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AnonymousSession 12
Just as every session, this one was not different, fascinating!!. Professor Dube bombarded us with so much interesting information about many different things. Among many others, we did talk about the travels of Marco Polo and the examples of the commercial contracts. I just cannot imagine myself paying the mortgage of my home and not being able to live in the property, wow! As usual, all assigned readings were fascinating! Personally, I enjoyed the example of the wisdom of magistrate Lan Dingyuan to conduct trials and deliver justice. It was very impressive how he swept away the false religious sect and how he was able to get the truth out the father who claimed the disappearance of his daughter. Another interesting reading was the efforts that Emperor Hongwu had to do to clean his dynasty from corrupted officers. Corruption is not easy to eradicate from government officials, because it is so easy to fall into such a temptation and mainly if the bribes are good. Having the death penalty as a deterrent should be enough to prevent officials to fall into corruption and they might thought think twice before accepting bribes Another very pleasant reading is the essay on merchants , I like it because gives a detail explanation of the origin of the products that are found in a particular region of the country. It also shows that greediness is a universal characteristic of all human kind. Thank you professor for such a great workshop!!
edited by edelafuente on 6/23/2016
AnonymousIn taking another PD this year, we were analyzing the wood cutouts of Native people made by the British. One of the things we noticed in analyzing the images was that the representations of indigenous people were incorrect because they were Europeanized. After some analysis, we realized, with the help of the facilitator, that the cutouts were made by people who had actually never seen a Native American. This let me to think about the question I raised in class about Marco Polo. Did he go to China? How do we know? I think this would be a good introduction to the word Epistemology- How we know what we know. We could also pose the question to our students regarding how we know if a source is credible. How do we know?
AnonymousDue to circumstances out of my control I was unable to make it to this session, which was very unfortunate because I am sure I missed a lot of very interesting information. However after doing the readings I was very excited. I feel like they were very insightful and will be very useful for me in the classroom. One thing that I always want more and more of is materials, and I am excited to have more. I am always trying to add more and more primary sources into my lessons, I am happy that I will be able to use some of these and modify them for my classroom.
clay dubeHi Folks,
I'm sorry for not posting these earlier. Obviously this will be for after tonight's session. If you use a computer in the seminar, though, please download them so you can open a couple of them when we make reference to them.
The Song dynasty document highlights what an amazing place Hangzhou was at that time. After the Jurchen invaded and pushed the Song ruling family south of the Yangzi River, Hangzhou was made the capital. What was happening in Hangzhou eight centuries ago?
Two of the three Ming dynasty documents focus on relations among commoners (landlord-tenant, commercial transactions, the status of merchants). Note that there's a blank contract for taking out a mortgage, for hiring a worker, and for selling a son for adoption. What, if anything, surprises you about these documents?
The third document details orders issued by the Hongwu Emperor (founder of the Ming dynasty). Here he's trying to control his officials? Why might that be both necessary and difficult?
There are five Qing era documents. The first is about the Qing takeover, which was especially brutal in Yangzhou, an area near Shanghai which resisted the Manchu invasion. The second is a list of proverbs about heaven. What values do you think they convey?
The third Qing document is the most important one to read, it addresses the kinds of issues that confronted a local magistrate (Lan Dingyuan's Casebook). What challenges did he confront and how did he deal with them?
The fourth Qing document is from a popular and often satiric novel. What jockeying is evident in the story?
The final Qing document is actually from the post-1800 period but deals with an important topic, that is, what stories to families tell about themselves. What are the key rules you can pull out from "genealogy rules?"
And, one of our documents is available at the website: http://china.usc.edu/emperor-qianlong-letter-george-iii-1793. It is a message to the British monarch from the Qianlong emperor. What are the key points in his message?
edited by Clay Dube on 5/17/2016
AnonymousUnfortunately I was not able to attend the last session however I was able to read the course passages. One of them that stood out was housing and tenants. When reading it I found it very interesting to learn about how primary sources are a great way to make inferences that give us a glimpse of the lives people encountered during the Ming dynasty. An idea for a lesson for using primary sources is having four contracts from the mind dynasty and students rotating each time and making inferences with a graphic organizer answering the essential question "How were tenants lives during the ming Dynasty?" Rather than having students read a passage, it is much more powerful to have students discover how the tenants lived during the Ming dynasty through inquiry. To further extend this activity, students can also make connections to their own lives and similarities to the rent system today.