[Jonathan Tam]

When I studied the environmental problem in China during my undergrad, I remember reading the proposal that a chinese professor proposed to launch cannonballs into the sky that would create particular matter for clouds to form around them. The solution resulted in the balls falling from the sky and landing on people's’ houses. From reading this article, it makes a lot more sense as to why China would pursue such crazy solutions in order to create radical changes in their environment. With groundwater becoming increasingly dangerous to use as well as air pollution above its safe levels, solutions will need to be creative with China. Many current environmental solutions allow for carbon and damage to be mitigated, but not reversed.

[Jonathan Tam]

When I volunteered in San Francisco, I learned about a policy that volunteers took up and that policy was that it’s better as a volunteer to give people new and unused needles from our office in the city than risk the fact that they might get needles from somewhere else. It was a policy that fully embraces that addiction has run rampant in the city and that the only reality is to accommodate for it. I was very much reminded of this when I read this article. It seems very much understood that there are familial pressures to continue the family line or to seek a better life in another country, but rather than addressing those larger systemic issues - it’s instituted to create adjustments that allow the system to proliferate. Embedded in korean dramas and jokes and even memes is this ongoing desire to break down traditional ideologies that have come at the detriment of our people. And it will be interesting to see how this unfolds in future generations.

[Jonathan Tam]

Contextualizing Asia’s reproduction rates to a cultural lag certainly provides a pretty steady explanation to how things are politically, economically, and socially. The article describes the cultural lag as a wave of empowerment that women took as they began to access the workforce. And it seems as though Asia is only at the surface of of this cultural lag. Asian women in the field of politics is still something rare and held in high regard, and business leaders throughout the course have typically been male. I believe it to be the duty of men to give up footholds in power so that women can feel better inclined to rise to power.

 

As I finished this article, something that also came to mine was how big of an emphasis American culture places on marriage and family culture. There are constantly tv shows and news of families and babies throughout American media. And it makes me wonder if the same is reflected in asian culture. I have always gotten the sense that (having grown up as an Asian male), there is an incessant focus on youth and beauty rather than age and family - but I will definitely need to take a deeper look into analyzing media as a platform for change in demographics.

[Jonathan Tam]

I will always find the idea of perspectives in history to be one of the most engaging and eloquent reasons for taking this course. History is just the story we tell it and it is reflected very much in the way things exist economically, politically, socially, and even in the names of things on the map. The first seminar does such a great job of presenting the known information about economics and demographics and this serves as a great platform for moving backwards in time and learning about pre-1800. I really appreciate how much thought Clay places on things like China’s single time zone or its peoples’ economic interests. This information really helps shape a better understanding of where China has come from.

[Jonathan Tam]

Hi everyone,

Jonathan Tam from the School of Social Justice at Miguel Contreras. This is my second time taking a course through the US-China Institute because I find it incredibly engaging and enlightening.

[Jonathan Tam]

I agree that it is quite interesting that such an ancient system is used for so many things today in China. While there were suggestions that it kept the poor working and not homeless - It still leaves something to be desired, because it really keeps social classes rigid. Rural families will stay in rural areas and other families that begin to benefit from the influx of trade will benefit more. Education systems, retirement plans and services slowly became available to individuals in urban states - leaving rural citizens behind. This has certainly left a mark on the disparity of wealth and presence of uninhabited areas in China.

[Jonathan Tam]

The fact that I didn’t have that much of an East Asian focus in my upbringing made this seminar all the more insightful. While I don’t explicitly teach a content area involving East Asia, where I can bring in topics discuss throughout all seminars is in my school’s social justice focus. At the School of Social Justice, topics like this are regularly discussed through councils, service learning projects, and socratic seminars among other things. And issues such as labor, gender roles, equity, and economic justice are very salient to the lives of my students.

An aspect that I found helpful to the course was the documentary shown in Seminar 7. Especially because we learned about the role of Mao after, to see how far labor has come from that starting point was very startling to see. I think that there is much to be said about how similar the labor history of America is to what is now in China with the layer of alliances towards the communist party. Much of China’s history has neglected the rights of humans at the cost of genocide, just as how the rights of many of my students are being tested as well. I would definitely like to have my students look in to Han Dongfang and the leaders of the chinese movement.

I would definitely like to thank the class for provide such depth on top of so much breathe. There is much that I can say now about each country in East Asia, about their customs, cultures, and identities. I can speak more ot the history of footbinding and the legacy of leaders like Syngman Rhee. I’m definitely interested in engaging with my colleagues on how more interdisciplinary our school can be in its approach to social justice.

[Jonathan Tam]

What I found most interesting throughout this seminar that I wanted to bring back into the classroom was the use of propaganda. Using the playing cards as way of analyzing chinese stories, history, and even personality cults was a great activity that encouraged students to seek out the answer through tangible means. It’s generally hard to bring in paintings and portraits like that; but through the playing cards, it was a lot easier. What I wanted my lesson sequence to be on was on primary sources as a way of shaping political states. I think that the Korean democracy might be a great platform for this. What my hope is, is that students will first analyze pieces of propaganda and then draw comparisons to how democracy was established in the United States and Japan.

