[clay dube]

One of my teachers, Ben Elman, wrote the definitive study of the examination system in late imperial China: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520215092/a-cultural-history-of-civil-examinations-in-late-imperial-china  He followed that book with a study of exams and meritocracy: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520215092/a-cultural-history-of-civil-examinations-in-late-imperial-china

Here's a free 6 page encyclopedia entry that Elman wrote: http://www.princeton.edu/~elman/documents/Civil%20Service%20Examinations.pdf

A more affordable book is Miyazaki's China's Examination Hell: https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Examination-Hell-Examinations-Imperial/dp/0300026390/ref=pd_lpo_14_t_0/132-6368989-8186525?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0300026390&pd_rd_r=2f5c82dd-9ed1-4a7c-893f-4fab57c834f9&pd_rd_w=aOsmv&pd_rd_wg=bWqcJ&pf_rd_p=a0d6e967-6561-454c-84f8-2ce2c92b79a6&pf_rd_r=MGBFX48YEVYWTE8NTZVY&psc=1&refRID=MGBFX48YEVYWTE8NTZVY

[clay dube]

Love that Todd highlighted this. Gavin Menzies retired from the British navy and dived into the idea that Chinese explorers got to what we call the Americas first. His paragraph neatly summarizes the divide. C-Span broadcast a talk he gave at India House in NYC (http://indiahouse.nyc/). The South Street Maritime Museum was a sponsor as well: https://southstreetseaportmuseum.org/.  Here's the talk, posted by someone who calls the book pure fiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtOdpy9gqPQ. Todd's provided an excellent collection of resources.

[clay dube]

Presentation attached. Usual request.

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[clay dube]

Hi Folks,

Once again, a compressed pdf. Please feel free to use it with your students, but please do not otherwise share it or post it to the internet. Thanks.

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[clay dube]

Hi Folks,
I've attached the Song-Yuan presentation in pdf format. I had to compress it down from >30mb. Please feel free to use it with students, but please do not share it or post it to the net. Thanks.

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[clay dube]

As Catherine notes, Heian 平安 ("peace") is different from Henan 河南 ("south of the river, the Yellow River). Both deserve our attention. Heian saw the flowering of Japanese culture. Many wonderful people are from Henan, which is part of the Chinese heartland. But even Henan's name can be confusing since a significant part of the current Henan province is actually north of the Yellow River.
 

[clay dube]

Hi Folks, Love the expressions here and, especially, places where you folks engage with each other. Knowing one's opponents is vital.

[clay dube]

Miguel - Generations of students have enjoyed learning about and experimenting with haiku. I think you're right that students may be similarly interested in sijo. As Jennifer noted, there are entire workshops and competitions devoted to this. Our NCTA partners at Indiana University have done much on this. Here's an article in the Korea Times by Mark Peterson who used to teach at BYU: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2021/03/739_277030.html?WA . Last year the LA Korean Cultural Center sponsored a contest: https://www.kccla.org/events/view/?eid=5742&cm=7&cy=2020

[clay dube]

Sean's point about looking for topics that allow you to bring the stories of several cultures together is an important one. He highlights the silk road and also Mongol expansionism. Trade drove the silk road exchanges and, after conquest, the Mongols also facilitated widespread trade. We touch upon that in the Song-Yuan lecture for the 5/12 session. During most of this period the nation-state idea is not the driving force in East Asia. Instead of political boundaries, there are cultural heartlands and frontiers where norms vary. The possible links between Siberian and Korean beliefs gets at this. These were fluid areas, borrowing, converting, inventing and transmitting a wide variety of cultural and economic practices.

[clay dube]

Guadalupe, Thank you so much for reading these materials and responding to them. Buddhism's emergence and transmission has been one of the giant developments. It had a varied but profound impact in East Asia. Most people in mainland Southeast Asia describe themselves as Buddhists and significant minorities in South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and China do as well. It is a minority faith in the U.S., of course, with polls showing about 1% of residents identifying as Buddhist. Buddhism's role as a cultural carrier has been significant, helping to transmit language as well as ideas about governance and even city design. 

Christian beliefs are more familiar to most Americans than Buddhist ones. In Asia, Christian missions have labored for centuries to promote the faith, sometimes at great personal risk. In Asia, only the former Spanish colony of the Philippines is a majority Christian country, but significant Christian minorities have flourished in places as diverse as Vietnam, China, Korea and even Japan. In our Ming dynasty lecture for the May 12 session, we touch on the Jesuit's arrival in China. One of the striking developments in China has been the embrace of Christianity by some political dissidents. But most of China's Christians aren't political dissidents, they are individuals who have found something in the faith that gives them help and comfort.

