[Lin Kuang]

Jennifer's Korea in 19th century is pretty impressive. She actually pulled out lots of maps to illustrate her lectures which made sense for us to see " The Sea of Japan Vs The East Sea" teritorial dipute among the Asians, which is very sensitive to all goverments in east Asia. She also told many fictional stores which we can introduce to our narrative unit to teach student authentic Korean culture and traditions. Interestingly to know from her lecture that women acturaly have equal rights with men and mariied men live in their wives's houses, which is opposite of Chinese tratidions. In China, if a married man lives in his wife's house is considered a shame becasue this man must be weak and useless without a " face", never do it. As an interpretor, my fisrt group of foreigners are Korean engineers. It seemed they are pretty patriotic and think everything in Korea is the best with their hand signs " Thumb Up". They came to my city to install commercial equipments, everyone of them had at least 5 huge sized suitcases with instense noodles, cigarettes, and other small items made in Korea becasue they didn't want to use Chinese produducts.They were very friendly and bowed all the time especailly to females.  

[Lin Kuang]

While Mr. Ma , the richest Chinese businessman felt a little nervous to apart from his phone for a  couple minutes while he was at the stage for a conference just presents a huge amount of population worldwidely who are addicted to their phones, ipads, or related electronic devices, a truly “Modern Opium .” The author addressed the myopia issues caused by playing video- games excessively on the Smartphones, which is truly severe issue for our young generations. Even though this article explored the serious issues of video games in China, Korea, and Japan to blame the Tencent  or other game producers provided addicted games to tempt young kids and causing the addictions and myopia, but the government seems to take actions to try to reduce the damages. How about our students in America? My 10th graders are on video games all the time, their attendance, their work habits, and their corporations are driven by games. Some video gamers reported to school twice a week with thick glasses and all assignments undone. Some students came to school and seek all opportunities to play online games on computers or ipads provided by teachers for their learning purposes since the curriculums are online. Some students play competition games and engage their friends in the class. Being educators and parents, we ran out our strategies to stop them to access to online games. I’d like to hear more detailed report about video games in Modern American Classrooms. We are utilizing the students’ motivations on video games to create educational videos. Kahoot became so popular on our campus. “ Some may view as a schocling affirmation that video games are eroding the education of entire generation, but the U.S. Department of Education sees it as an opportunity; a chance to to reinvent education in a way that makes it more relevant to today’s student.”  Are we going to put our curriculum on video games in order to engage students in learning?

 

https://www.polygon.com/2015/4/13/8401113/u-s-department-of-education-the-future-of-education-includes-video

“ U.S. Department of Education: The Future of Education includes video games in classrooms”

 

[Lin Kuang]

My name is Christina L. Kuang, currently teaching 10th Grade English at Green Design Steam Academy. I attended East Asia Origins:1800 Spring seminar and learned a great deal to apply to my teaching practice. Actually my students' strong interest in East Asian culture and traditions put me back to the Fall Seminar.  We established the East Asia Origins Club at Green Design STEAM Academy for students who want to learn more about Asian cultures. The purpose is to teach other students about the different traditional and pop cultures, foods, folk tales, and languages from different Asian countries. We will focus on China, Japan, and Korea. I really think I will have great opportunity to take the main points I will learn from here back to my school to meet our students' needs. I am in!

[Lin Kuang]

Thank you again, Dr. Duke for the valuable resource provided here to help us understand the Chinese Cultural Revolution better with the study of Guobin Yang's new book " The Red Guard Generation and Political Activitism in China", which provided us insightful facts about the event. Even though I was born into the middle of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, but we were too young to understand what was going on at that time. I knew for sure our parents named their children as " WeiBing" or XiaoBing" in pride to honor the Red Guards. My brother has HongBing as his name, and so many of our neightbors and friends. For elementary schools, students with three good virtues, academy, and physical Education would be qualitied to join as a Little Red Guards wearing the triangular red scarf , which was a corner of the National Flag with our heros' blood who sacrified for our country as we were told at the ceremonary. We viewed this as a great honor and rewards for us, which helped students behave well, achieve better for their full developments. When we moved to middle school, then we were encouraged to join the youth league as one of the requirements to uplift our social status eventually to the communist party member. I actually have very strong interest to study further about the event that I was so fanscinated about when I was young. As Guobin Yong indicated " Chinese youth engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 - 1968, enacting a political mythology that envouraged violence as a way tp prove one's revolutionary credentials. This same competitive dynamic would later turn the Red Guard against the communist government", which guided me out of the darness of our generation becasue I would have difficulties to understand the outcome of the engouraging violence tp prove one's revolutionary credentials at that time because we thought that was super fun to ride on FREE trains to Beijing to meet our Chairman Mao.

