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It's easy to add color, COLOR, COLOR!

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One of the best websites on contemporary Chinese demographics and agriculture is

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/ChinaFood/index_m.htm

It was produced by Gerhard Heilig a few years back in response to Les Brown and WorldWatch's book Who Will Feed China?. That book argued that rising living standards and changing diets would combine with continuing population growth to dramatically increase China's overall food consumption. China would be able to purchase this food on the world market (now you know why farmers in Kansas favor free market policies and hate using food sanctions), but that poorer nations might be hard pressed to meet their needs.

Heilig has assembled a wealth of data and produced excellent charts and maps to discuss the current situation and the challenges China confronts. He concludes that China can feed 1.48 B people in 2025, even without technological improvements. He recommends, however, many important changes, including infrastructural strengthening and continued family planning.

This is a wonderful resource that high school and many middle school students would be able to use. Students might also draw upon data from the World Bank Human Development Index and the United Nations Infonation sites to see if trends since Heilig's work was published in 1999.

The site for the WorldWatch volume is http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/books/8/.

An essay based on the book is at

http://www.emagazine.com/oldissues/january-february_1997/0197feat2.html.

And finally, the US Embassy in Beijing released a report:

http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/fddeb12.htm.

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One of the best websites on contemporary Chinese demographics and agriculture is

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/ChinaFood/index_m.htm

It was produced by Gerhard Heilig a few years back in response to Les Brown and WorldWatch's book Who Will Feed China?. That book argued that rising living standards and changing diets would combine with continuing population growth to dramatically increase China's overall food consumption. China would be able to purchase this food on the world market (now you know why farmers in Kansas favor free market policies and hate using food sanctions), but that poorer nations might be hard pressed to meet their needs.

Heilig has assembled a wealth of data and produced excellent charts and maps to discuss the current situation and the challenges China confronts. He concludes that China can feed 1.48 B people in 2025, even without technological improvements. He recommends, however, many important changes, including infrastructural strengthening and continued family planning.

This is a wonderful resource that high school and many middle school students would be able to use.

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Here's the itinerary as of 04/12/04. It includes the names (but not contact info yet) for the hotels. Many will have websites so you can preview the setting.

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Courtesy of Xian Everbright International Travel Service:

26/JUN: Departure for China
27/JUN----03/JUL：Beijing (Peking University)
04/JUL(SUN)：Today you will take flight WH2156（1520/1955） to Dunhuang，then transfer to hotel after dinner. You will spend 2 nights in this hotel, after visit the Crescent Moon Spring and the Mingsha Dunes.
05/JUL(MON)：Today visit to the Famous Mogao Grottoes, Dunhuang museum,. Then will visit a local village and farmer’s home.
06/JUL(TUE)：After breakfast you will fly to Xi’an by air MU2232 (08:00/10:00). You will have a seminar in the JiaoTong University today, Arrived in Xi’an, you will visit the city wall and the square of the Drum and Bell tower Then have dinner and transfer to the Bell Tower Hotel where you will spend 3 nights in this hotel.
07/JUL(WED)：Sightseeing today will include, Shaanxi History Museum and the Big Goose Pagoda., also visit a middle school and Today will have lunch students and teachers. Today you’ll enjoy a special Chinese dumpling festival dinner, after dinner you will appreciate ‘Dance with Musical Accompaniment in the Style of Tang Dynasty’ which shows prosperous Tang Dynasty in China history.
08/JUL(THU)：Today will visit the Army of Terracotta Warriors, Huaqing hot spring pool and the fascinating Neolithic relics housed in the Banpo Museum. Then visit an old people’s home(Nursing Garden).
09/JUL(FRI)：Morning transfer to the airport for your flight to KunMing MU4282(10:40/12:20), Afternoon visit the Horticulture Exposition(’98 World Expo), then transfer to hotel, you will spend 1 night at KunMing Hotel. 10/JUL(SAT)：Morning flight to Lijiang, Visit the Yunshan Meadow on the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain with the cable, then visit Jade Peak Lama Temple, and Ming Dynasty’s Baisha Mural Paintings, Lijiang ancient town.
11/JUL(SUN)：Today sightseeing the old Dragon Pool, renowned for its over 500 kinds of flowers and various famous pavilions, then continue to drive to ZhongDian. En route, visit the tiger Leaping Gorge, which is the one of the World-famous deepest canyons of the world.
12/JUL(MON)：Today sightseeing including Bita Lake, then visit local Tibetan family for learning traditional life style of Tibetan.
13/JUL(TUE)：Take the morning flight to KunMing, then transfer to the airport and take flight to the ShangHai. After lunch you will check in hotel in ShangHai.
14/JUL(WED)：After breakfast will transfer to Suzhou by bus, then visit Tiger Hill, HanShan Temple. You will spent 1 night at Suzhou Hotel.
15/JUL(THU)：Morning visit the Tarrying garden. After lunch you will transfer to Shanghai by bus. Shanghai, China’s largest city and commercial heart of the nation. Take a stroll along the riverfront Bund. You will stay two nights at the Shanghai hotel.
16/JUL(FRI)：Today visit the Jade Buddha Temple and Yu Garden and wander the twisting alleyways of Old Chinatown.
17/JUL(SAT)：Morning have the breakfast in the hotel, then transfer to the airport .Homeward bound！

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Steve --

Please share some of the internment-related websites with our crew via the discussion board.

