses, hold political posts in the government, have jobs, and cannot be sold to become a wife or bought to serve as a concubine. They are not property. They are equals to men in many ways.

Learn about Marriage and Money in China.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

About Tibet

February 16, 2010

How does Communist China treat its minorities compared to the way minorities have been treated in the Americas?

Yes, human rights violations did happen in Tibet, but most happened during the Cultural Revolution. Mao ruled China for twenty-seven years (1949 – 1976) but the Cultural Revolution started in the mid 1960s and ended in 1976 with his death, and everyone in China suffered during that decade.

Since Mao considered Tibet to be part of China (and recorded, nonbiased evidence from primary sources prior to the rise of Communism supports that claim), those who suffered in Tibet were treated the same as the rest of China. Monasteries in Tibet were destroyed–but this was going on everywhere in China and after 1976 many of the major monasteries were rebuilt by China.

The next post shows what happened after Mao died—facts we seldom if ever hear. It is always good to have the facts to see who sins and who doesn’t.

Learn what happened After Mao and more about Tibet – Inside 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

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