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AnonymousI was going through some old National Geographic magazines the other day and I found a great article on Shang Dynasty. The article, "The New Story of China's Ancient Past" is in the July 2003 issue which also has an awesome map of the Korean War that is currently hanging on one of my classroom walls.
In the article, it states that it is legend that the first oracle bone was "rediscovered" in 1899 when a man suffering from malaria bought a turtle shell to pullverize into a potion. Luckily, someone noticed the 3,000 year-old inscriptions on the shell and this led to collection and cataloging of thousands of other oracle bones. Great article...with wonderful pics.
Louis
AnonymousThis story from the pages of the New York Times titled "Deep in Cihna, a Poor and Pious Muslim Enclave." It is dated March 19, 2006 so it really is current. I think the title alone should lead teachers and students to be interested in this large and important minority in China. Please observe all copyright laws. I have included the pictures so download time may be a bit long. Nicholas Beck
AnonymousWhile sorting through my China unit resources, I came across an old article on the Han Dynasty, which was written by Mike Edwards and published in the Feb. 2004 issue of National Geographic. The article refers to the Han as a rival of the Romans in power and prestige. The article ends with a quote from the director of the Institute of Archaeology in Beijing, who states, "The West inherits its traditions from the Romans and Greeks, while China inherits from the Han." Any thoughts?
AnonymousI found an off beat story at the China Daily web site about how the government wants to scramble or block mobile phone signals in the exam halls, placing police outside and having students sign a contract saying they won't cheat at the college entrance exams this month (June). Apparently there is alot of pressure when 9.5 million are estimated to be testing and only 1 out of four becoming eligible for college. 1,700 students were caught cheating last year including using mobile transmissions and selling copies. The country is quite embarased by the cheating and will send those caught selling or leaking exams 3 to 7 years in prison. Some exam sites won't allow the cell phone blocking signals claiming it is physically harmfull. If you would like to read more this is a link to the article I read. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104AP_China_Crushing_Cheats.html
AnonymousI have noticed some articles recently about China being rain makers and controlling the weather and it caught my interest. When studying ancient history with my 6th graders we have read how people around the world are effected by droughts or floods and what they have done to survive mother nature. This would be a great current article about what China is doing now in the modern world to change the weather depending on if they want or don't want rain.
In the article "Climate Control, Beijing-Style" by Melinda Liu from a Newsweek article I found at
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13107271/site/newsweek/page/2/
they explained that they originally began researching man made rain in 1958 to improve harvests or to minimize destructive rain. According to the article:
"the parched North China plain has been stalked by drought since 1998. Normal precipitation is between 22 and 24 inches annually, says Zhang, but Beijing had only 18 inches last year. And drought continued around China’s capital city this spring, “so we’re increasing rainfall using our own means,” says Zhang. “But man-made efforts can’t solve the drought problem altogether; they can increase rainfall by only 10 to 15 percent.”
China has had success in their rain making endevours. Some examples from the article are as follows:
"Chinese meteorologists claim that similar efforts helped create good weather for a number of past VIP events in China, including the World Expo in Yunnan, the Asian Games in Shanghai and the Giant Panda Festival in Sichuan."
"last autumn, authorities in northeast China induced artificial rain to assist 10,000 firefighters battling a massive forest fire in Heilongjiang province."
"In 2004, when Shanghai’s sweltering temperatures soared above 95 degrees in July, weather modifiers induced rain to break the heat wave and reduce demand on the city’s overstretched power grids. “Shanghai was the first city in China to use man-made rain to cool down temperatures,” boasted Yu Zhaoyu of the city’s Meteorological Bureau."
What prompted the interest in controlling the weather for the Olympics? Well, according to the article the Russians controlled the weather recently for an important ceremony. Here is an exerpt form the article:
"The idea of creating good weather received political support from China’s former party head Jiang Zemin after he attended a 2000 celebration in Russia marking the 55th anniversary of the end of World War II. Jiang was impressed when the Russians induced rain to successfully clear up clouds for the ceremony. “When he came back, Jiang said China should do the same thing,” says Zhang, “We’re trying our best to be ready for the Olympics. Already we’ve succeeded in clearing up small cloud formations.”
How is China changing or controlling the weather?
the quote by Zhang especially caught my attention:
“I intended to modify the weather by using artillery.”