One striking aspect of religion in East Asia today is the evident devotion of women. You see this at temples and churches. Men are there, of course, and are often religious leaders, but women are frequently the majority of those participating in public religious practice.

Thanks, again, for jumping into this discussion. I hope many more of our colleagues will also do so.

[clay dube]

Great question - no real data to answer this conclusively, but most who made it to adulthood would have made it to 40-60. Infectious diseases and threats from drought, flooding, and war were evident. Today, the things that kill people in East Asia are similar to what kills people in the US (cardiovascular problems, cancers). Confucius's formula for self-cultivation shows a) it's hard and takes a long time and b) was probably beyond most people.

[clay dube]

For the debate, you and your schoolmates (fellow Confucians, Mohists, Daoists or Legalists) will need to argue in support of "your" school of thought and against those of others. Here are some of the questions we'll look at:

1. What is the basic nature of human beings? 

2. Describe the organization and conduct of an ideal society. How is it organized? What are aims of the state and how do the people and the state interact? To whom do we owe loyalty?

3. What are the core components of education in that ideal society? How are people taught? What are they taught?

4. How can we move from the society we have to the ideal one? What is to be done? 

You can prepare by reading the philosophy teaching guide. As you read, try to answer the questions on pages 46-47 for each of the schools.

[clay dube]

Confucian	Mohist	Daoist	Legalist
Alonso, Karina	Alvarez, Johanna	Batres, Max	Brown, Anastasia
Bub, Taylor	Carothers, Ryan	Carvajal, Olivia	Cate, Richard
Corral, Tara	Del Cid, Jessica	Diaz, Miguel	Douglas, Alison
Evert, Sarah	Fleet, Camie	Garcia, Daniel	Gautam, Barsha
Gregg, Sharron	Harris, Deirdre	Haupt (Burt), Morgan	He, Bin
Jackson, Cynthia	Kang, Helen	Kidd, Jade	Kuropatkin, Jeannine
Leiato, Daniella	Li, Xiaozhen	Lobberecht, Sean	Laguna-Caturegli, Julie
Macchiarella, Jennifer	Melgoza, Melina	Moreno, Guadalupe	Pao, Martha
Pian, Ping	Privitera, April	Prudencio, Cristina	Rabena, Aaron
Robinson, Kimberly	Rutley, Todd	Torres, Jacqueline	Walker, Johnny
Watterson, Hope		Reed, Liana

 

Some weren’t with us on 3/17. Your assignments are below. We hope you can join us 3/24.

Carter, Tara Ann – C

Goodwill, Paul -- M

Kelley, Martie – D

Kuo, Julie – L

Mazas, Imela -- C

Perez, Yadira – M

Reed, Liana – D

Tang, Sharon – L

Zimmer, Daniel -- C

[clay dube]

Delighted that many of you have focused on the water issue. It's worth noting that water management has been a theme of many scholars in coming up with theories about East Asian societies. For Japan, scholars have argued that the need to work cooperatively to manage water for irrigation, etc. was an important force for group cohesion. For China, some have argued that "despotism" originated in "hydraulic societies" where a powerful state was needed to manage water. Some readings:
Japan
EAA - rituals and management  https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/water-tradition-and-innovation-flowing-through-japans-cultural-history/
William Kelly-- waterworks key, role of power: https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/57647/ceas031.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y (a second Kelly piece looks at 20th century management) https://apjjf.org/-William-W.-Kelly/2454/article.html

Kanzaka - Tokugawa village communities and water http://www.ehes.org/ehes2015/papers/Kanzaka_CivilEngineeringTokugawaJapan.pdf

China - Wittfogel - hydraulic civilization: https://www.britannica.com/topic/hydraulic-civilization#ref220125 introduction to his book: http://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/Wittfogel.pdf

A critique by Perry of Wittfogel and those who ignore him (and much of the China history field does) is attached. NY Times obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/26/obituaries/karl-a-wittfogel-social-scientist-who-turned-on-communists-91.html

 

 

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[clay dube]

Hi Everyone - terrific to have a chance to say hello. I'm Clay Dube and head the USC U.S.-China Institute. I've been teaching about China and Japan for a long time and am looking forward to our seminar. I first lived in China in 1982-85. I've been traveling to (or living in) East Asia almost every year since 1989. It's been my privilege to take groups of teachers to East Asia eleven times and I hope that funding will again make it possible for us to do that in the future. I love reading and films and take a lot of pictures (you'll see some). I'm anxious to hear your thoughts about some of the big historical and cultural questions we'll take on over the course of the term.

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