session #2 - october 16

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,
Great to see everyone. I didn't call on everyone and I apologize for that. We want everyone to participate --- which is why we have this discussion forum. If there's an idea you wanted to share, but couldn't put it into words at the time or just thought of it now, please post it to the forum.

The few slides from today's discussion are available at the link below. Please note that all of the graphs are from this week's readings.

For the next three sessions, please feel free to post articles or links to news items about China that you come across.
For example: about Fan Bingbing:
https://variety.com/2018/film/news/fan-bingbing-apology-ashamed-and-guilty-for-what-i-did-1202966828/
https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/actress-fan-bingbing-tax-evasion-1202974463/

Jack Ma
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-step-down-chairman-n908061

Here's a talk about Alibaba's rise: https://china.usc.edu/video-duncan-clark-rise-jack-ma-and-alibaba

Here's the trailer about the rise of Alibaba: https://vimeo.com/channels/crocodileyangtzeexcerpts/94901900 (trailer is free to watch, the full film is available for rent)
 

 

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[Nira Sun]

I watched both videos about the development of Wechat, a popular social media app in China. I use wechat with my AP Chinese students. It's quite a convenient way to stay connected with my AP students and provide them access to the language outside the class time. Whenever I drive around San Gabriel area, I take pictures of signs or anything I see in Chinese. I send those pictures to my students as random homeworks. As mentioned in the video, the voice message is a great function which I got to apply to my class as well. Sometimes I left them voice message for them to practice listening or responding. Students also recorded themselves based on the prompts I provided. It's instant and convenient. As a teacher, I can always go back to grade on their speaking. Students are big fun of such interacting learning apporach. I hope my students get to experience the true authentic language materials that come from daily life. From such experience, I also get to deliver the message that language learning doesn't have to be restrained inside the classroom.

[Lin ZhaoDavison]

Thanks, Nira!  WeiChat is a great tool used for Chinese instruction, especially for instant chatting and listening and speaking. I'll use WeiChat too.

[Lin ZhaoDavison]

Thanks to Professor Dube for the chart illustrating where Chinese people spend most money in the mini-lecture.  It seems that Chinese people spend most money in tangible things like food, clothes, and cars for basic daily needs.  As China has the ambition to eliminate the poor and majorities of its citizens become middle class, I'm wondering if Chinese people will spend more money on education, healthcare, sports and entertainments to improve quality of life. 

[Katrina Oh]

Sometime last year, one of my students, who happened to be Chinese, first told me about WeChat. The way she described it- WeChat is like Facebook, but better. Initially, I thought Facebook's limited penetration into China was the result of the state's firewall but after watching the Discovery video, I realize WeChat mobile messenging app has done a better job of satisfying the demands of the Chinese market. For instance, it offers users the ability to record and send voice messages- a feature appreciated by Chinese users, who wish to avoid having to spend so much time sending complex Chinese script.

In the United States, we hear of technology juggernauts like Amazon, Apple, Facebook- but now I see there are other firms outside the United States that are just as innovative. After learning about WeChat, I too now agree with my student: WeChat is a superior to Facebook by combining communication, commerce, entertainment all in one convenient package.

[Lin ZhaoDavison]

National Committee on US-China Relations hosts events and webinars on China studies and issues.  The recent webinars include "2018 China Town Hall".  The keynote speaker was Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state and national security advisor.  

Other webinars of the month can be accessed at the "Event" website: https://www.ncuscr.org/events. 

For example, on Oct. 18 the webinar topic will be "Economic Policy Making in China (1949 - 2016).  

[Natalie Sanchez]

In the past 10 years international travel for Chinese citizens has risen. International travel is more accessible to high income individuals in China. This is something I talk about with my students in terms of migration. Also, people living in urban areas seem to be the ones that are traveling more than the rural regions. We also look at China’s internal migration amongst the more low income citizens. Many of the low income citizens in China are subject to internal migration mainly when it comes to the flexibility of their jobs. Many have moved from home in rural areas to places where there is more work or better economic opportunities. In addition, China’s Hukou policy makes it difficult for some to obtain a better lifestyle especially those designated agricultural.

[clay dube]

For session 2 on economics, here are links to the videos I embedded in the presentations.

13th 5 Year Plan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhLrHCKMqyM

The belt and the road: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSancn88eFk

Claymation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdPK1v0UxqQ

 

[Marcos Rico]

Nira,

         I am planning to show my 4th graders the video before we do the Hour of Code in December. A common complain that I hear from elementary school students is that everything was already invented in the past. There is nothing else left to invent. I see Wechat is a great example of modifying a product tha already exists and improving it. People were already sending text messages, but it was not very practical due to the large number of characters needed to write in Chinese. (https://www.hutong-school.com says that “With 3,500 characters you can read up to 99.48 %, which means pretty much everything!” Wow!!!! in the same website It mentions that in order to read 90% of the newspaper you only need to know about 900 Chinese characters, compared to how we only have 26 letters in the English alphabet.) The introduction of voice message with WeChat made it easier to send messages in Chinese making this app very popular. 

