The Prince’s Garden

June 26, 2010

These photos were taken inside Prince Kung’s (1833-1898) palace and garden (once called Gongwangfu). This palace is in Beijing’s Beihai district. Prince Kung was Emperor Hsein Feng’s (1831-1861) younger brother.

As Inspector General for the Emperor of China, Robert Hart, known as the Godfather of China’s modernism, lived in the same hutong that Prince Kung lived in.  The Forbidden City was on the far side of Tiananmen Square.

Robert Hart, the main character in “My Splendid Concubine” and “Our Hart”, often met Prince Kung in this garden.

After 1950, for several decades, this palace and the garden became a communal home for many Chinese. In recent years, the garden, considered one of the best in China, was renovated and is now a tourist attraction, which attracts thousands of visitors daily.

To design a proper Chinese garden one must build a big place in a small space.  Prince Kung’s garden and estate is surrounded by a high wall and outside is Beijing.  Once inside, it is easy to forget that outside the walls is a crowded city. It was also easy for the Qing (Manchu) royals to forget about what was happening throughout China.

Discover The Summer Palace

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Hollywood Takes the “Karate Kid” to China

June 17, 2010

I walked to the local movie theater (June, 2010) to see the new The Karate Kid staring Jaden Smith, which was filmed in China—mostly in Beijing.  It was also the biggest modern movie co-produced between an American Studio and China. The themes from the old movie were there, but I enjoyed this movie more because it delivered something the old movie didn’t—a glimpse at Chinese culture.

The Jackie Chan character lives in a Hutong.  If you want to learn more, I suggest The Last Days of Old Beijing by Michael Meyer. The Great Wall is about an hour from Beijing. I’ve been there too, but I’ve never seen it without people.

The trip to the top of Wudang Mountain, well known for its deep-rooted tradition of wushu (martial arts), took me to a place I’ve never been. Watching Jackie Chang and Jaden Smith climb that long, narrow stairway reminded me of mountains I’ve climbed that took my breath away in gasps with heart pounding.

China may not have elections where eligible citizens , stupid and smart, gets to vote as in America, but James Lassiter, a “Karate Kid” producer, says that in China “The people run the country, so if people didn’t want you shooting in their neighborhood, there’s no authority that can tell them they have to. That’s why it’s called the People’s Republic of China.” Source for quote:  KansasCity.com

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress offers another look at 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.

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

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China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

2-28 Massacre in Taiwan

June 1, 2010

By accident, I stumbled on a Blog about the “2-28 Massacre” in Taiwan in 1947 when Kuomintang soldiers under orders from Cheng Kai-shek, an American ally, slaughtered about 30,000 Taiwanese citizens. It was the first time I’d heard of this incident. Source Blog: Patrick Cowsill

Taipei, Taiwan

When I typed into Google “Tiananmen Square protest”, 1 million 260 thousand (1,260,000) hits came back condemning the 1989 Massacre in Tiananmen Square. “Several hundred civilians have been shot dead by the Chinese army during a bloody military operation to crush a democratic protest in Peking’s (Beijing) Tiananmen Square. Source: BBC

Then I typed a similar question about the massacre in Taiwan by an American ally and 21,200 hits came back.

Here’s what the BBC had to say about the Taiwan incident, “The event was an uprising sparked by the beating of a female vendor by authorities for selling untaxed cigarettes. Between 18,000 and 28,000 people are said to have been killed in riots and a subsequent crackdown.” Source: BBC

Compare the language.  When it was about the Communists, it was a “bloody military operation to crush a democratic protest” but when the killings were committed by an American ally, it was “an uprising…sparked by the beating of a female vendor by authorities….”

Of course, we will always remember the man standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Have you forgotten what happened in Taiwan yet?

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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 lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

IMAGE with Blurbs and Awards to use on Twitter

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Four Equals One China—Urban China (Part 3 of 7)

May 15, 2010

In 1949, when Mao came to power, 0.005 kilowatts of electricity were being generated in China.  Most of China did not have electricity or modern roads. In 1950, most of China was the same as it had been for centuries.

Soon after Mao’s death, China entered a transition that isn’t over. There was a period of planning and then the miraculous modernization of China that the world has seen since 1980 began.

China’s first 10, five-year plans focused on modernization and growth in urban areas. Urban China started with about 250 million people. As China became the world’s factory floor, the largest migration in human history took place and 300 hundred million rural Chinese moved to urban China to work in factories. Today, urban China has about 550 million people with more than a hundred cities with populations over a million. Trillions have been spent developing cities like Shanghai, Beijing and others.

To discover more about this modernization transition taking place in China, read Pop-Up Cities: China Builds a Bright Green Metropolis by Douglas McGray.  By 2020, China plans to build four hundred new, modern cities at a rate of 20 each year.

Go to Four Equals One China: Part 4 or Discover After Mao

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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

Giving up Power is Painful

May 13, 2010

Something I read this morning revealed a similarity about America and China’s governments. Break Up the Parties was in the May 2010, AARP Bulletin about ending the partisan poison that has almost caused a political cardiac arrest in Washington and Sacramento. In Washington, the suggestion was to stop seating Democrats on one side of the aisle and Republicans on the other and seat them alphabetically so they talk to each other. 

In California, Two Government Reform Measures on June 8 Ballot would end the status quo.  Instead of Registered Republican voters only voting for Republican candidates and Democrats for Democratic politicians, this measure, if passed, would open the ballot so all voters could vote for any candidate from any political party.

Gasp! California’s Proposition 14 brought Democrats and Republicans together to defeat it.

Why? For the same reason why most of the 70 million members of China’s Communist Party don’t want to hold open elections and allow all Chinese citizens to vote for multiple parties, which is restricted in both America and China since it isn’t the voters who decide the next President of the United States. The Electoral College does that. 

In case you don’t know, it was 535 handpicked, loyal registered Republicans and Democrats that elected President G. W. Bush to his first term in the White House while the popular vote went to Vice President Al Gore by more than a million. At least in China, the Communist Party has more than 70 million who take part in deciding who the eventual Presidential contenders will be.

Discover an example of how Power Corrupts
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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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