They are using silver iodine and rocket launching it into cloud formations. They have been testing chemical aviators at different altitudes and on different sized clouds. Another way is to induce a sorm early so it hopeully blows over by the time of the desired event. China has also spent a lot on research and setting up and running the Beijing Weather Modification Office. They employ 30 people and have "two aircraft and 20 artillery and rocket-launching bases to help modify weather around the city." They have a budget of about 50 million per year.
The article seems to lean mostly towards the positives of this rain making, but it does include some concerns.
"Cloud-seeding shells and rockets have sometimes gone astray, damaging homes and injuring inhabitants."
I never thought people would fight over clouds. Read the following qoute:
"the rainmaking scramble became so intense in 2004 that five Henan province villages reportedly squabbled over “cloud theft” after they all seeded the clouds simultaneously but only one district received the lion’s share of rain."
Some people expressed environmental and health concerns, however meteorologists claim they use such small doses of the iodine that it won't have any negative effects.
All in all I would reccomend reading this article. Perhaps the Russians and Chinese will make it into the hisoty books one day for discovereing and perfecting how to control the weather.
AnonymousTHEATER | July 29, 2006
Theater Review | 'Geisha': Ong Keng Sen’s ‘Geisha’ Offers a New View of a Tradition Built on Dreams
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
A languid, half-playful, half-academic and disappointingly dull 90-minute collage of words, music and dance.
The article is a review of a new performance in New York focused on the geisha theme. I find it interesting that the piece is said to focus on the aesthetic of the geisha’s role rather than on the erotic element. I remember one of our speakers commenting on this and I find it interesting and true that from a western perspective—that is when a non-Asian writer attacks the subject—sex seems always to be highlighted. Makes for excitement and drama, right? However, as in this case, when an Asian writer discusses the theme art and aesthetic becomes the focus rather than the erotic. I also find it interesting that the piece is dismissed as “dull.” Is this because the sex is missing?
One other interesting fact is that the principal geisha is an African-American woman. Ong Keng Sen is said to question and challenge western thoughts of geishas in his piece and it sounds like it to me. If it comes to LA I’ll be interested in seeing it.
This article can be helpful in discussing literary criticism and understanding multiple/comparative perspectives on literature.
AnonymousINTERNATIONAL | July 13, 2006
Q&A: China-North Korea Relationship
By ESTHER PAN
Q&A: ASIA: The China-North Korea Relationship.
The article discusses the history of the relationship between China and North Korea commenting on the fact that it has been a very good relationship, one providing food and fuel to the other. It goes on though to ask if that relationship is still as strong as it once was. It is said that with Kim Jung-Il’s testing of nuclear weapons China must now question its support. Critics state that although China is seen as a buffer between the U.S., Japan, and North Korea, Americans overestimate China’s influence over North Korea. And although China is concerned with North Koreas nuclear program they will not withdraw their support from the country entirely. According to the article China needs N. Korea’s ambiguous military strength to serve as a buffer between Chin and the U.S. In this respect China is willing to live with n. Korea as a nuclear power, i.e. as protection against the U.S. So analysts speculate that the relationship will remain close.
The article is excellent in that it breaks the argument up into separate sections that one can easily read and understand. It is written in Q & A format which can be very helpful and effective as a teaching tool. One might even create a lesson employing this Q & A format in other subjects. Try to read this and copy it if you are interested before the Times makes you pay for it.
AnonymousI observed a teaching colleague using international and local ethnic newpapers/periodicals that communicated the same news event: tsunami/hurricane/war/elections/misc. While many students cannot obviously read the language, they did make great observations regarding the events. Talking about layouts, color, fonts, imagery, and even the ads, the students began to absorb the relevance to these paper-things to people around the world. Some share brief tales of going to ethnic markets/neighborhoods for family demanded ethnic papers. This lesson could be extended to look at web-sites but without personal language skills, be careful at finding legitimate news sources. The students did pick ones that told the event in the best way, and all pairs explained their justification to the class. Next was picking the matching English translated headlines to the original headlines on the papers. Their intuition for layouts led to many of the correct guess. Finally, homework was for students to bring a sample to class or such papers/periodicals to the class from a specific time period/event, such as a week or an election/disastor. This is how the teacher collects sample for the next few years down the line to keep relevant to incoming future students.I observed a teaching colleague using international and local ethnic newspapers/periodicals that communicated the same news event: tsunami/hurricane/war/elections/misc. While many students cannot obviously read the language, they did make great observations regarding the events. Talking about layouts, color, fonts, imagery, and even the ads, the students began to absorb the relevance to these paper-things to people around the world. Some share brief tales of going to ethnic markets/neighborhoods for family demanded ethnic papers. This lesson could be extended to look at web-sites but without personal language skills, be careful at finding legitimate news sources. The students did pick ones that told the event in the best way, and all pairs explained their justification to the class. Next was picking the matching English translated headlines to the original headlines on the papers. Their intuition for layouts led to many of the correct guess. Finally, homework was for students to bring a sample to class or such papers/periodicals to the class from a specific time period/event, such as a week or an election/disaster. This is how the teacher collects sample for the next few years down the line to keep relevant to incoming future students.
