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AnonymousProfessor Dube disseminated far too much information to cover in a single post, from Chinese Thanksgiving (mid-Autumn Festival) to the “Jade Rabbit” lunar lander to a model of party hierarchy. I will say that one of the things I enjoy about his lectures is his obvious pride in USC. His boosterism is restrained, sometimes quirky, and always interesting. He presented us with fun facts like USC being the only university to have an alumi nominated for an Oscar every year since the Academy Awards’ inception in 1929; or, NASA being currently headed by Charles Bolden Jr., a USC grad. Professor Dube’s excitement about the rivalry game against UCLA (when Tommy Trojan was wrapped up for protection) was contagious. I found myself catching Trojan Fever, and I watched the next three games—including the Rose Bowl—with great interest. After all, former QB Cody Kessler is a Bakersfield boy!
AnonymousMooncakes are a very familiar food eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival in China. In all the novels about China that I have taught to my students they almost always mentioned mooncakes. I love to cook , so I decided to see if I could I find a recipe for authentic mooncakes. After looking at the recipes I realized that first they are not what I thought they were. Mooncakes are not really sweet, they are more complicated to make that I considered, and some of ingredients would be difficult to find. Also I was concerned with trying to get them to look like a traditional mooncake which have very intricate designs. I saw designs of hello kitty and many more beautiful designs. After evaluating what it would cost me to hunt down the items and the fact that no one in my family would probably even try it, I decided not to try. For traditional mooncakes I would need duck eggs, bean paste, lye, and a special syrup. I really have no idea in my town where to find these items. I however will be trying it from a speciality shop during the Mid-Autumn Festival this year. I’m brave.
AnonymousThe Mid-Autumn festival is a festival in China that is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month on the Chinese lunar calendar. It is considered to be half way through Autumn. It is the day where the moon is thought to be the biggest and the brightest. It is the second biggest festival in China. This year the festival will fall on October 4th and the entire week from the 1st through the 8th will be celebrated. On festival day your family would celebrate by gathering together and offering sacrifices to the moon, eat moon cakes, and express strong yearnings for family members not close by. Some families prefer to celebrate at their homes and others prefer to be outside to be closer to the moon.
The history of this festival goes back to Zhou dynasty. The Chinese have always followed the moon closely and it was how they created their calendar. They wanted a way to recognize its greatness. During this time sacrifices could be made as thanks and the hope of good crops during the harvest season. It was a very important festival to the farmers. A romantic spin on the festival tells the story of Chang E. In order to protect her husband's elixir, she ate it and flew to the moon. There are also many legends surrounding this festival. I hope I get a chance to be a part of this festival someday.
AnonymousChina’s Great Famine: the true story
Session 9
After reading this, I am wondering where I have been! This read was horrifying to say the least. I find it shocking that a country can cover up such an atrocity and twist the facts for the people who are descendants of the victims. I am also thankful that he was able to gather these facts while working for Xinhua and “unearth the truth about the famine”, as he dove through the archives while working on the state agricultural policies. It is through truth, no matter how ugly, that we can learn and move to a better place as a society. As an American, it is hard for me to even begin to understand how something so awful can be covered up and twisted to represent the horrific event as just a minor occurrence. The levels people had to stoop to for survival is unthinkable. I am so glad Yang Jisheng was able to write Tombstone and get this information out, so these types of things will never happen again.
AnonymousSession 8
Mao Zedong on Art and Literature
Mao’s views on art are not surprising when you think of who he was, and I am definitely not an expert. I was sick during this session and was only hearing some of the discussion from a different room, so unfortunately did not receive the information firsthand. As I read this article about Mao, I was immediately drawn to the words, “workers, peasants and soldiers”. Professor Dube showed pictures on a different night that showed the importance of this idea. Every advertisement or piece of art included a worker, soldier, and peasant and Professor Dube made sure we recognized the importance. Mao believed that literature and art are present to represent these groups of people.
