[Helen Kang]

There is a muscular Chinese man with the Chairman Mao’s book held to his chest as if to holdon to its teachings and virtues and pummeling two little caricature characters that look to be Westerners. You can tell from the imbalance of the size and drawing details of how the Chinese man is drawn versus the little caricatures drawn small to make them look laughable and insignificant. Anyone that does not have the same high regards to Mao’s teaching about communism will be met with the brute force of this brave and fierce looking character.

[Helen Kang]

This poster’s message seems to be more straightforward and simpler in the message it conveying compared to some of the other ones. The resolute stance of 3 healthy, full grown men with variying ethnic facial structures depict a sense of unity in the Western, Asian and African lay people. With the red letters in the background and a book held close to each of these men’s breasts, it conveys people united in picking up weapons although they are not soldiers to become civilian fighters for communism.

[Helen Kang]

Depicted in the poster, I observe a boy and a girl who seem to be siblings, looking towards the same direction and concentrating to aim a slingshot at something higher up in the sky. It can be looked upon as a picture of a harmonious sibling relationship with an older brother spending good childhood activities with a baby sister. Later it is explained it is a poster encouraging youngsters to help with the growing of crops by eliminating birds that will often come and eat up the precious seeds that are meant to germinate to become seedlings to be plants that will yield grains.

[Helen Kang]

Wow! That sounds absolutely immersive and what a perfect project for your TV/Video Production and
Digital Photography courses. I know a lot of Korean teachers give their students a K-Pop video making projects but your assignment of writing a treatment, storyboard, shot list to go along with it sounds definitely a few levels above and beyond.

[Helen Kang]

This is my first time participating in US-China Institute and boy, did I come across it at the right time! Actually it would have been better had I know about the wonderful high caliber free workshops before I started teaching my Korean language and culture classes. My original subject associated with my degree in music, and I added the Korean language teaching designation later on by taking the Korean CSET and adding it to my credential.
Being Korean-American and bilingual was the only reason that I was able to prepare for the CSET and pass it rather easily. But when it came time to actually teach the Korean language, I felt so very inadequate to teach the language let alone its history and culture. The culture, I felt can only give them a watered down Korean-American Culture was frozen in time and we did not grow with S. Korea with their waves of changes that came since and any South Koreans that comes to visit the U.S. now and engages in a conversation with me will tell you that I definitely am very different in my thinking and ways of doing things compared to them. I have been away from living S. Korea for close to 40  years now.

I have not had a single class in Korean history and really did not care.. America was my home now!
But as fate would have it, the direction of my credential started to weigh more towards Korean subject with the current K-pop and K-culture boom.

Before attending the USC US-China Institute's intensive 1 week seminar on East Asian Cultures, I had attended the Korean Cultural Center's 1-week seminar on Korean culture and history and really got to experience for the first time, a high-caliber, highly academic condensed education from distinguished professors, and I could not be more grateful for the immersive experience. I felt that I can speak and teach my students on Korean history and culture with much more confidence and authority and made me feel emotionally more grounded.   A few weeks later, I got to experience the same type of immersion of rich history and cultural learnings, but now expanding out to include the closest neighbors to my homeland, Japn and China! The information was so dense and compact that I felt there was no way I can internalize and digest all of the information from just one session, so I was glad to learn that US-China institute continues to educate and this would not be a one-time experience.  I need the continued education as even now the cultures and history of these East Asian countries continue to evolve and change as fast as the times do.

[Helen Kang]

This was my first visit to the Chinese American Museum, and when I looked around and read the details of the hardships and obstacles that the Chinese immigrants had to endure, I felt like they had it much worse than Korean immigrants did. As a Korean imigrant, I felt a strong connection to the Chinese immigrants and all the injustices and blatant discriminations and exclusions they had to face and overcome, and truly felt like the Chinese people were like big sister to me in that they paved the way for other Asian Americans as they were the ones hit the hardest and fought injustices against Asians. I appreciated the many artifacts from the earlier days of their immigration history as well as some of the earlier families who were able to become successful amidst the woes that faced them and felt a deep appreciation.

[Helen Kang]

I am 7th from the left in the front row.

I teach Korean language in my school at North Hollywood High School and I take my students here every year and they offer a $200 grant to help pay for a bus.

The KCC is not very big and without a knowledgeable docent, the walk-through can be very brief. The docent that met us on this particular field trip, however, was exceptional and I was very impressed with her level of knowledge and her command of information about Korea, its history and culture as people asked questions and she gave very seasoned and complete answers. This has not always been the case sometimes in the last few years.

I do like the fact that KCC is very active in how its venue gets utiized with its free concerts and movie nights that are packed full with artistic and educational contents of S. Korea.

 

[Helen Kang]

Diving in to the subject of meanings of colors in Professsor Dube's lecture, in South Korea family members mourn by wearing white, and I remember seeing dramas with story lines of loved ones dying and women wearing small pin white ribbon in their hair to mark their time of mourning. I think I only saw an actual person wearing such pins in their hair in Korea just once but then again I only spent the first 9 years of my life there.

I lead a Korean Drumming group at my my school with traditional drumming clothes with bold color blocks that mean specific things. When I teach the students of the meanings that the colors represent, I can expand and cite examples from China compare differences and similarities that occur between the two countries.

[Helen Kang]

Dr. Coats opened my eyes to so many aspects in the Japanese theater, and here are some of the things that especially stuck with me. The AKabuki theater interior, I learned, was a "thrust stage" where the middle of the stagen would protrude out to the audience even more. It reminds me of somewhat a stage of runway models where they would walk closely in to the audience. The Kabuki actors would be heavily made up in colorful make up that would eccentuate their facial expresssions on stage and the parts I found entertaining were that actors will stop in a stop-motion like pose with a karate-chop like yell while crossing their eyes, and the audience would go wild over such actions.

The women were banned on stage to discourage prostitution, and young boys were put in women's roles on stage. These boys ended up becoming prostitute subjects, so then they were replaced by adult men to play the women's roles, and they also ended up becoming prostitute subjects.

I find such ban of women on stage to be interesting for its paralell in other countries though it may not be for the same reasons as for preventing women from becoming sexual objects.

[Helen Kang]

Wolf Warrior II (2017, one of the most popular Chinese films), Operation Red Sea (2018, Similar to "Black Hawk Down)

These movies, I learned were intended for Chinese audience, and to build soft power. Soft Power, by definition I noted from the lecture and additional research, is the ability to get others to want the outcomes that you want, and the ability to achieve goals through attraction rather than coercion”(Nye, 1990). The media industry is a big factor and with China's presence in the film industry, we see it affecting Hollywood blockbusters. I was surprised to learn that China had such a big infuence in the movie making industry. 

The contrast of the Chinese dream vs. the American dream was that the Chinese dream is one that benefits and honors the country and American dream is for individual success.

[Helen Kang]

The lecture on Japanese postcards and Imperial Japan (Dai Nippon Teikoku, 1867-1945) was very enlightening as it gave me chance to not only learn about Japanese art through postcards but also more about the culture and history.
Being a what you call a 1.5 generation Korean-American, which means I came to immigrate into United States with my parents who were in mid 40's I felt like I was stripped of a Korean identity and now told I would now be like any other "American" child. I never had a chance to fully embrace myself as a South Korean or even have a sense of identy as one before I had American culture and identity forced down my throat.

So when I ask myself, how much do I know about Korean history, I know very little to none, other than just general things that a non-Korean would just hear about, such as that it was invaded by Japan, and divided in to two Koreas because of a communist dictator in the North. I have recently have had the chance to get more detailed lectures about Korean history and now to get educated about the surrouding countries such as Japan and China is like finding my original roots. 
As I learn about the Japanese postcards and the arts expresssed in it makes me ask questions and make mental notes and comparisons to what was going on in Korea at that time and in my own way, finding traces of my home coutry reflected in them.

It was very interesting to learn that sending postcards were the latest and most modern thing of the times, and what was written was exposed on the post cards, and it was considered a part of a "public discourse". It also reflected travel and tourism as people would often send postcards when they went to visit a place worthy of being put on a postcard and the traveler would send it to their friends and family back home.

[Helen Kang]

This poster depicts unity of the different countries represented by the flags and China's flag is in the forefront along with Russia as the most prominent and the biggest, which may show the condition of their comeradery at the time.

[Helen Kang]

I observe a somewhat Westernized looking family with features that look non-Asian depicted to be  wealthy family with fair skin as if they never had to toil in the hot sun for work the land for farming or do hard labor. They are looking and saluting at something they seen to be in complete awe of. The faint depiction of people in the background, however seem to have more Asian features and their skin is also darker and look like laborers.

[Helen Kang]

Without understanding any Chinese writing, It looks like people are running in harmony towards a destination together. It seems to show people of one mind and one goal, healthy and well fed, happy, with determination and inspiration. What I notice is that I see a soldier and other young people who seem like students and I see no farmers, so I am left to think, "Are farmers encouraged to stay where they are to do their primary job, which is farming? I guess they were not invited.

[Helen Kang]

The booklet in her hand seemed at first to me like another Mao's little red book because its similarity in size and the fact that it seems to be presented as one of he main things but I see that it is not red in color, so I don't think it's Mao's red book, but something equally as important that they want to impress upon their people.  So I cheated a little bit because I was curious what it was that this peasant woman is holding so happily in the other hand opposite the book, and I see that is contraceptive.  Now I am able to make sense of the happy depiction of a single child rearing on the left side of the poster and the people with different skills being able to wor productively on the right side.

[Author]

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