        It is a good example of how there are posibilities to improve on other products and technologies.

[Christine Xu]

As Chinese people using voice messaging, mobile talking, photographing of food, WeChat becomes part of Chinese culture Just in 3 years. According to NY times, In China 5.8 million people are using WeChat. This is almost 2/3 of the entire country using WeChat. WeChat becomes a tool for communication and entertainment in Chinese daily life. 

Although WeChat brings convenience to the people, it also could be problematic. WeChat has messenger, facebook, eBay PayPal all in one place. This sounds miracle, but concentrating so much data in few hands is not a good thing.  In US people will not accept and trust one for all, and also maybe they will run into anti trust problem and government will break up or block. But Chinese no laws like that, and actually many Chinese love that way. This makes the Chinese government control and supervise the people more easily because all the data and information of Chinese company are forced to share with Chinese government. From WeChat Chinese government knows everything about the people who are using it. WeChat can be a police station to watch the people. Chinese government can track every single movement you make. This is against human rights by the way.

 

[Christine Xu]

Its a China’s great shame about the Great famine. It caused 36 million people died and even hungry people resorted to cannibalism. After around 60 years, the famine still cannot be freely discussed in the place where it happened. It remains banned in mainland China, where historical amnesia looms large and government control of information and expression has tightened under the Communist Party’s control. Why the Chinese government won’t allow the true tale to be told, since Mao’s economic policies were abandoned in the late 1970s in favor of liberalization , and food has been plentiful ever since. The reason is political: a full exposure of the Great Famine could undermine the legitimacy of a ruling party that clings to the political legacy of Mao, even though that legacy, a totalitarian Communist system, was the root cause of the famine. As many economists have observed, no major famine has ever occurred in a democracy. 

 

Sources: nytimes.com

 

[Marcos Rico]

This lecture shows us what happened in China when they followed a top - down management on their agriculture, it was a failure and there was famine. Farmers were not motivated to work hard, they were getting paid by the number of d ays that they worked the fields not by the outcome of their work. Eventually the farmers were able to reorganize and followed a bottom - up management. It was a great success, ( without governement input) the farmers redistributed the land, and decided that once government production quotas were meet, the families could keep all the production surplus that they had farmed. This motivated farmers to work hard and increase their production in order to have a larger surplus. All of this helped to greatly improve the economy. Of course the great Chinese leader took all the credit for the improvement of the country’s economy.

[clay dube]

Thanks to Christine for mentioning the terrible famine that followed the Great Leap Forward. Below is a link to an interview with a scholar who studied the famine and wrote about it in the book, Tombstone.

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[Nira Sun]

Hi Marcos,

Your children were absolutely right about "nothing new" anymore. Due to the vast development of technology, people are no longer excited for small invention. Just look at where apple is going with its technology invention, you can see that consumer' appetite is getting bigger and bigger.

In terms of Chinese characters, I personally think it's quite similar to English letters even though there are only 26 letters. The 900 characters are just the basic formality of words. In order to really comprehend the meaning of certain messages or texts, you will need to grasp way more than that. In addition, most of the vocabulary and phrases are various combinations of dfferent or same characters..

For example, 好 is good. 不好 is not good. If you only know 好 but with no knowledge of 不, you will never guess it's the opposite meaning. Similar to English, you know "view" is to look at something. Without knowing what "pre" means, you will never guess the meaning of "preview".  It's a game of making combinations. I think "making connections" is what we need to teach our students so that they are open to different ideas, concepts or theories instead of being ignorant.

Now going back to the Wechat topic. It is indeed convenient when you can leave a voice message instead of typing. Just like you mentioned, it's probably due to the tiredness of typing. Any intention of the modification to technology always seems to satisfiy our needs as human. : ) 

[Christine Xu]

According to FAO, Growing rice and fish together is a Chinese tradition for 1000 years. Qingtian ( Zhejiang Province, China) Rice-Fish Culture System is one of the examples. The Qingtian has undergone great changes since this village was designated for heritage in 2005. According to the local people, they were poor but now they have extra income because of the coming tourists. They opened 5-6 agritainment restaurants to accommodate the tourist needs. And this also has created some new jobs opportunities.

The integrated rice and fish culture makes Qingtian and Longxian village famous for something other than emigration. The entire village is benefitting from the conservation of its agricultural heritage and has become a popular destination for tourists coming from the cities of Wenzhou and Shanghai. 

The remarkable resilience of this agroecosystem contributes to household food security and unique rural landscapes. 

In my class I will let my students to discuss and share ideas about the Rice-Fish Culture System. We are going to talk about how the rice-fish farming can help the global communities keep pace with the current demand for food authenticity through sustainable rice and fish production in ecofriendly environment.

 

Sources: FAO/ Researchgate.net

 

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