session #8 readings (dube, 10/16)

[Gerlinde Goschi]

Thank you for sharing this, Christine.  The process of foot binding caused excruciating pain to women.  Many women were completing their daily household chores, carrying heavy things during this process.  I read up on this and was surprised to find out how widely spread foot binding was in the past and for how long.  As Prof. Dube mentioned, many cultures have a "foot binding" process of their own in one form or another.  I am happy to read that by today this custom stopped.

[Christine Xu]

My dad used to love Beijing opera very much, and he even can sing a little of the Three Kingdoms. 

Beijing opera started 160 years ago. Beijing opera is important part of Chinese culture. It is called Beijing opera because it is formed in Beijing. Beijing opera features four main types artistic methods. They use the skills of speech, song, dance, and combat in movements that are symbolic and suggestive, rather than realistic.The skill of performers is evaluated according to beauty of their movements. 

Main roles in Beijing Opera performance are: Sheng (Male role), Dan (Female role), Jing (Painted face male role ), Chou (The comedy role).

Lian pu is the colorful dressing on the actors’ faces. By using transformative and exaggerated figures professional spectators would easily tell the characteristic of a role. Colors of Lian pu are varied with each representing a characteristic. For example, red symbolizes loyalty, prosperity, courage. It indicates a positive character, such as Guanyu, a great general during Three Kingdoms Period. Black signifies honesty and frankness, such as Lord Bao or Zhang Fei( zhang fei and Guang Yu shared a brotherly relationship with their lord Liu Bei in the late Eastern Han dynasty and early Three Kingdoms period).  White stands for evil and cunning, with Cacao as its representative, a famous politician in the late Eastern. 

Beijing opera contains the soul of Chinese national culture. Its unique charm inspires ethos of Chinese people. It is really the treasure of Chinese culture. 

If you have chance to go to Beijing, try the Liyuan Theatre. It would be a good choice for you. 

Beijing opera is a must teach part if you teach Chinese culture. Your students would like it. 

 

[Christine Xu]

Drinking tea is part of Chinese culture. If you are teaching Chinese culture, you should not miss Chinese tea. Tea houses and tea gardens usually reflect traditional Chinese architecture. 

There are different types of tea, for example, green tea, Oolong tea, Yellow tea, Black tea, Pu-erh tea, White tea, Chrysanthemum tea, Jasmine tea, Kuding tea, Medicinal tea. 

Chinese tea culture refers to how tea is prepared as well as the occasions when people consume tea. In China, tea is consumed regularly both on casual and formal occasions. It is consumed throughout the day, including during meals, as a substitute for plain water, for health, or for simple pleasure. It is not only a popular beverage, but also used in traditional Chinese Medicine as well as in Chinese cuisine.

 

[Erin Tanguay]

During the Monday (October 16th) class Professor Dube talked about arts in the Qing dynasty and how many people learned about Chinese history by watching Chinese Opera performances. Then the discussion went to what type of people were allowed to take on the role of actors or actresses. Dube mentioned that in Japanese Kabuki performances the female roles were played by highly skilled men. He also mentioned that there was a portrait or painting of a male performer who plays female roles being admired by a woman. This made me want to share a program that I show to my 7th grade students when we are studying the Japanese Arts. There is a great program (albeit old) called "Japan's Living Treasures" by National Geographic (1980). This program outlines 15 people who are paid a living stipend to continue the "Old Way" arts and train an apprentice to continue on when they have passed. One of the treasure is a Kabuki performer who has perfected the art of what it means to be a graceful and elegant woman and taught classes to women on the art of being a Japanese woman. My students love this program because it shows many "Old Ways" in the arts such as, sword making, paper making for screens, doll making, ect.. However they love the Kabuki scenes the most.   

[Erin Tanguay]

After reading these two documents about the rebellion against the Qing dynasty I think I will focus the lesson plan for this forum on the relationship between the 1911 revolution and China's first president and influence of the United States and George Washington as a Revolutionary War hero and first President. In 8th grade United States history the students learn how the United States and it's form of democracy and the rebellion against the British Empire influenced other countries to do the same. Usually, we focus on the countries in Central and South America that begin to fight for their independence, however, it is never discussed how this also inspired the rebellion in China. Students are encouraged to write for the history award in our school and the topic is always about how the US Constitution and the United States system of government influenced other nations. I think this would be a great way of having the students learn more about the Chinese foundation of their early republic and the connection to the American Revolutionary war and our first president. I was thinking of connecting Washington's Farewell Address and the Xiong document and discuss the importance of Washington's view on the importance of an elected, term-limit presidency and why this would be admired by the rebels in 1911. Then I could connect the three principles outlined by Sun Yat-sen and the connection to the Enlightenment principles that we used in creating the three branches of the United States government. I believe this would be a meaningful way to connect the early history of China's Peoples Republic and the early Republic of the United States.  

[Chris Hertzog]

I appreciated the reminder that charts and graphs can bring a great understanding and bring about deeper thinking or deeper reflection on a given topic or subject.  I want to incorporate more in my class and lectures.  With projectors and access to the internet we can find and project just about any subject area.  Growth vs. Development is a great way to make students think in a different manner, it got us to consider multiple aspects of Chinese society, economics and transition to industrialism.  Sometimes we, and our students can just think, "Well industrialization happened."  Or, "The just industrialized their society."  It is always more complex than we like to think.

I have appreciated the other charts used such as the ship tonnage, economic output, populations.  Each tell a story on their own and are great tools to use in the classroom for our students to explore and work through complex historical events.