[Jonathan Tam]

My knowledge of Chairman Mao is honestly very limited, but hearing about his great leap forward was very interesting. To think that he had killed potentially 20-40 million people through famine, that he had improved the work-based system to compensate workers, and that he advanced education for people up to high school makes him a lot like other leaders in history that we question for being beneficial in some ways and detrimental in others. But, perhaps the most interesting I found, was Mao’s personality cult - that Mao could remove tumors among other things. I was further intrigued by how his personality cult weakened the support of the People’s Republic of China, especially because those same cults exist today in both support and detriment to certain leaders.

[Jonathan Tam]

It’s a touch ironic – acknowledging the fact that it won’t be acknowledged is inevitably acknowledging it. But I digress. It was interesting to see in this article by the Financial Times on how Mao’s cultural revolution was recognized in 2016. More interesting than that was how part of the article discussed how the anniversary wasn’t acknowledged due to the fact that it would evoke emotions, thoughts, and connections to the current Chinese president, Xi Jinping. Often considered the most powerful leader since Mao by the Communist Party, it seems very naturally to draw ties between Xi Jinping and Mao, which leaves the situation very ironic. Why wouldn’t you want to acknowledge the cultural revolution? I pulled up a second article only to find that under Xi Jinping, the ideologies of the communist parties have now become very present in schools, media and government agencies. It certainly begs the question of how he will be remembered one day given the irony of this situation.

[Jonathan Tam]

I was fascinated earlier in the session with the marriage culture that was established - that the bachelor would need to produce three items that go round: a watch, a sewing machine and a bike. And so something that definitely lingered in my mind after seminar today was the fact that Mao had introduced the concept of divorce. It certainly left me with the question of how that culture existed. Was it frowned upon? Or did it bring about a certain commiseration among divorced families? From what I know growing up, divorce was highly frowned upon in my Chinese family. There was a certain element of “saving face” in the Chinese community. You didn’t want to be apart of the family that couldn’t hold it together. I wonder if this evolved only here in the United States or was an ideology carried on from China.

[Jonathan Tam]

All throughout High School, FDR was painted as a hero. He was painted as the person who got America out of The Great Depression and the dutiful responder to the Second World War. The cartoon depictions of FDR certainly paint him differently as someone who exploited wartime to bolster profit, was puppeteered by the British, and ripped off the Chinese. I would certainly like to revisit a United States history course some day, but I’m left thinking about Dube’s statement about how history is written. Something that he had shared was that you can’t change the pass, but you can change the perspective and story of it. But as the books are written for children to absorb - new stories, new data, new questions and new people can really challenge those stories. I’m reminded most recently of the death of Fidel Castro and the reaction of my students to his time here. In his most public personality, Fidel Castro was a dictator. He pushed people out of his country and was an homophobe who persecuted thousands of queer cubans by sending them to re-education facilities. But on the other hand, he ended illiteracy, hunger, and high infant mortality rates in Cuba. Our leaders aren’t as altruistic or straight-forward as we always assume them to be. They’re complex and opinionated with only history to drive them in one director or the other.

[Jonathan Tam]

The thing that resonated with me most in Seminar 9 was Sun Yatsen’s quote that China was being carved up like a melon. With events like the Boxer Rebellion and foreign interest of Christian missionaries and Americans like Hayes, China had only evolved from warring dynasties to warring interests. It definitely explains Sun Yatsen’s urgency to revolutionize China over the interests of reformers like Kang Youwei. Unfortunately, the pieces weren’t in place for Sun Yatsen’s revolution to take hold. Surely, there were pieces like his student followers, but the military power wasn’t present to drive out foreign interests and unify China. I suppose he was just much too before his time. Or maybe he came at exactly the right time.

[Jonathan Tam]

While I do understand the reasons why you won’t want to bring foot binding as a topic in the classroom, I actually think that it would be a great topic for my students to discuss. I teach at the School of Social Justice and so discussing gender roles in history would a great circle topic in bridging how those roles exist today. A topic that we have discussed in the past is the role of makeup in our lives and a conclusion that we were able to reach was how it’s a value among the girls at our school to wear and keep wearing make up. Bringing in a topic like foot binding might challenge the origins of where those values came from. From what was discussed in seminar, the foot binding culture was established during the time of the Song dynasty. An emperor was impressed by women who had particularly small feet and this was a tradition upheld by the rich northern families. My guess is that a very similar path can be followed if we analyze makeup.

[Jonathan Tam]

The account by Ulysses S. Grant was one I found particularly compelling. In the article, he describes his day to day experiences leading up to meeting Prince Kung and leaving China. Throughout the account is the key agenda to figure out how to “deal” with the Chinese, but to my surprise, it wasn’t as demeaning as I expected. The experience is raw and reflective, informative and well-depicted. There are moments when he even praises the Chinese for the actions in the streets as merchants or their kindness, but always centers back to his role as a politician in this region as well as treating the experience as a matter of international relations.

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