Since our focus here is on Asia, it might be useful to also discuss Asia-US contacts, since that is part of the 5th grade standards (Perry missions to Japan, the amazing exchange between New England and China that started just as America was becoming a nation).

One site that I think you could use with 5th grade kids, at least you can use the idea and images, concerns the gifts that were exchanged by the US and Japan at the time of the Perry expedition (1853-4). Take a look at http://blackshipsandsamurai.com/ and check out the "gifts," "portraits" and other sections for some ideas.

We brought Shigeru Miyagawa, one of the MIT prof. who created the site to LA for a session with our teacher affiliates last November. It was excellent. He also has a great cd-rom for introducing students to ideas about ethnicity and identity. Learn more at http://www.starfestival.com
[Edit by="Clay Dube on Apr 3, 2:15:56 PM"][/Edit]

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After hearing Geoff Robinson's presentation and reading Nobel Economics Prize Winner Amartya Sen's essay on "What Li Peng and Lee Kuan Yew Don't Know About Asian Values," how might we explain to students that while we must be tolerant of others and understanding of cultural differences, we must also insist on our common humanity and, therefore, our inalienable rights (i.e., can't be taken nor given away) as humans?

*****

One of my favorite passages in the Confucian classics comes from Mencius. A student asks about an instance in which a king was killed. He expects Mencius to take an absolutist position that such a killing must always be condemned. Mencius, however, argues that the king had not behaved in a kingly fashion and so his murder was not regicide.

Thus, even the elitist Mencius has expectations of rulers and rulers who fall short and not really rulers.

You won't be surprised that the Ming dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang (c. 14th century) elected not to include this passage in the official version of the classics that he had printed and distributed.

[Edit by="Clay Dube on Feb 13, 8:22:55 AM"][/Edit]

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Aren't we already overburdened as educators? Haven't we gotten the message that we're supposed to focus on math and literacy? Isn't trying to bring Human Rights isn't just too much?

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Teachers in Southern California may wish to participate in a Teaching about Human Rights workshop at UCLA on February 7-8, 2004. Los Angeles Unified teachers (and those whose districts accept LAUSD credit) can receive salary point credit upon completing the workshop requirements.

Read more about the workshop at: http://international.ucla.edu/asia/article.asp?parentid=5932.

The workshop website is http://international.ucla.edu/asia/rights.

[Edit by="Clay Dube on Jan 8, 2:45:06 PM"][/Edit]

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The Times requires people to register for their site, but it's free. They use it to block folks who use web strip miners to steal content and to find out what you like to read. Marketing, marketing, marketing. It is also important in determining the number of distinct site visitors as opposed to page views. This is important for advertisers.

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Here's a NY Times article that introduces Japanese dishes. There is also a link to an interactive slide show (turn on your sound to hear the narration).

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/07/dining/07JAPA.html

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Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, released its list of the top China stories of 2003. Some had important media twists:

1. new leaders: President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao (March)

2. SARS epidemic

3. Study Jiang Zemin's "Three Represents"

4. Oct. Communist Party Central Committee plenary session -- approved continuing economic reform

5. Oct. Shenzhou 5's spaceflight, China became third nation to send a person into space (YANG Liwei)

6. June/Oct. Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement with HK and Macao

7. Taiwan's Chen Shui-bian called for referndum on Taiwan independence

8. December 19-20, human resources development conference sponsored by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council

9. gas field blowout in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, the worst
accident of its kind in China, at least 198 deaths

10. China's economic growth, expected to reach 8.5% in 2003.

<http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200312/28/eng20031228_131389.shtml>

First -- the list itself is kind of a media story. The CCP is deciding what the top stories are. Somehow HK voters opposing Beijing's security proposal and its candidates didn't turn up on the list. The fact that Chen's position in Taiwan polls improved with his promotion of the independence referendum was also neglected. The ongoing AIDS crisis is absent as well and while SARS is mentioned, the bungling of it for months isn't.

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Jane's definitely right about the importance of piracy to the entertainment and media businesses. While not a new story, it's become even more important because of internet file-sharing. The film Cell Phone (a terrific Chinese movie directed by Feng Xiaogang and featuring Ge You) was released on Dec. 18, 2003. At least by 12/25 an AVI version of the film was available for download.

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Can't we build analytical and communication skills drawing upon old favorites from the Western tradition? Can't we just camp out in the neighborhoods of Shakespeare, Dickens, Hawthorne, Melville, and Fitzgerald? With the occasional field trip into the worlds of Austen, Dickinson, Brontë, Wright, Ellison, and others..... Why should we go to the bother of adding Asian literature to our courses? Don't we have enough to do just to teach kids to read and write?

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Hi Folks,
As announced a couple of weeks ago via the discussion list, we'll be assembling on 10/18-19. Rooms have been reserved for everyone in the Brentwood Holiday Inn and Miranda's been working with the N. California contingent on their flight plans.

Among our plans are:
your presentations on what you are doing/will do with your students
your presentations on what you are doing/will do with your colleagues
a screening of Joint Security Area
discussion of big questions answered, raised by the trip
suggestions on improving the trip

As before, we're picking up parking (please carpool), accommodations, and food.

If you need help on the logistics, please contact Miranda at .

[Author]

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