[Chris Hertzog]

Foot binding is an attention grabbing topic for students, but I appreciated Daniel's caution, that as teachers, we need to be careful about letting our students think that this practice was "what the Chinese did to their girls".  It did happen, and is a reality, but not necessarily as wide spread as we way project to our students, or may be the only thing they rememeber from this time period and culture.  I always try to get remind students that it is easy to judge the past or people in the past as easy as it is to look at another culture or ethnic group and to characterize or stereotype them.  Kids (and us) do that very well as it is, but as I teach History, I want my students to put it in context.  Do we do similar things in our culture, or our we blind to our peculiarities?

[Lesly Gonzalez]

Now that we've had the three-sided discussion, I think I will incorporate this activity into my unit plan. I will now begin trying to identify the topic for the discussion...

[Jane Shen]

Chris, I am not an expert in European history, but I was thinking if at the similar time in the history while Chinese nobels were binding their daughters feet, in Europe, weren't the girls sufferring the girdling and the super tight corset in order to fit in their western dresses ( hoop skirts)? 

Even in present days, we can see in most of the fashion magazines that bony models are leading the fashion trends. Even the popular celebrities are constantly on a diet to fit in children sized dreses. All these peculiarities mislead our growing teenagers.

I am attaching a cartoon which could reflect on the current model industry here.

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[Jane Shen]

I agree with you Lesly. I tried  4 sided discussion in my high school classroom by having the students compare and contrast the three traditional dresses among three Asian countries: Chinese Qipao vs. Korean Hanbok vs. Japanese Kimono vs. Western hoop dresses.

Students were so excited and engaged actively. I have to extend the debate from 1 section to 2 sections.

Debating is a really effective way due to my experience .

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[Tanish Fortson]

I know that Professor Dube told us not to do a unit on foot binding because it wasn’t as wide spread, as people made it seem.  As Westerners I think we just find the topic interesting as well as fascinating. I remember in high school being taught about the subject and imagining being ridiculed if I was ever to visit China because I am very tall and wear a size 10, which is well above the attractive 3 inch, idolized size. Now that I am older, I realize that this was a very silly way of thinking. I am thankful for this class educating teachers because I feel like I did not get the proper education for world history. Due to this feeling, when teaching my kindergarten and 1^st graders, I have a goal in mind, and that is to teach how I would want my children to be taught.  I don’t want to teach them random things out of context which is how I felt like I was taught world history.

 

[Eric Hoh]

I appreciated how the role-play discussion organically led to a deeper understanding of how China transitioned between these three approaches to reconstruction. Professor Dube really modelled how to facilitate the discussion, and I see the potential for an intellectual exercise such as this to be used for a wide range of learners. It would be interesting to utilize this topic of debate as a critical thinking exercise in which students might compare and contrast the process of reconstruction for a particular region and/or nation-state studied throughout the course of a unit (or at the end of a school year). I can imagine students becoming deeply engaged with the opportunity to debate and role play certain characters in this history. I would probably supplement the discussion with sentence starters and a guide with key points that would have been front-loaded and researched prior to the debate. 

[Tanish Fortson]

I absolutely loved the 3-sided discussion. I was on the side of Self-strengthening. I am a follower of Qiu Jin and believed in enriching the state and strengthening the military.  I did agree with a lot of what they were striving for such as raising the living standards and being self-sufficient. A lot of the difficulties arose with this movement because most of the people had little to no experience with governmental activism for economical purposes.  They wanted to improve their livelihood but didn’t know how to do so.  Their economy was not where it needed to be for investments and most people depended on the tradition ways of employment. The self-strengthening movement did fail to make a direct impact on China’s problems but nonetheless the Chinese were proud of what was accomplished during this time, and built on the accomplishments that did take place such as the few modern arsenals, factories, and railway that was built..  

Personally I think it was brave and smart for them to commit to social, keep the rebellion down and try to advantage economically. 

[Carlos Oyarbide]

I think the image of the Japanese victory over China would provide an excellent cross-disciplinary opportunity. If you were to show this to students without explaining its context, it could provide you with an excellent “hook” to teach bias, propaganda, context, explicit versus implicit meaning, and I’m sure many other content specific skills or subjects.

 

By simply asking students “what do you see” you can start to unravel the many layers of an image and its purpose. Guiding questions like: “who do you think is being depicted?”, “Why are they fighting?” “How are the two sides depicted?” As the students answer these questions, you can then lead students to whatever topic of skill you want to introduce or built upon.

 

Discussions about images and how they shape perception on a subject could apply to several subjects. The controversy caused by photos like this when the the website was put up can lead to further discussion about history and propaganda and even ownership of historical events.

 

This photo also reminded me about the discussion we had about the controversy of the Sea of Japan V. the Sea of Korea. The names we use and the images we use shape the perception of the history and by extension, the present. Particularly, names and images define the feelings that outsiders have towards an unfamiliar event or place.

[Gerlinde Goschi]

I enjoyed this three-sided historical encounter with my group, the self-strengtheners, and with the reformers, and rebels.  All three leaders, Li Hogzhang, Kang Youwei, and Qiu Jin presented great arguments for their causes.  I think the reformers and self-strengtheners are not that far apart in their beliefs and ideology. The reforms suggested by Kang Yowei, have the precondition of modernization of the traditional examinations.  Our leader, Li Hongzhang, was also an advocate of 19th-century modernization. Although he was loyal to the system, he understood that the Confucian examination practice needed to undergo a reform to give prestige to scientific modes as seen in the US or the West.  The rebels forgot to mention that Sun Yatsen invited the Soviets into China to advise him on the organization of his party.  This is why the Nationalistic Party is leaning toward a Leninist organizational structure today.

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