Honoring Foreign Devil Heroes

November 20, 2012

It is ironic that in the 1940s we were fighting with the Chinese against the Japanese. Then in 1950, China and the US fought against each other in North Korea and Chinese advisers were sent to assist North Vietnam to fight the US in the 1960s.

Then Nixon arrives in China in the 1970s and we were friends again.

In February 2010, I had an instant message chat with Ian Carter, an Australian expatriate living in Southeast China, and learned that during World War II in 1944 an American B-24 Liberator bomber vanished without a trace in Southeast China.

Fifty-two years later in 1996, farmers discovered the bomber’s wreckage and the remains of the ten-man crew on Mao’er Shan (Little Cat Mountain), Southern China’s highest peak. The name of the B-24 bomber was Tough Titi.

These Americans are considered heroes (click on this link for more about this story) to the Chinese, and the remains of the crew were returned to the United States for burial.

There’s a memorial stone near the crash site and Chinese tourists pay honor to these Americans by leaving flowers and other gifts.

To honor these heroes further, the Chinese recovered some of the bomber’s parts and used them as a centerpiece for a museum in Xing’an, about four hours from the crash site.

Discover Country Driving (in China) by Peter Hessler

______________

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.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

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

The Internet Maze of Smoke and Mirrors

November 19, 2012

This is a follow up to Cyber War: Who is the Enemy?

It seems that students in China may be modeling themselves after a Jackie Chan movie and playing catch-me if you can.  Harking back to a piece I wrote about Google being hacked, more evidence has been revealed that the real perpetrators may be high school students.

Even the New York Times says, “the attacks came from China but not necessarily from the Chinese government, or even from Chinese sources.”

The US National Security Agency (NSA) traced some of the attacks to servers in Taiwan.  Then a United States military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has also led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at a vocational school in east China’s Shandong Province. Last week, in another hacking incident, the trail led through China to Germany where that attack originated.

Photo of Berlin wall courtesy of http://www.photoeverywhere.co.uk/west/berlin/slides/berlinwall0970.htm

What is most disturbing is the knee jerk reaction that took place when shortly after Google went public with its accusations against China without evidence, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting China’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall.

This is not the way to build trust with other governments. The wise thing to do would have been to wait until all the evidence was in before deciding who was guilty. It’s also interesting to know that this vocational school is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and Google’s competitor.

______________

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.

Subscribe to “iLook China”! Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

1 Comment | America, China, crime, government, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Cyber War – Who is the Enemy?

November 13, 2012

China rejects claims of Internet hacking attacks by Gillian Wong, Associated Press Writer.

Why is it that everything that happens in China is that government’s fault?

At least that’s how the Western media and politicians seem to report it. If the Chinese government is to blame for what every Chinese citizen does, then every senator, congressmen, Supreme Court justice and the president of the United States are responsible for everything happening in America.

China has every right to deny they are responsible. After all, where is the evidence? I always thought people were considered innocent until proven guilty. Shouldn’t governments have the same right. Isn’t that the foundation of American justice? China has a huge population using the Internet. Anyone could be doing this.

In fact, there are 485 million Internet users in China, more than any other country in the world.

How would you like to keep track of 1.3 billion people? Heck, the government of the United States can’t even control its people, and I know that China does not control their people as much as many in the West want to believe it does.

Here’s an example of what happens when Yellow journalism in the West and politicians stir the pot. One Blogger Who Found Them Guilty is evidence that “simple” minds jump to conclusions based on propaganda, which is a two way street.

In addition Hacker Statistics.com says, “The United States currently leads as the country that suffered the most attacks in regards to online cyber threats with 35% of these aimed at citizens of the US; the US was also the country that hosted the most attacks, with 60% of phishing attacks starting from the US.”

Then there is this ranking of countries that are good in computer programming and the best in computer hacking. First place goes to Russia.

2. India
3. Poland
4. The United States of America …
15. China
Source:Share Ranks.com

However Rediff.com ranks the United States tops in malicious Internet activity, the number one country of orgin for Web-based attacks in 2009, accounting for 34 percent of the worldwide total.

______________

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.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

1 Comment | America, China, Chinese Culture, crime, government, military, politics, United States | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Venice, Zhouzhuang

November 12, 2012

We arrived early when the parking lot and the streets were about empty.  That’s the best time to get there.

Zhouzhuang is surrounded by water, and boats are needed for most short trips.

Zhouzhuang history is rooted in China’s Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC – 476 BC) more than a thousand years before Venice was established. However, it would not be called Zhouzhuang until 1086 AD .

The town is well known for its preservation of numerous buildings from the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Zhouzhuang, the Venice of Asia,  is on the United Nations Reserve List for the World Cultural Heritage and the Dubai International Best Practice to Improve the Living Environment.

As you can see, it gets crowded. Most of these tourists were Chinese citizens from the growing middle class.

This is where I was a photo thief. I wanted to take a picture of these captured birds but the owners wouldn’t let me.  He pointed at a sign that said I’d have to pay.

I walked a distance and used my meager telephoto lens to take this shot of the birds tied to the owner’s boat.

For a comparison with Venice in Europe, while there are no historifcal records that deal directly with the founding of Venice, available evidence has led some historians to agree that the original population of Venice were refugees from Roman cities near Venice (420 – 568 AD). From the ninth to the twelfth centuries Venice became a city state.

If you enjoyed this photo essay, see the Li River Cruise

______________

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.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

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

Scapegoating China and Manipulating the Opinions of Americans – Part 4/4

November 8, 2012

In conclusion, how many ignorant adult voters are there in America that a presidential candidate can fool to gain votes? I think the answer may be found from the number of adult Americans that do not read books and watch too much reality TV.

According to Mental Floss, Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix, in the United States:

1. One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

2. Forty-Two percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

3. Eighty percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

4. Seventy percent of U.S., adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

5. Children who watch four or more hours of TV per day spend less time on school work, have poorer reading skills, play less with friends, and have fewer hobbies than children who watch less TV. Source for #5: Reading.org

However, according to A. C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day, and the number of hours per day that TV is on in an average U.S. home: 6 hours, 47 minutes. Source: csun.edu

No matter what we hear from an American politician running for election, the Bureau of Labor Statistics proves that education/literacy pays, because the unemployment rate for adult Americans with less than a high school diploma is 14.1% (medium weekly earnings in 2011 was $451) while unemployment for workers with a college BA degree is 4.9% (medium weekly earnings in 2011 was $1,053).

In fact, about 39% of voters ages 18 and older that do not have a high school degree vote, while 77% of college graduates vote. In addition, you may suspect that low-income voters would vote Democratic, but the top sixteen states with very high or high level of persons living below poverty (43% of adults with low literacy skills live in poverty), twelve  of these states vote solidly Republican. Source: Election 2012 Factors: Poverty Level Households by State

Answer this question: If you cannot read or understand what you read, where do you get information to help decide how to vote or what to think about China?

A. talk radio (dominated by conservative talk shows such as Rush Limbaugh)

B. television

C. reading informative Blogs such as this one

D. reading newspaper, books, and magazines to become better informed

E. other sources – for example, the barber shop or a bar

I think that Abraham Lincoln should have also said, “It is easier to fool someone that is uneducated and does not read than someone that is educated and reads.”

Note: If you want to learn about the impact of watching too much TV, I suggest you read TV Turns Kids Into Zombies, Retards Development, and eventually, these children grow up to be adults that vote.

Return to Scapegoating China … Part 3 or start with Part 1

______________

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.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

3 Comments | America, American culture, China, economy, education, family values, media, politics, United States | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »