[Cynthia Lehr]

My students tend to think of China as a far-away country with a labor market that, through factories, manufactures items we Americans stereotypically think of as cheap. They then think that the cheap products we buy are a representation of what the Chinese live with, what their economy is like, yet our visit to Chengdu proved this to be far from the case. First, their high-speed railway system is far ahead of what we have. Our ride from Xi’an to Chengdu was quite smooth. Our visit to the Hai Pa Wang Western Food Logistics Park taught us much about the transportation hub Chengdu is. Our host mentioned that Chengdu is a three-hour plane ride or less to anywhere else in the country. Our flight out of Chengdu allowed us to see some of the other Chinese airlines besides the majors we Americans of heard of; Chengdu Airlines and Sichuan Airlines, for example, are just two of the many Chinese airlines that exist for its large population. And if we want to compare technologies, we could consider some of the electronic décor of “downtown” Chengdu—among the large-screen, sometimes full-wall-of-a-building moving advertisements, there was an entire building (that said UR on it…) that sparkled gold. Seriously.

I try to reinforce that we’re all human; we simply develop different traditions. We can analyze the “One Belt, One Road” initiative and contrast it with current U.S. leadership policy that more often seems to be alienating, not embracing, its neighbors. There is this idea of needing to help one another while serving oneself--perhaps one of the markers of a "1st world country".

But while we’re on the topic of foreign relations, I am still intrigued about panda diplomacy, though it has been touched on a lot in this forum. Ahh, the symbolism! Pandas are so cute and cuddly—who wouldn’t want to embrace one! Although pandas are so conspicuous, certainly not blending in with the landscape, in wild they avoid humans so well. Interesting. I remember our Chengdu tour guide Allen (#... 2 or 3?) telling us about a group of scientists he took into the mountains because they wanted to try to spot a panda in the wild. They came across an older villager who admitted to having seen only one in 20 years… This is one of many interesting articles on panda diplomacy that mentions the ability to insert a cute fur-ball into a country with which China wants to build foreign relations, for whatever reason (positive or otherwise). Here we are, all human, but it takes animals to bring us together? And we thought we were on the top of the food chain! Food for thought. Pun intended.

I was impressed with the Jianchuan museum complex—it makes sense that, with as much land as it takes up, it is not in a more densely-populated area. I champion the creator wanting the Chinese to know all aspects of their history, not just “the winner’s side”. I found the museum about the 2008 earthquake especially tear-jerking, with the piles of school children’s book bags. This is comparable to the 9-11 attacks, as after each, there was reform to building codes. This isn’t something our students much think about, though my students and I live in hurricane territory, so it is relevant. Here is a website that featured parts of it we might not have seen, what with the time constraint.

 

[Cynthia Lehr]

These lesson ideas would fit into a larger research unit plan geared toward a 9^th grade World Literature course. It could also lead into Anthony’s lessons on Journey to the West…

Unit Objectives:

Students will…

• Formulate relevant, self-generated questions based on interests and/or needs that can be investigated.
• Research events, topics, ideas, or concepts through multiple media to explain how the use of different mediums, modalities, or formats impacts the reader’s understanding of events, topics, concepts, and ideas in texts.
• Examine historical, social, cultural, or political context to broaden inquiry and create questions.
• Organize and categorize important information; synthesize relevant ideas to build a deeper understanding; communicate new learning; and identify implications for future inquiry.

Focus Questions:

• What are some of the many forms of walls? (types of physical walls? types of mental walls? etc.)
• What are the purposes of walls?
• How can the purpose of a wall change over time?
• How can walls contribute to the well-being or detriment of the very people who create them?

Anchor texts:

• “Once Upon a Time” by Nadine Gordimer, 1989 (short story)
• American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, 2006 (graphic novel)
• “Climbing China’s Great Wall” by Afaa Michael Weaver, 1951 (poem)

Possible supplementary texts:

• “The Great Wall of China” by Franz Kafka, 1917 (short story)
• “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1890 (short story)
• “The House of Asterion” by Jorge Luis Borges, 1954 (short story)
• “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost, 1914 (poem)
• Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, 1994 (use excerpts to help analyze comic/graphic novel formats)

Students would read and annotate “Once Upon a Time” over the course of two or three days leading up to this part of the unit. This short story is based on South African apartheid; a mother and father continue to build more safety measures for and around their property so as to protect themselves and their son. Unfortunately, in the end, the son is harmed by some of those very measures.

Day 1:

40 minutes for a whole-class Socratic seminar or small-groups (use Appendix B, if using small groups), according to teacher preference (10 minutes for students to prepare, 30 minutes discussion), on “Once Upon a Time”, focusing on the following:

• What are some of the many forms of walls represented in this text?
• What are the purposes of those walls?
• Do any of those walls’ purposes change over time?
• How can walls harm the people who create them?
• Guiding questions from the Psychoanalytical Criticism (Appendix A)

15 minutes for a whole-class mini-lesson on research/citation review

35 minutes student research in pairs on famous physical walls in this world, The topics would be randomly assigned and would include (but not be limited to) the following:

• the Great Wall of China
• the city wall of Xi’an
• the Berlin wall
• Hadrian’s wall
• Wall of Ston, Croatia
• Vietnam Veterans Memorial
• Western Wall, Jerusalem
• Walls of Troy, Turkey
• The chewing gum wall of Seattle
• Walls of Babylon, Iraq
• Great Zimbabwe Wall

Students may work electronically using Google’s Applied Digital Skills, the second module (Research and Develop a Topic), the 2^nd activity in that module. (The first activity has students create a fake news article to understand the elements of credible sources.) This is a free resource; each module has short videos to walk students through how to do that particular skill. Activity two has students choose a topic to research (which you instead assign to them), use a shared Google doc, and hyperlink sources into a short informational page (of a few paragraphs). The teacher should tell students how many non-wiki sources you want them to use. (Four is a good, short number.) Also, if you want them to have a more formal Works Cited page, do explain this. The online activity does not have them formally do so; that could be saved for another time. Finish for homework if need be.

Day 2:

10 minutes to talk through with partner who will present what. Short 1-2-minute presentations, straight from the Google doc, displaying a picture or two and summarizing the information researched yesterday.  Briefly share with the class the following:

• Who created the wall?
• When was the wall created?
• What was/is the purpose of the wall?
• How is the wall being preserved?
• Is the wall helpful to all? harmful to anyone?
• What does the wall seem to represent to the people who created it? To other people?

35 minutes for presentations to the class.

45 minutes: Intro to American Born Chinese: The first three chapters introduce all of the main characters. If that is too much to do together in class, narrow to first chapter or two. Chapter 1 introduces a little of the character Monkey from Journey to the West.  Use excerpts of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics to help students learn to analyze not just the words but the visuals of the text. If you do not have access to that text, consider just reading the first chapter, then assign each student one panel to put into words. Then have the class read what they have written in order. This can foster discussion on what details students might have missed, how many words it takes to represent what the pictures did, etc. Decide how you want students to annotate or interact with the text, giving them examples so they can continue on their own for homework. For homework, students can read and annotate the next two chapters.

Day 3:

25 mins: Begin with having students analyze the poem “Climbing China’s Great Wall” using TiPCASTT. (If students are not already familiar with the acronym, it does not take long to familiarize them; the hyperlinked worksheet is self-explanatory. Also, have students note any similarities to their homework reading.

• During this time, you can do a homework check, having students visually flip through their annotations of American Born Chinese one by one, whether they did them in the book or on a separate sheet of paper.

10 mins: small-group discussions of the theme of the poem and of any connections they found to their homework read.  

5-10 mins: have small group representatives share group findings.

10 mins: whole or small-group discussions of other types of barriers, pulling in recent reads. Ex: in Ch. 1 of American Born Chinese, Monkey is physically separated from the dinner party by its locale in the sky. He is then barred from it for not wearing shoes. Meanwhile, the rest of the monkey population cannot even get to the party because they cannot create their own cloud chariot to go. (Nor do they even know it is occurring, as they cannot smell from that far away.)

35 mins: Individual research, minimum three sources, writing up research notes in a Google doc on one of the following topics that are found in American Born Chinese. This can be a small summative assessment on MLA research skills using an MLA rubric. (Appendix C). Several people per class will have the same topic; they need not do their research together.

• Journey to the West
• Chinatowns in the USA
• Arranged marriages in Eastern Asia
• Traditional Chinese Medicine
• Kung Fu
• Lao Tzu
• Chinese immigration to the U.S. in the 1900s

Depending on time, this research could be used for brief presentations as the content comes up in American Born Chinese, as students continue to read and discuss the graphic novel for homework over the course of a couple of weeks.

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Appendix A

Discussion resource: Literary theory—psychological criticism (adapted from the Purdue OWL’s information on Psychoanalytic Criticism)

Psychological Criticism Assumptions

1. Creative writing (like dreaming) represents the (disguised) fulfillment of a (repressed) wish or fear.

2. Everyone’s formative history is different in its particulars, but there are basic recurrent patterns of development for most people. These particulars and patterns have lasting effects.

3. In reading literature, we can make educated guesses about what has been repressed and transformed.

Guiding Questions:

1. a) What does the character desire? b) How do those desires affect the character’s behavior?
2. a) What does the character fear?   b) How do those fears affect the character’s behavior?
   • note: the most common ones are related to sex and death
3. Is there any psychological diagnosis the character might fall under?
4. examples: depression, anger issues, obsessive, obsessive compulsive (OCD), Oedipus complex

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Appendix B

Small-group discussion roles

Directions: Each person at your table needs a role and needs to contribute to the group discussion. Identify on this sheet who does each role.

Roles:

Moderator: Make sure everyone has a part. Pick the topics and the order in which you will discuss them. Do not let anyone talk for too long—politely move discussion along. Make sure the entire question has been answered—none of these should have one-word answers. Make sure all people participate—think of a way to include those who might not be as prepared in the discussion.

Recorder: Write or type the gist of your group’s answers for this discussion. You do not need to write word-for-word, but the bigger ideas should be there. If on paper, make sure it is stapled to this paper and that all names are on it. If on Google docs, make sure to share with your teacher’s email.

Social commentator: During discussion, try to elicit social commentary. During a question, if you hear anyone giving the ‘big picture’ ideas, or how the question brings up issues that relate to our society, repeat them to the recorder, as that is what we’re looking for. Questions to infuse for each discussion topic include ‘how does this relate to us/to present society?’ You are to answer this, too!  Skip this role if you don’t have six people!

Big Brother/Big Sister: You are the watchdog; on a piece of paper, write each person’s name, and after (or under) their name, tally how many times they contribute something relevant to discussion—not just ‘I agree’. Your tally paper needs to be stapled to this one.

Book-minder: You are to prod people (metaphorically, of course: hands to yourself!) to infuse textual evidence to support their answer—especially when you’re sure there is some. Please record some of the quotes your group uses to support their answers for each topic. You can write ‘topic 1’ ‘topic 2’, etc., and underneath each, write the quote(s) used to discuss them, with page# please!

Lit Connector: Whenever you hear an idea that might be somewhere else in literature, whether we read it for this class or not, infuse questions to your peers to see whether you can come up with those other texts. Keep a running list of the texts you come up with and the issues/topics they relate to. Submit that list with this paper when you’re finished. (If you don’t have 5 or 6 people in your group, skip this role!)

