Asia and the World

[Anonymous]

Re: Dowry and rrustamzadeh's post...
A similar concept exists in India (read Hinduism for this purpose) concerning the personal belongings like gold (which is highly in demand in India) jewellry which is brought by the bride. This is called as 'stri-dhan' or 'wife's wealth'. The 'shastra' (ancient Hindu scriptures) as also the current Hindu Law recognizes 'stri-dhan' as the personal wealth of the wife to the exclusion of the husband. This cannot be used by the court of law to pay off the debt of the husband if the wife does not permit it.

[Anonymous]

My MS students of world history are always enthusiastic about knowing how to write a word in another language - since I'm Indian, they want to know what something is called in Hindi or how it is written. While teaching Feudal Japan, I got in touch with a Nisei teacher at our school and had her write word like 'Japan' and copied the characters for 'samurai' and 'bushido' and the numbers up to ten. Students were very involved in attempting to write the characters and coloring it in their own combination of hues. I wasn't too lucky in ge tting characters in Chinese though.
By the way, if I remember correctly, the term 'Zen' (Buddhism) is derived from Sanskrit. The word for meditation in Sanskrit is 'dhyan', which became 'ch'an' in Chinese phonetics and then 'Zen' in Japanese!
I'm planning to watch 'Hero' starring Jet Li - as suggested in the forum - and checking for audio-visual content to be shown when I'm covering China next year

[Anonymous]

Teaching world history involves a lot of 'jumping around' and this can be quite a task for MS istudents to keep track of, especially since our students at large are not too much Geography savy.
When do you cover Japan? Before you get into the Crusades or after you have covered China and the Mongols? Is there a specific pattern that you use to slide to a different culture so it doesn't become too drastic of a switch for the students?
I always point out the region of the world on the world map that we will be covering after I have given them a pointer as to what region we just completed.

[Anonymous]

I noticed some of the work you did with students when covering Japan and it was great. I noticed students carrying around papers with different words or their names written in Japanese.

[Anonymous]

Hey Reza,

I should have tracked this thread better - sorry.

I don't have a picture easily scannable, maybe I'll get my husband to work on it this weekend. You can all laugh at my 80s hair.

I don't mean to overstate the history of women's oppression, and I certainly heard some truth in the UCLA seminar lecture perspective that we can't possibly expect to understand the male/female dynamics of the past completely and shouldn't be too quick to impose our own interpretations.

I find myself as a political/philosophical liberal wishing that all of us could be free from expectations based on gender, ethnicity, class, education, physical appearance or any other factor you plug in to the list. Seems so unfair when any of us bump up against limits to our self expression or life choices that exist on the basis of something assumed by others.

I do feel that it is a part of the success of human beings that we specialize and generalize our expectations - so maybe some of it is inevitable.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone noticed the articles on China (or related) in the L A Times under 'Column One'? It is perhaps reflective of the growing influence of China in world economic affairs. Even today LAT has an article about LA's Chinatown titled 'A City's Chinese Passage'.
A couple of years back I pointed out to my HS students of WHG that the economies of China and India are moving at a tremendous pace and giving a strong competition to the US. There were grunts of disapproval and outrititght disbelief.

[Anonymous]

As a lifelong fan of the Olympics, one way I am trying to focus the teaching of China in the 7th grade curriculum is to highlight the rich history of China's Middle Kingdom. As the start of the Silk Road, many civilization saw China as the forefront of refined culture. I am sure the arts and the other extra-curricular events surrounding the Olympics should be just as interesting as the events. Much like the World Expos, the Olympic Expos offer an insight for the locals to the outside world, but at the same time, it provides a yardstick to how their "culture" measures up to the world. With pride and the nature of 'face' in Asia, China's extravagant spending for Olympic venues and infrastructures reflects their modern willingness to open to the world again. Much like admiral Zheng He's trip to the world, China now can make the same journey through the digital media. I hope they show off their rich history and new "openness" to the world. If anyone remembers the 2004 Greece Olympic Games, the opening ceremony was rich with Greek history and fusion world culture through performances. While the games in Seoul and Tokyo/Nagano/Sapporo put those countries on the mind map of the masses, the 2008 games for China has a greater potential to raise interests around the world, simply for the fact of the ease communication and the number of nations participating. I know that winning the medals gets you respect in the world, but the real question to me is "will China finally open communication and free thought with the onslaught of foreign visitors and journalists?" Will we also see CNN type of stories where we can really see news pieces on life in rural and urban China? Will China allow their people to move beyond communism, poverty, and free travel??? Then we in the Western world could truly understand China and Asia's place in the world....

