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.

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.

6 Comments | China, Chinese history, history, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Betting Against China’s Housing Market

June 21, 2010

You may have seen stories or headlines predicting a housing bubble bursting in China as it did in the US. China bashers are probably praying this will happen, but don’t count on it.  Placing a bet that China is going to stop growing its economy soon is throwing money away.

The Market Oracle talks about this in “Will China Housing Market Follow the U.S. In a Mortgage Bust?” Although the Bank of China held $10 billion in US subprime assets when the  US bubble burst, Chinese banks don’t make those loans in China—the risky subprime loans to poor people with bad credit was in US. The only reason the Bank of China held those assets was that they trusted America—then.

Older Housing in China

The real estate market in China is different. Chinese families contribute and buyers often pay 30 to 50% down. Also, when the bubble burst in the US, housing loans to GDP were 79% but in China that number was 15.3%.

In fact, according to the May 29 – June 4, 2010 The Economist, about 20 – 30% of urban housing is owned by the top income earners. The rest live in free housing provided by employers or in  state owned housing with low or no rent. It also helps that most Chinese save and avoid using credit cards. Then there is rural China where 750 million live and all the housing belongs to collectives and there are no mortgages or rent.

See Greedy Buyers Beware

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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.

Leave a Comment » | America, business, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, economy | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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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1 Comment | China, cultural differences, politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Greedy Buyers Beware

June 8, 2010

The China Law Blog posted a piece about China Product Beyond Your Worst Nightmare and pointed out that in China there are levels of quality five levels below anything you would think possible and for Chinese manufacturers those levels are normal.

For that reason, Dan, who posted the piece, blames US companies that have problems with the quality of Chinese manufactured products for failing to be specific in the contract’s language.

drywall disaster

One example used in the piece was about the tainted Chinese drywall that has been in the US news.  When the defect was discovered, the Chinese drywall manufacturer urged the U.S. customer, Banner Supply, to sell the drywall in other countries—not in the US.  Depositions unsealed Friday by a Florida court judge in Miami-Dade County shows that the US company refused the offer.

US companies that sign these flawed contracts are probably drooling at the low prices and imagined profits and stagger off giggling in a daze at all the money to be made. Greed for flawed products is the blinding motive. I understand because we had a problem with a greedy US contractor over an addition to our California house that had nothing to do with China. We ended up firing him and no addition was built.

Learn more—see China’s Labor Laws

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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.

1 Comment | America, business, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, legal system | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Move Over America, the BRIC is Coming

June 6, 2010

McCombs Today says that during 2001, Goldman Sachs predicted Brazil, Russia, India and China (known as the BRIC) would dominate global economic markets in the 21st century. China, for one, has set goals to clean their environment, build a colony on the moon and technologically match the US military.  It helps that China has become America’s banker or should I say landlord.

History demonstrates that powerful nations often act arrogant and bully others. America was no different after World War II when much of Europe and Asia’s infrastructure and industrial capacity had been destroyed.  For about five decades after the war, the U.S. was the best source of manufacturing which grew a middle class who lived better than most kings and emperors from earlier times. From such riches came an attitude that American democracy and capitalism was superior to any other system.

Goldman predicts by 2035, China will be the world’s largest economy and India will be tied with America for second place.  This prediction is because 42 percent of the world’s population lives in the BRIC countries, which have 22 percent of the world’s land mass and 24 percent of global gross domestic product.

Soon, other nations will listen carefully When China Speaks

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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.

2 Comments | America, China, economy, environment | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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