Here is a digital way to see the papers worldwid daily:
Newspaper Museum
AnonymousGreat use of graphic in this suggested site: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200504/
I hope new and old teachers appreciate the "Traveling the Silk Road" for any lesson applicable for early Mongolian history (or China's past).
AnonymousLarmer, Brook. "Up Against the Wall." Smithsonian. August 2008. Vol. 39, No. 5
An incredible article about the state of the Great Wall on the verge of an inundation of visitors from the 2008 Olympics. The numbers associated with the Wall are amazing-built by a succession of dynasties for over 2000 years, at its height over 4000 miles long, and, now, according to the experts more than 2/3 may have damaged or destroyed. Anything this huge and this old suffers the ravages of time. Natures tears it down with every means of erosion at its disposal. The Red Guards destroyed sections to erase this symbol of a feudal past, others scavenged it for building matertials, and still others have breached it and removed it to develop and industrialize. Even though it is now illegal to damage the wall, there are no funds or extra personnel to enforce the law; there is just the desire to cash in on the tourism potential. One positive aspect on the part of government is to conduct a survey that will determine the Wall's length and condition. One of the more inspiring stories told in the article is that of Sun Zhenyuan, a 59-year-old farmer who is working to protect and preserve a 16th century stretch overlooking his home. His ancestors were soldiers who moved there to garrison and rebuild sections of the Wall. On one of the towers built during that time are the characters in the archway proclaiming it to be "Sunjialou," the Sun Family Tower. What a link, what a legacy!
AnonymousNorman, Howard and Michael Yamashita, photographer. "On the Trail of a Ghost."
2008 National Geographic. February, 2008, Vol. 213, No. 2.
Great article for teaching haiku. Howard Norman's ghost is Matsuo Basho and the trail is the 1200 mile journey Basho completed in central Honshu in 1689. Illustrated by the photographic equivalent of haiku by Michael Yamashita, Norman tells of Basho's "last ride." The ailing practitioner of Zen and poetry undertook this long journey as if it were a spur-of-the-moment walk to the corner grocery for a pack of cigs. The article enticed me to find Basho's Narrow Road to a Far Province, described by Norman as haibun, a mixture of haiku and prose, for a new experience in travel writing and reflection. Basho's dialogues with Chinese and Japanese poets of the past-conversation with ghost and ghost-to-be-made me feel better about my mutterings with imaginary and not-so-imaginary beings and my predilection for TV Tourettes.
AnonymousThe Great Wall indeed has a fantastic history. But to get a high tech idea of what the Wall looks like, here is a website to allow students to get a birds eye view of the Wall.
http://www.satellite-sightseer.com/id/4799
AnonymousI think using the LA Travel Section on China could be a good resource for material for student projects. I like to have my students do brochures about a place we are studying, and this would be a great resource. You can research Great Wall of China, or sight see in Beijing, check out http://travel.latimes.com/destinations/asia.
AnonymousI thought the quote "dash" posted a few years ago, "The West inherits its traditions from the Romans and Greeks, while China inherits from the Han" was very interesting.
During the spring East Asia in my Classroom seminar Professor Ye highlighted the reverence Chinese people hold for the Han dynasty and its achievements-- one of the most striking pieces of evidence for this pride in the Han dynasty is that 94 percent of modern Chinese people claim to be descendants of the Han.
I think this quote could be a great springboard to an end of the year discussion or project for sixth grade history; building off of this quote, students could go back through each of the civilizations we have studied to think about what traditions we inherit from each of them. After compiling a list of how modern Americans use ideas from each civilization, students could write about which civilization they think American culture has "inherited" the most from.
-Karen