Discussion questions:

• What are some of the many forms of walls represented in this text?
• What are the purposes of those walls?
• Do any of those walls’ purposes change over time?
• How can walls harm the people who create them?
• Guiding questions from the Psychoanalytical Criticism (Appendix A)

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Appendix C

MLA Rubric

	Exceeds Criteria 8-10 pts	Meets Criteria 5-7 pts	Approaches 2-4 pts	Does not meet 0-1 pts
In-text citations present	All sources and pictures are cited in the research notes using parentheticals, and the parentheticals are hyperlinked to the online sources.	Most sources and pictures are cited using in-text parentheticals; all or most are hyperlinked to the online sources.	Some sources and pictures are cited using in-text parentheticals; some or none are hyperlinked to the online sources.	None of the sources and pictures are cited; hyperlinking is done by simply putting in the URL.
Works Cited Alphabetical Order of Citations	All Works Cited citations are in alphabetical order (numbers precede words) by the first word of the citation (excluding a, an, & the).	Most citations are in alphabetical order (numbers precede words) by the first word of the citation (excluding a, an, & the).	Some citations are in alphabetical order (numbers precede words) by the first word of the citation (excluding a, an, & the).	The citations are missing or are not in alphabetical order.
Indentation of Lines	All citations begin at the left margin with the following lines in a hanging indent.	Most citations begin at the left margin with the following lines in a hanging indent.	Citation indentation is reversed with the first line indented and the following line at the margin.	There is no indentation of lines, or the citations are missing altogether.
Completeness of Citations	All citations have all of the required elements.	Most citations have all of the required elements.	Some citations have all of the required elements.	None of the citations have all of the required elements.
Order of Elements of the Citations	All the citations have the required elements in the proper order.	Most of the citations have the required elements in the proper order.	Some citations have the required elements in the proper order.	None of the citations have the required elements in the proper order.
Punctuation	All citations contain the proper punctuation.	Most citations contain the proper punctuation.	Some citations contain the proper punctuation.	None of the citations contain the proper punctuation.

*Could add source credibility—no wikis, for example.

 

 

[Cynthia Lehr]

Though I have freedom to do almost anything in my IB English courses with my 11th grade students, such is not the case with my freshmen World Lit classes. I work in a geographically large school district that caters to its deep-South, conservative constituents. I do some district curriculum work in the summers, and every summer we preview texts for district-wide approval for each "regular-ed" and Honors high school English course. That said, if anyone has any recommendations on short (250 pages or less) Chinese works that do not have any s-e-x, no foul language that begins with the letter 'f'... and is generally low on other profanity, please let me know! We are looking for World Lit (and of course, I'm pushing for Asian) texts for our 9th and 10th-grade courses. It need not be contemporary, though more often that does seem to be the push. Has anyone read the graphic novel American Born Chinese?​​

[Cynthia Lehr]

Great idea to incorporate into an escape room/breakout box activity. I have used those types of activities with my classes and have supplies to do the escape room--so I'd love to help give (and get) ideas for a Chinese-culture escape room activity.

[Cynthia Lehr]

So, Chengdu is the capital of the Sichuan province. It seems to be a travel hub for cities in southwestern China. From a more historical perspective, using http://www.gochengdu.cn as my source, Chengdu was founded about 2,300 years ago (Qin Dynasty) and “is the only city in Chinese history that has survived to date with its name and site remaining unchanged”. I used this website to research more of the historical sites to see:

The Jinsha archaelogical site was found in the early 2000s; archaeologists have unearthed finds from the 12^th to 7^th centures B.C. (Talk about a country with history!). There have been finds of thousands of gold, bronze, jade, stone, and ivory articles—even the foundation of a palace, a burial site, a residential area, a sacrifical area… The site has a theme park and a museum to help accrue monies for continued excavations and research. From these excavations, they found “a circular golden foil featuring four flying birds surrounding the sun”, which the country has adopted as its symbol of cultural heritage (in 2005) and later as the city of Chengdu’s logo (in 2011).

In the area (about 60 km from downtown Chengdu) is the Dujiangyan Irrigation System, “the oldest water-control project still in service in the world”. Just makes you think—could we have survived two thousand years ago, with what we know exists now? Because two thousand years ago, they were engineering and planning and thinking just as well, withoiut a few (hundred….) technologies we now rely on.

