Silence to Beauty

May 12, 2010

The art displayed in this post comes from artists, who are graduates of the Shandong Provincial Rehabilitation and Career School, an institute in China that trains young Chinese with disabilities. These artists are deaf.

In 1949, Mao Zedong launched the People’s Republic of China and ruled with an iron fist for almost three decades.

During Mao’s time, there was almost no free artistic expression in China unless the art served the propaganda needs of the state.

Zhang Guoli, Sons

After Deng Xiaoping opened China to a global market economy, the post Mao generation was introduced to Western art and theory.

Huang Jinpo, Earth

It wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that art from China started to emerge.

This is the dormitory where the artists live.

The photos in this post are presented with permission from “Embracing the Uncarved Wood, Sculptural Reliefs from Shandong, China“, which was made possible by a generous grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and with assistance from the Office of the Provost of Franklin & Marshall College. ISBN: 978-0-910626-04-0

Discover Chinese Yu Opera with Mao Wei-tao

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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.

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1 Comment | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, disabilities, education, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

America Electrified — China’s Road Map (Part 2 of 2)

May 9, 2010

In 1935, FDR issued an executive order to create the Rural Electrification Administration to bring electricity to millions of rural Americans.

The sad fact is that if President Obama were to propose doing something similar today, the issue would become devisive.  Politics might stop the process. The Tea Bag people would scream socialism, big government. They would march in the streets calling it “Obamapower” instead of the REA.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt - 32 President of the United States

It took six years after the REA was launched in 1941 to help 800 rural electric cooperatives to string 350,000 miles of power lines.

Click on the America’s electrical grid and learn more about what it took to build the most extensive electric transmission system in the world.  The electrification of America took more than half a century and is still evolving.

The biggest difference between China today and America in the 1950s is the population.  America electrified a nation with a population of about 160 million people.  China has 1.3 billion—a daunting task. Since China has connected about five hundred million in less time than it took the United States to connect far less, if anyone can do it, the Chinese can.

Discover China Going Green or return to Part 1 of America Electrified

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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.

1 Comment | America, business, China, Chinese history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

America Electrified — China’s Road Map (Part 1 of 2)

May 9, 2010

In 1952, China was producing 0.005 kilowatts of electricity. Now they need trillions of kilowatts. After Mao’s death and Deng Xiaoping opened China to the world, China seriously started building electrical power plants.

If you study the timeline for the growth of America’s electrical grid, you will discover that Thomas Edison designed and built the first direct current (DC) power plant in 1882. Then the first alternating current (AC) power plant opened in 1885 and transmitted power 200 miles from the plant.

By 1927, forty-five years later, the first power grid was established in Pennsylvania.  It wasn’t until 1933 that Congress passed legislation establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority, which now produces 125 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year.

Similar to China today, in the 1930s there was a huge gap between people in America’s towns and people on farms. About 10 percent of U.S. farm families had central station electricity in the mid-30s. Like China, almost all urban people had power. Source: Living History Farm

Go to Part 2 of America Electrified or discover Deng Xiaoping’s 20/20 Vision

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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.

Leave a Comment » | America, business, China, Chinese history, government | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Not One Less (1999)

May 8, 2010

In the movie Not One Less, a thirteen-year-old girl is asked to be the substitute teacher in a small Chinese village.  The teacher tells her that when he returns, if he finds all the students there, he will pay her ten yuan—less than two American dollars.

Although money is involved, it isn’t much. When one student, Zhang Huike, stops coming to school, Wei Minzhim, the thirteen-year-old substitute, follows him to the city.

There are several themes in this movie. The most powerful to me were the value of an education and not losing face. If Wei loses Zhang, she will fail the responsibility the teacher gave her. To succeed, she must keep all the students and teach them.

Confucius taught the Chinese that an education was the great equalizer and the key to leaving poverty behind. Most Chinese believe this with a passion.

Zhang Yimou was the director. He says, “Chinese culture is still rooted in the countryside. If you don’t know the peasant, you don’t know China.” Because of this, there is a strong message in this movie about the urban–rural divide, which is being addressed as China sews the nation together with high-speed rail and electricity.

This a powerful movie about children, education, and poverty that shows the challenges China faces in lifting the lifestyles of almost eight hundred million Chinese, who don’t live in the cities. The challenge is to do this without losing the values that made China what it is.

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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, Running with the Enemy, was awarded an honorable mention in general fiction at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival.

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1 Comment | China, Chinese Culture, Confucianism, education, family values, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Taking the Spiritual for Granted

April 26, 2010

Most people that live in Western democracies grew up fearing and hating the word “Communist: during the Cold War. The media brainwashing that went on for decades to paint the word “communism’ as evil did a great job.

Christianity in China

A conservative, Republican, born-again Christian, evangelical friend of mine that has never visited China was proud to E-mail me and say that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China. He also told me that ‘communism’ was evil.

Taking one word and using that word as a definition for evil is wrong. Mao did evil deeds during the twenty-seven years he ruled as China’s modern emperor. Stalin and Hitler also were responsible for horrible atrocities. Words are not evil. Using a word to describe evil is dangerous. It leads to stereotyping. If what my friend said was true, than my mother-in-law, the closet Christian, would be evil since she lived in a communist country.

See “An American Shadow Over the Philippines” http://wp.me/pN4pY-6Z

 

1 Comment | China, Chinese history, politics, religion | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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