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Christine XuMy card displays workers, peasants, and solders, they carry Little Red Books, and they are together praising chairman Mao during the Culture Revolution. This cards also reads “ Long live Chairman Mao”
Mao was the person initiated the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
And over 1.7 million people died as a result of the Cultural Revolution, according to the country’s official figures.
Christine XuEmpress Dowager Cixi is one of the most significant and controversial political figures in modern Chinese history. Except her political roles, she also was an excellent artist. She was good at painting, Chinese Calligraphy, and court art. She is one of the good examples to talk about if you teach Chinese history, culture and Chinese art.
Cixi had involved in the Wanchun yuan (Garden of ten thousand springs) reconstruction project. This indicated that her strategy of asserting political power through art but also provided a rare glimpse of how a patron’s creation and decoration of space can be read as a self-portrait. Cixi utilized the location and scale of the Tiandi yijiachun ( spring united between Heaven and Earth), her own place, as a symbol of her continuous power struggle with Qing imperial tradition. She designed the palace’s layout and interior decoration, and it suggested Cixi’s feminine and religious identities. Cixi was the person who finalized all instructions when it came to the construction of the Wanchun yuan and the Spring Palace as well.
Christine XuEmpress Dowager Cixi is one of the most significant and controversial political figures in modern Chinese history. Except her political roles, she also was an excellent artist. She was good at painting, Chinese Calligraphy, and court art. She is one of the good examples to talk about if you teach Chinese history, culture and Chinese art.
Cixi had involved in the Wanchun yuan (Garden of ten thousand springs) reconstruction project. This indicated that her strategy of asserting political power through art but also provided a rare glimpse of how a patron’s creation and decoration of space can be read as a self-portrait. Cixi utilized the location and scale of the Tiandi yijiachun ( spring united between Heaven and Earth), her own place, as a symbol of her continuous power struggle with Qing imperial tradition. She designed the palace’s layout and interior decoration, and it suggested Cixi’s feminine and religious identities. Cixi was the person who finalized all instructions when it came to the construction of the Wanchun yuan and the Spring Palace as well.
Christine XuDrinking 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.
Christine XuMy 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 XuThe footbinding is a major symbol of China’s backwardness. I still can vividly remember that it was funny and horrified when I saw my great-grand mother and grand mother’s tightly bound feet at my early ages. They could not walk steadily.
The fabled “golden lily feet” were decorative and all about male sexual satisfaction. Foot biding also demonstrated male economic power at the old time and it showed that male want to confine women physically and prevent their movement. Mothers of girls from poor families bound their daughters’ feet in the hope of attracting a wealthy man who could raise their offspring from the desperate poverty. This practice was banned nearly a century ago by the Chinese government. It took years to die out. Even nowadays in China, few of its victims, most age 80 or older, san still be found.
Christine XuManchurian influence had continued under the early emperors of Qing dynasty, but increasingly Confucian influences were felt, especially in the civil service and other aspects of bureaucracy. From the end of 18th century, there were financial problems began to set in. With the first encounter with the British the Qing leadership showed that they needed to adopt radical changes to prevent big threats to its society. There were obvious signs that they lagged far behind of many foreign countries and needed to adopt radical changes. If there were wiser and stronger leadership at the top, china might have been transformed by peaceful processes into a constitutional monarchy. However, the Chinese looked to old ideas and solutions within their existing Confucian system for how to save themselves.
There are a lot of things we can learn from the Qing’s history. In nowadays society, “our approach needs to be revolutionary, creative, scientific, and sustainable” in order to be able to survive and thrive.
Christine XuChina’s challenges: political change, pollution/environment issue, and protest.
Recommendation:
-Some kind of institutional participation is necessary. People should participate in the whole decision-making process. There should be more freedom of speech.
-China focused more on the economy and neglected the environment in the past. Environmental problems become issues. In the coming decade, china's environment will be in a difficult process of recover. Therefore, supervision should be enhanced. Reporting and emergency measure are needed. When accidents happen, enforcement and strict punishment should be implemented.
-In China small protests become more and more numerous.Democracy is the solution to make officials careful about what they say and what they do. Even the party has to make itself democratic to ensure its own survival.
Christine XuChina has complicated relationship with workers’ rights.
What the legal right do workers have in china, and what protections do they have in terms of labor standard and wages? There are no cleared answer so far because everything is under control of the government/the communist party. I have heard some incidents happened in china that some workers of the state owned factories committed suicide because of the stressful and hopeless working condition.That is so sad. I am glad, there are some supporters, like Han Dongfang, they present for workers and fight for their rights. I hope there are more and more people, dare to speak out and fight for their rights/human rights, so china can be closer to democracy.
Christine XuIn 1998 the south Korean president, Kim Das -jung brought the idea, the Sunshine Policy. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his successful implementation of this policy. It was foundered by Hyundai. The countries agreed to work toward a peaceful reunification in the future. “The idea was based on the traditional Korean ways of dealing with enemies by giving them gifts to prevent them from causing harm”. The aims for this policy are: No armed provocation by the North will be tolerated; the south will not attempt to absorb the north in any way; the south actively seeks cooperation.
So many separated families got reunited. And old siblings got to see each other after so many year( I was touched by the picture). According to professor Kim’s PPT/picture, the guy said “ father I have returned your cow back”. It was really emotional moment.
However the process of reunification has met many difficulties due to ongoing tension between the two states. It is sad for the civilians ( why the families have to be separated because of the governmental political issues.)
Christine XuJapanese armies invaded china’s northern provinces and captured the capital city, Beijing. The Japanese troops responded the Chinese resistance to their invasion by orgy murder, rape, looting, and burn. The photo “ burial alive at Nanjing” showed Chinese at Nanjing are being buried alive by Japanese troops. They were competing with each other to invent new and more terrible way to kill Chinese people. Those crime shocked the civilized world at the time. Although it has been forgotten in many countries, it is still a good rigorous teaching of history, and it is becoming neglected discipline. The Nanjing Massacre is the best documented of Japanese atrocities in China.
"Nanjing Nanjing” is a well know movie that it showed the city of life and death, and the following massacre committed by Japanese army during the war.
Christine XuI was shocked by the pictures of Japanese aftermath of the world war 2. The war solved some problems, but created many others. At the end of the war, Japan’s infrastructure was gone. Infrastructure is a countries public system and services of a nation. The bombings Japan had received from the U.S. were responsible for the destruction of Japan’s infrastructure although the U.S. helped Japan strengthen its economy by rebuilding its transportation system, industry and urban infrastructure.
Economic Impact: the railway system badly affected. Machinery were difficult to maintain and repair. Imported raw materials in short supply and limits on the use of gas and electricity affected industry. And the people suffered hunger, poverty, and losing jobs.
Christine XuMillions Japanese civilians were evacuated and including children, women and elderly during world War II. They have to leave their home and displaced to rural towns because of the air bombings raids on Japan. The picture of schoolchildren being evacuated touched me a lot. The government made the decision to evacuate the civilians because they want to minimize the casualties so that Japan’s population could be regenerated for future. Once the war ended, parents began to make their ways to retrieve the children. Some families had lost one parent or both parents, or even all siblings.Some children had to wait long time to find cousin or an uncle who was willing to take in the child. Although the Japanese government had finally surrendered and they had saved their children and the civilians in somehow, orphans became an issue of social welfare and visible symbol of defeat from the war.
Christine XuFrom reading the article, it seems that Chinese communist had influenced some of the Korean patriots on the 20th century. Kim San, one of the Korean patriots, joined the Chinese communist movement, and he as a communist to fight for Korean national liberation against Japanese imperialism.He joined the Chinese nationalists when the canton uprising occurred in 1925, and he became secretary of the Beijing Communist party soon after that. It is interesting.
Christine Xu-Confucius and Confucianism did inspire Japanese art and its culture. The Neo confucianism sparked the emergence of three related themes (Buddhism, confucianism, and Taoism) in Chinese and Japanese painting. And its concepts still serve as important focus of calligraphic practice in China and japan. Even today, many artists in both Japan and china pursue calligraphy as their main profession.
The influence of Confucianism in china and Japan is a good topic which I am going to talk in my class. And we are going to practice calligraphy in my class as well.