For the literature buffs, Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu (712-770), a contemporary of Li Po (whom I taught this year in the World Lit portion of IB), lived for four years in Chengdu, and there is a Thatched Cottage Museum, a park and museum in his honor. This cultural heritage site was begun during the 1500s during the Ming dynasty, and renovated in 1811 during the Qing Dynasty, which portrays the value these multiple dynasties have in preserving culture.

There is plenty more to discuss--we could probably live there for a year and not visit every place there is to see (considering some of the historical sites are so LARGE, they would probably take several days to really see all).

[Cynthia Lehr]

I approached my research into this city first from a tourism standpoint. Lonely Planet was my primary guide. Number one on their tourism sites is the giant panda breeding research base. There are approximately “120 giant and 76 red pandas”, with mating season between March and May, and newborns arriving in the autumn and winter (95-160-day gestational period on giant pandas, 135 days being the average). Looks like the pandas have nice, well-kept, wide-open spaces, thankfully. (Near where I lived briefly in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, there was a tiny zoo with one three-legged bear in an enclosure the size of half a train car—it could make you cry, but luckily it was shut down ten years ago. Zoos can crop up anywhere, whether they have the resources to maintain the animals or not!) If one were to go to this breeding center during July, the pandas would probably be sleeping, especially indoors in air conditioning.

Tea houses are popular in Chengdu as well, with some tea houses serving recipes that date back hundreds of years, with the most popular being jasmine, maofeng, and zhuyeqing. Some also have tea-pouring performances, and of course pickup games of miajang (mahjong being an alternate spelling? I’m assuming that is the same game). In the research I did, it sounds like coffee shops are starting to edge out tea houses.

There are plenty of temples to visit. There is a large, well-preserved Buddhist temple dating from the Tang dynasty: Wéngshū. It has 190 rooms housing artifacts such as calligraphy, paintints, and other cultural relics. It also has an apparently recently-renovated vegetarian restaurant that is quite popular.

Hungry? Sichuan food abounds, as Chengdu is the capital of this province. The barbecue skewers look delicious!

More in another post, so as not to overwhelm!

 

[Cynthia Lehr]

I was able to get my photo taken and printed at my local CVS pharmacy--they use a Kodak program and machine to print their passport photos. We played with the program, and it had all sorts of other ID photo-size options, one of which matched the specs for the visa photo size (1.3 in x 1.9 in). If that machine had it, I imagine many others do as well--Walmart, etc.

[Cynthia Lehr]

Chris, I look forward to picking your brain a bit about the international school environment. My husband and I have considered teaching abroad (which is where I got my beginnings, anyway). I liked "Salonica" when I visited it for a day or two as a friend and I made our way down to Athens over a dozen years ago--I used to live in the Rhodopi mountains a bit north of Thessaloniki, in southeastern Bulgaria.

[Cynthia Lehr]

Hi Anthony, I remember you as well. I'd love a rundown on which of the authors you mentioned have works suitable for 9th and 10th grade World Lit classes--not too lengthy, no foul language. How old is Yoshi, and how many more years ahead of him does he have?

[Cynthia Lehr]

My name is Cynthia Lehr, originally from Columbus, OH, and I have been teaching English in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for 10 years. Currently I teach IB English and 9th grade Honors (World Lit). I first came to teaching through the Peace Corps as a secondary ed teacher in eastern Europe, where I fell in love with the profession--though education has certainly evolved much more quickly, lately, through the advent of each new technology.

My interests include learning, reading, working out, cooking, traveling, playing with my two daughters, and the occasional date night with my husband, who works together with me at the same school. My goal for this study trip is to accumulate resources and knowledge to bring back to my (admittedly conservative) school district to expand the World Lit reading lists (all 9th and 10th grade English courses) to include more Asian literature. After the 6-day bootcamp-esque NCTA workshop I attended last summer in Indiana, I was able to infuse five east Asian texts into my own classes this year, since I have much more leeway with the students in my IB courses.

I look forward to meeting and traveling with everyone!

[Author]

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