AnonymousSession 8
Nixon’s Press Corps
The woman in this story is my hero! I am not one who looks for causes to stand up for and fight or takes a stand because of specialty groups or popularity. I am definitely a “right fighter” though and have a hard time keeping my mouth shut for stupidity or injustices. In saying this, I have never felt the pressure to not be able to make a stand which makes me admire her even more. The very thought of tearing down her drying rack for a President she didn’t even respect and who would most likely never even arrive, was more than she could take. I believe it was so much more than the rack that she was taking a stand against. I think that in the hoopla of her community getting ready for the leader of “American Imperialism”, she began to feel depressed at the reminder of her lack of freedom. She had lived in the United States and experienced a different way of life. Refusing to take down her drying rack was a way to reclaim a little bit of the freedom she once knew.
AnonymousMuch like the other literature I've read from the era of the Cultural Revolution, I enjoyed this piece as well. In most of the stories that I've read from that time period rarely have a standoff between someone in an authority position in the party and a common teacher. Lots of irony and sassy ideas made me giggle as I read. Reading this also made me wonder, too, are memoirs, journals, diaries, and letters a better way to study and learn history? Why or why not? Is history and the study of history supposed to be objective, or can it be subjective?
AnonymousThis piece was both interesting and troubling at the same time. It was interesting because it gave me a peek into the mind of a man who managed to come from humble beginnings and control millions of people with a red book. It was troubling, because at some point, I felt like he was talking in circles. In the first comment, he says that "There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake" and that "literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines." So, does he believe that even when artist aren't trying, there is still some underlying political message? Does the Mona Lisa contain a political message? What if an artist paints a bowl of fruit, which has been done before, is there a political message in that? In addition, he wants art that is truly for the workers, peasants, and soldiers. Why does he believe the other art is not for these classes of people? Maybe the art and literature speaks agains what Mao champions, and so it is considered counterrevolutionary.
Later, he demands that there is a unity of politics and art...but I suppose it's the politics that he supports, of course. Then he says that "questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles....I think I laughed out loud...free discussions? Really? Again, as long as it is a discussion that contains the "right" political viewpoint...
A very interesting man, indeed.
AnonymousWhat a story! From rotting crops, to starvation, to illness, to death! It was told so simply from the father's point of view that I couldn't help be wrapped up in the story. It is not a story filled with action, but a quiet retelling of a very troubling time. When the father was in the hospital, angry at the doctor's, I could feel his rage and see the gym teacher holding him back. It's a great story about survival, which is what one of my English classes is working on now. They could discuss the lengths that people go to in order to survive and the value that we put on a person's life as we justify our actions.
Anonymous"There is no such thing as art for art's sake." My daughter is an artist and I think she would disagree with Mao Zedong, and so would I. But, as my opinion is irrelevent, what is important is that China continues today to hold to Mao's philosophy, and as such, it is important to know what that philosophy is. All culture, art, and literature is for the masses; the workers, peasants, and soldiers.
AnonymousFirst of all, I was surprised to find that such an animal existed...China, with a Constitution? This seems a very "western" idea. Then I looked at the date, 1982, and had to go back to check when Mao died...1976. Some of the writing in the preamble seems a little sensationalized: "Thereupon the Chinese people took state power into their own hands and became masters of the country..." This is, apparently is around 1949 when they overthrew imperialism, feudalism, and capitalism...only to be taken down by a Cultural Revolution...perhaps I should be a little more forgiving than this...but I think it's interesting that the Constitution boasts of China having the longest history in the world but how much of it is discussed openly and on display for the people?
The constitution also talks about democracy...but it's a democratic dictatorship...excuse me, what?! After doing some research, it basically boils down to the idea that the part really believes that it represents the people...but, I also found this...
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/11/economist-explains-21
Always interesting, and never a dull moment...
AnonymousThis great famine bears a very striking resemblance to the story written called "To Live" where the people are starving, the mother is sick and, ironically, the healthy son at the end dies. As I read about this journalist, I couldn't help wondering if that fictional tale was based on this real, true event. The tales of the actual events are horrific, children begging for food and being dragged deep into the mountains left to die from exposure and starvation. That's AWFUL!!! The thing that also really bothers me is how the most unpleasant things are sanitized and euphemized so that it becomes more palatable. The three years of starvation and death become, "Three Years of Natural Disasters", etc. They were so desperate that they turned to cannibalism, all the while, begging for the government to come to their rescue.
The comment that I will always carry with me is this: "So right now it's very necessary to write this book; otherwise nobody has this history." In other words, the author felt he had to write the book because there is no one else to do what he does and tell those stories. I wonder what stories my students and how they will be shared...