[Anonymous]

Sports: Baseball, sumo and the World Cup: We tend to think of soccer primarily as a European sport and secondly as a Latin American sport—for some the opposite applies. United States is obviously last in the equation. But where does Asia fit in? A little below Africa? Somewhere in there with the countries from the middle east? If you saw any of the world cup games, namely the first round game between France and Korea, you might think to place Asia, and Korea in particular, a little higher in the world cup/sports pyramid. Despite being behind for the majority of the game, they seemed to hold their own pretty good against the SuperEuroFrance team. Eventually they tied in the 80th minute on a sloppy, disheveled France and went on to maintain that tie against a favored western European team.

I found it interesting that the Korean community here in Los Angeles showed their support by gathering by the thousands in red t-shirts at the Staples center. It’s a nice message to send to all those Western countries that tend to dismiss Asian countries in the world sports realm discounting Asia as a continent only interested in martial arts and sub par baseball. Oh, in martial arts they excel, yes. But as for “real sports” such as baseball they are C at best. Japanese baseball in fact is a nice place for “farm teams” that washed up Americans can fall back on for a paycheck when they are no longer good enough to play serious American baseball—remember Clay’s Tom Selleck slide?

And yet if you have ever watched a Japanese baseball game—male or female league—there seems to be a lot more excitement, energy, and in general a lot more going on with the fan participation than in American baseball. Maybe Asian baseball has a long way to come but it is pretty exciting to watch as is sumo wrestling and any of the various forms of martial arts. And although no Asian teams made it to the final round of the World Cup, they did pretty good overall, better than America did anyway.

[Anonymous]

I am looking forward to the 2008 Olympic Games, also, to see what impression China will make since gaining its recogniton as a progressive, economic giant. The country has immense potential economically and has a lot to offer culturally, deeply steeped as it is in ancient traditions.
The one comment that I would like to make is that the country has a long way to go to educate the people in speaking English as it is universally used to communicate with visitors, of which there will be many during the Olympics. I found the cops in Shanghai to be very helpful in a gruffy way when I asked for directions by pointing the location on the map - they always replied in Chinese and pointed the directions and after a lot of repetitions, shaking heads and gesticulating, I always reached the locaiton I was headed for.

[Anonymous]

The NY Times website has a slideshow I recently viewed on child brides in India. Some are girls as young as 11 that are being married off to 45 year old men with first wives and kids. The girls are sold by their fathers in to marriage for meager dowries and the chance to escape their family’s poverty. The fathers are not happy and do not want to marry off their daughters so young but they feel they have no choice. One girl wanted to go to school and become a doctor when she grew up, plans which faded when she was married off to a 45 year old man who will use her to have more children. One bride now has a daughter the same age as her, 11. Although I understand the cultural practice of an older man marrying a younger woman, I find it very disheartening that the girls are being married off so young. I think we can agree beyond cultural practice that 11 and 45 is too large a gap and that the practice is simply wrong and should be reexamined.

This of course can lead into a great discussion with students on feminism, cultural norms, exploitation, and their own thoughts on marriage and career. I recently overheard three American college girls in a café in Washington discussing plans to get married. They were talking about what they wanted from a husband, career, family name, etc. By way of their conversation, I gathered that education and career seemed a way to pass the time until they found their husbands. By the way, I was not eavesdropping, they were simply that loud.

Are we really that far from arranged marriages ourselves?

[Anonymous]

Re: "The NY Times website has a slideshow I recently viewed on child brides in India....".

Child brides in India are generally localised in the colorful state of Rajasthan, more so in the rural communities of the country.
This practice has a historical context. India through the centuries has been subjected to regular invasions for the riches it has had - in the region, the country used to be called as 'sone-ki-chidiya' or the 'golden bird'. Virtually all of the invasions (except for the Europeans in the late medieval and early modern era who came from the south) came into the sub-continent from the north-west (today's Afganistan - specifically the North West Frontier Provinces area where Osama is supposed to be hiding).
The first region the invaders from the NW entered was the state of present -day Punjab and Rajasthan. As a result, families started marrying off their daughters at an early age to safeguard them from being 'dishonored' by the invaders. In time, this became a tradition, but it started off more as a way of survival than anything else.
As more and more families become educated and modern technology broadcasts the nature of the 'modern' world, I think this practice of child marriage should start disappearing for the most part.

[Anonymous]

Some information to use to compare religions is attached

[Anonymous]

Sun Tzu is another excellent topic to use to cover ancient China.
Here are some concepts from The Art of War
• The supreme act of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting
• No country has ever benefited from a protracted war

[Anonymous]

Starting off to familiarize myself with Japan, I defined terms. Affixed is my list:

[Anonymous]

For those intersted in Japan, I found a good web site
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2133.html

It has a lot of facts- complete with more links to get a better perspective on Japanes culture.

[Author]

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