China’s Electric Challenge

May 10, 2010

To bring electricity to the 1.3 billion people in China is a challenge due to the terrain. If we count only land, America is the third largest country and China the second. Russia is first.

To give you an idea, America has 922,095,840 square miles of cropland to feed 4.5% of the earth’s population. China, by comparison, has 247,878,000 square miles of farmland to feed 20% of the earth’s population. The rest of the land is either desert or mountains.

Currency from the Song Dynasty

Never forget that during the Song Dynasty (960 – 1279 AD), China had the highest per capital production and income in the world. At the time, China’s GDP was the largest in the world until the middle of the 19th century when Western Imperial colonial powers invaded China winning two Opium Wars. Source: ELSA Berkeley.edu

Discover China’s clean coal power plant in Tianjin

See Electricity is the Key

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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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2 Comments | America, business, China, Chinese history, economy | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Summer Palace

April 16, 2010

The history of the Summer Palace starts with the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) when the Golden Hill Palace was built in the present site of the Summer Palace.  The Summer Palace that exists today dates back to Kublai Khan (Yuan Dynasty – 1277-1367).  In 1750, Emperor Qian Long (Ch’ing Dynasty – 1644 -1911) had canals built leading to Kunming Lake, which was enlarged to serve as a reservoir for Beijing and is still in use today. He built palaces on the hill to celebrate his mother’s birthday.

Summer Palace

In 1860, during the Second Opium War, a combined British-French military force invaded Beijing and destroyed many of the buildings.  Twenty-eight years later, the Dowager Empress Ci Xi’s brother-in-law rebuilt and expanded the palaces using money (when he was the leader of China’s the navy) that was meant to modernize the Chinese navy.

Summer Palace

After the Ch’ing Dynasty was swept aside during the 1911 rebellion, this new Summer Palace was opened to the public.  In 1990, the Summer Palace was designated a world heritage site by the United Nations.

Summer Palace

This “site” has more pictures and information about the Summer Palace.

Summer Palace

This “video” shows the Summer Palace from the main gate to Suzhou Street where Emperors went to be entertained.

Pagado seen from the Summer Palace

To learn more about China, see Zhouzhuang—China’s Venice

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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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Three Hundred Years – Part 3 of 5

April 6, 2010

After the Opium Wars, Christian missionaries flooded China. Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine, found success after converting to Christianity. Hong claimed that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and started the Taiping Rebellion that lasted more than a decade and cost more than twenty million people their lives.

Hong Xiuquan - God's Chinese Son

Hong’s goals were to replace the Ch’ing Dynasty and rid China of Opium. After achieving that goal, he was going to convert China to a Christian nation and he would be the first Christian emperor.

Since the English and French did not want the opium trade stopped, these Christian nations helped the Ch’ing Dynasty defeat the Taipings even though the rebellion was a Christian uprising. I wonder if Liu Xiaobo had this in mind when he said what it would take to change China to be as Hong Kong is today.

See When in Rome, Do as the Romans http://wp.me/sN4pY-354

 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Three Hundred Years – Part 2 of 5

April 6, 2010

From Part 1, Liu Xiaobo’s last sentence, “I have my doubts as to whether 300 years would be enough.”, shows that he understands what it would take to change China’s people so they would accept a Western style government. To make this happen, China would have to be occupied by Western armies while hordes of Christian missionaries arrived to convert the population.  It would take generations to rid the culture of its Confucius Taoist influence—China’s cultural foundation.

Since the West attemped doing this during the 19th century, we already know what will happen. Tens of millions will die since there would be resistance.

Opium Poppy

During the 19th century, more than one of China’s emperors told Western representative that China had everything the empire needed and there was no need for trade with the West. This resulted in two Opium Wars started by England and France to force China to open its doors to Opium and other Western products and to allow Christian missionaries free access to convert the peasant population.

The result was catastrophic.  If it hadn’t been for World War II and Japan’s invasion of China, which cost almost forty million lives, the West might have eventually succeeded in another century or two to convert China into a Western culture as Liu Xiaobo said in Part 1 of this series.

See The Reasons Why China is Studying Singapore http://wp.me/pN4pY-2z

 

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

An Invasion of Fat

March 18, 2010

I remember one night when we ate in a Shanghai restaurant and at the next table, this overweight kid, maybe ten, said in a shrill voice, “I hate vegetables. Where’s the meat. I demand more meat.” Then he pounded the table with both fists while his face screwed up in a rage. His mother had an embarrassed look on her face but she didn’t say a word.

The Opium Wars in the 19th century that forced China to open its doors to foreign drug dealers (English, French, American, etc.) and Christian missionaries was nothing compared to the recent obesity invasion. In 2005, it was predicted that 200 million Chinese would be obese within 10 years.

McDonalds has more than 1,100 locations in China.
KFC has more than 2,900 in over 400 cities.
Pizza Hut has about 500.
Starbucks over a 1,000.

China’s bulging middle class has fallen in love with the Western fast food diet and couch potato lifestyle. Those hit worst with the expanding waistline are the pampered single-child generation. More than 11% are reportedly overweight and the number of obese children is rising at the rate of 8% a year. Much of the new fat is in wealthy urban centers such as Shanghai—where the obesity rate among primary school children hit 15.2% last year, according to the state media.

Read Doing Business 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.

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2 Comments | America, business, China, Chinese history, Christianity, food, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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