AnonymousDing Ling a remarkable feminist, writer and most importantly revolutionary began with a strong representation of female independence being raised by a single mother until the age of 13 because her father died when she was three. When her stepfather tried to marry her off when she was 16 she ran away to Shanghai in 1920. To me this is a very important milestone for Ding Ling, not just because of her independence and strength, but the act of running away was – in my opinion – her first exertion of feminism over a male oppression then represented by her stepfather’s attempt to control her life. By 1925 she marries her husband and becomes of a supporter of left wing causes when she publishes a red and black journal to promote social change. Although she publishes Ms. Sophia’s Diary in 1927 and rises in prominence, her husband is arrested by the British in 1930 because of his communist activities is turned over to the nationalist who execute him. Ding Ling is also placed under house arrest for her ideological stance. After she is released to Yenon she runs away when joins the communist cause in Northern China.
Between the 1940’s – 1980’s she is highly critical of the Chinese government. In 1942 she is even documented for criticizing communism in China for not treating women equally and not letting women have authority despite the marketing campaign clearly depicted a woman as a representation of the pheasant which was to be celebrated as part of the ideology. When she’s criticized by Mao by 1957 she is condemned and put on a farm to do manual labor, spends five years in jail
Chinese women such as Ding Ling were taught by the government that the act of exerting female empowerment was undermining the primary goal of the Marxist movement by removing the focus from the peasants and the soldiers i.e. class struggles. Her struggle for female empowerment can be compared to black female feminism, which was suppressed for the civil rights movement.
edited by rcharles on 1/21/2017
AnonymousJust like there are "four olds" that the Red Guard searched out during the Cultural Revolution, it makes sense that there would be 4 modernizations. Those four modernizations are thought to lead to something greater: agriculture, industry, national defense, and science & technology. It was thought and even declared that people wouldn't need to worry about class struggles anymore because of the modernizations. Again, I had to do some research because I knew about the June 4 incident at Tiananmen Square, but I had no idea about this April 5th movement. Again, someone died and the students gathered to mourn. They gathered on the Chinese equivalent of Memorial day and things went bad from there. From November 1978 to December 1979, Chinese had posted on the wall. What they posted was very similar to those charts of the Cultural Revolution, where people's character was attacked. Only on this Democracy Wall, they aired their complaints about the government and its corruption. True to form, instead of using this as a tool for reform, it was then used "to manipulate public opinion with distorted rumors and outright falsehoods." These are the words of Deng Xiaoping, so take from it what you will.
What I did like, were some of the quotes regarding the Democracy Movement and Response 1986-1987:
Literature is a mirror. When the mirror shows us things in life that are not very pretty, or that fall short of our ideals, it is wrong to blame the mirror. Instead we should root out and destroy those conditions that disappoint us...Shaming a mirror is no way to make an ugly person beautiful, nor is it a way to make social problems evaporate." - Liu Binyan, of CCP (expelled twice), in LA Times
I absolutely LOVE this quote! This has been my stance regarding literature at least for the last two years! I would love to take the Hua's "To Live" and the article about the great famine, read them both, and have the students discuss this quote. Surely there are other places in life where we've seen this occur. Could we also take an incident and find a correlating fiction, or perhaps even write our own?
AnonymousAs I read some of these comments, they reminded me of someone's Facebook or Twitter newsfeed... that gives me an idea....
Anyhow, there is a quote from Den Xiaoping in a speech on the Suppression of the Tiananmen Square Protest. He said, "The US berates us for suppressing students. But when they handled domestic student unrest and turmoil [during the 1960s and 1970s] didn't they send out police and troops to arrest people and cause bloodshed? They were suppressing students and the people, but we are putting down a counter-revolutionary rebellion. What qualifications do they have to criticize us?..."
All I could think was, "Yea! Right?!" How ironic is it that the United States goes around to these other countries with what China refers to as "long history" and tries to tell them how to behave. I think I've always had mixed feelings about it. I'm not saying that I agree with the oppression that occurs in other countries, but what I am saying is that if you are going to "police" other folks, at least be relatively guilt free when you do... Sure, the government can justify it's actions against protests, marches, and sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, but then so can other countries, right? As far as I can see, we all still have a long way to go and an interesting road ahead...