I am married to a Chinese woman who was born in Shanghia, China. She suffered with the rest of China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
She moved to the United States in the 1980s and is now a U.S. citizen. If you marry a Chinese woman, you marry her family. I know first-hand that filial piety is alive and well in China.
Contrary to popular Western opinions spread by the media, the Communists did not get rid of it. When I travel to China, my white hair is a ticket to respect that was earned over a long period.
In China, I don’t hear, “Hey, old man.”
If you are interested to see how Mao’s Cultural Revolution influenced people, this short video is a good example.
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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During the summer of 2007, a teen with his supposed girlfriend, both strangers, wanted to rent a room for an hour or two at a motel. We had just pulled into that motel’s parking lot in Southern California after driving several hundred miles. We heard the motel manager say, “No way!”
The boy turned to me as I was getting out of the car, and he said, “Hey, old man, can you give us a ride to the next motel? They will not rent us a room here.”
I’m sure this adolescent was out for quick sex. He probably didn’t even know the girl’s name or care. But the lack of respect for an older person was obvious. And of course, conservatives don’t help any when they promote their brand of brainwashing like this blog post Liberal Brainwashing for Dummies.
Mudslinging isn’t going to solve anything. What America needs is both ideologies to work together to strengthen the family by teaching parents how to say “NO” and stop encouraging kids to do what feels good.
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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Since the episode with the punk kids, that mother who thought I needed reason for keeping them off our driveway doesn’t talk to me or acknowledge that I am alive if we pass each other on the street.
After all, I ratted out her precious, perfect child and called the police about his pack of unruly punks. In addition, one of the other children that wanted to play in our driveway argued with me after I politely asked them to go somewhere else.
Of course, I’ve heard the, “kids will be kids” crap as a teacher. However, I do not except that excuse for rudeness and unruly behavior.
My wife and I value our privacy. That’s why we bought a house at the end of a cul-de-sac. We also don’t like the liability of kids using our steep driveway for cheap thrills since we live in a litigation nation where everything you worked hard for can vanish in a court of law.
In reading this post from Always on the Verge, I discovered one of the idiots that advocates a world run by rude punks. I don’t think this author has ever considered the other side of the coin beyond her small world.
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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Before I start to talking about Chinese parents and children, first let us have a look of the currently pretty hot arguing book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which is a Chinese-AmericanYale law professor mom that wrote about how she was strict with her two daughters by making a lot of can’t doing rules, and she was acting like a wicked witch to push them to study.
I will not comment on which parenting method is better, Chinese or Western.
What I want to say is the book’s author Amy Chua’s way of parenting is typically Chinese though she is 4th-generation American.
Note from Blog host: Evidence of this may be found among reviews and comments on Amazon.UK. Rosie in the UK wrote, “I am Chinese now living in the UK and I admit I was outraged when I first read theWSJ excerpt of her (Amy Chua’s) book. My first thoughts were I can’t believe anyone would do something like that to their children. However, as I thought more about it and I guess living out here in the UK I’ve been so used to the numbing and dummying of our children’s perceived fragile self esteem and always making sure that their feelings and wants are met for fear of damaging them emotionally, I forgot that, hey, I was brought up pretty much the same way.”
Hanna says, “We Chinese have a long history of parents being strict with their children. From old days, the Ke Ju Kaoshi (official examination) was the only chance for people to change their fate and life.
“To achieve this, they must study really hard. We have an old saying about this “Shi Nian Han Chuang Ku Du Ri, Jin Chao Jin Bang Ti Ming Shi”, which means “Ten years of study at a cold window only for the day of passing the examination.”
“To study, students must be pushed even by using the stick.”
In addition, modern Chinese are also having many new chances but this still won’t change the way most Chinese parents raise children, because China now has the “Gaokao”, which is the high school examination to get into a university or college.
Because of the competition, parents can’t afford or wouldn’t dare to let the child just play and have fun. Children don’t know what is best for them.
Parents must force them to study but spoil them at the same time. When the child gets the great score, that means everything to parents. The kids don’t have to do anything else in life but study. Therefore, the story is the boy went into a famous college but didn’t know how to peal the eggshell.
Note from Blog host: Another review from Amazon.UK supports what Hanna is saying. The reviewer wrote, “I know how appalling some of those things sound to many. Not me, since I am Chinese myself and I have been brought up that same way, if not more strict.…. However when I grow up (now 40), I see the vast difference of parenting among other people in different countries (I live in UK now with my English husband), and what repercussions it has on the kids when they grow up. I am glad I was brought up the way I was.”
Hanna says, “Chinese parenting is not about ‘feelings’, but it’s not to say that the parents do not care.”
The child has to finish the school homework to 10 pm at night five days a week. Then after school, the child goes to the special training to develop other skills such as piano. This is not about what the the child is interested but it’s what the parents decided based on what they believe is necessary. What we learn in China is that the children have to attend eight different hobbies classes. There’s no free time.
In fact, in China, children should not argue with their parents and the child must do what the parents say.
When the child is good at studying, it means “Guang Zong Yao Zu”, (bring honor to your ancestors).
When you get the low score (100% score is best. 60% means you barely passed the exam. 90% is good. However, even just 1% lower and the child gets the “cold face”).
This not only means teachers calling parents endless times for meetings and punishment from the parents but it embarrasses your ancestors too.
This means when children are doing the homework, parents watch them until they finish to insure no mistakes.
Another recent review from Amazon.US points out an interesting thought. “The (Amy Chua) book raises an important question: Is America’s assumed educational mediocrity really the fault of our public schools (as some believe) or is it the fault of an epidemic of indulgent parenting (as others believe)? Asian kids seem to do remarkably well in the public schools… and raising little complaint about the quality of the schools.”
As for myself, Hanna writes, I think I’m the lucky one born in a family offering more freedom. Luckily I was a good student so my parents didn’t have to pay as much attention to me.
Did they spoil me? Sure. Did they care about my feelings? Yes, because they allowed me talk and argue with them.
If your child is no good at school, you must still love them. However, being strict so they have a good future is not worth it if they hate you later. No matter what kind of family you live in – strict or spoiled – the important thing is to love. Then the world can be better place.
Chua says, “My memoir — seen in the West as a story about “extreme” parenting — is being marketed the opposite way in China, as a story about the importance of giving kids more freedom. Amusingly, the book’s title in China is Parenting by a Yale Professor: Raising Kids in America, and I was asked by one Chinese women‘s magazine to give its readers tips on “how to be friends with your kids.”
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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