[Lin Kuang]

There're so many things we have learned since we took the course. I am planning to continue the study this Falll semester. Looking forward to some excitment and inspirations. A life-long learner can always find fun.

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[Lin Kuang]

We studied Lu Xun’s proses, short stories and other literature pieces when I was in my 10th grade in China, but I felt so difficult to understand the theme he tried to convey till I attended Eleen Cheng’s Lecture here at USC. We read Lu Xun’s Outcry, Madman’s Diary before, the main character was so deeply depicted and we remembered “Ah Q” who learned to draw his name at the court and humorously cried that he didn’t make it circular enough, which made you cry for him with deep sympathy about his naiveness and innocence even though I didn’t quite understand the figurative meaning of it that time. Now, I read Perface to Outcry and understood Lu Xun’s insight thoughts about his complaining. Of course, he went to Japan to further study Western Medications to help more Chinese patients who were mistreated, but the experience he had there, “ On one occasion, I unexpectedly encountered Chinese people I hadn’t seen in a long tim.”. He also mentioned, “ there were many of them. One was bound in the middle and many others stood to his left and right, all physically strong bodies, yet displaying expressions of apathy.”  This finally awoken him to leave for Tokyo as he felt that studying medicine was root of foremost importance. Citizens of ignorant and weak nation, no matter how healthy and sturdy their bodies, can serve as nothing more than subject matter for or spectators of meaningless public displays”. He started to use his pens to write and wake up the sleeping giant Chinese. This is a great piece for patriotism for our kids, but here the kids tranny have difficulties to understand.  

[Lin Kuang]

After I finished reading Ms.Hornby ‘s article “ Chinese Envirobmrnt:Gound Operation” , I started worrying about t our next generations survival skills are not to find a job or position in our society, instead to protect our environment and return clean water, air, and soil to our next generations. The 2011 Caixin magazine shocked us all with its cover photo of a rice plant, the grain turned a “ silver metallic color “, which told us that rice from southern Hunan province , the top producer, was contaminated with cadmium. The report “ hit the nerve with city dwellers already anxious about food safety and persistent smog “. As a researcher from Jiangnan UniversitySchool of Business stated, “ The effect of pollution and of the misuse of agricultural inputs like pesticides and fertilizer will become the next big stage in the food safety debate”. Seriously, I actually spoke to a professor from Shanghai University about the severe pollution in China, his reaction quite shocked me because he does not care about it. I asked him curiously about their concern and topics in his lecture, he very honestly told me “ literature has nothing to do with environment”. While the worldwide recognition of the global warming and environmental issues are not on their agenda in a very distinguish University. This is really bothering me a lot. Anyhow, Chinese government finally published a $150m national Soill pollution survey in 2014 , which has been classified as a “ state secret”. They also started to move pollution plants away from prosperous cities to area where regulations are laxer and people are too poor to complain.  God bless Chinese poor people! 

[Lin Kuang]

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/3QL_ycH_Y5jaLLpOezAhug

I just read this amazing article about the unique design from the professional Japanese weavers “ Butterfly House” crested Kimono Project for all guests from all countries that will attend the Olympic event in Japan in 2020. The Traditional Japanese dresses embedded each every country’s culture and tradition, which is a great presentations and respect to people from all over the world. 

[Lin Kuang]

Thanks to Professor Yamashita's impressive lectures on Japanese Culture and traditions systematically, I acturally found it helped me reveal the puzzles I had befiore. In the artical, " The Japanese learned from the Chinese how to write history something during seventh and eighth centuries. In addition, the calendar that they imported taught them how to keep track of the passage of itme in an orderly manner, and the great classic of Chinese history , including the Spring and Autumn Annals..." they mentioned Chinese writing has the greatest impact on Japanese writing. When we study the Japanese characters, we found out that they came from each single part of the Chinese characters and the cund system is quite similar. I reallly respected the facts that the Japanese selectively followed Chinese models, and they eventually created their own writing which reflects their culture and their beliefs.It's interestingly to know that they built their defence system on the tops of the mountains as Mountain Castles and Flatland Castales, the decentered governing system probally encouraged the the existence of the Worriers to fight for their survivals.

[Lin Kuang]

"Full of sound sleepers-all about to to suffocate to death. let them die in their sleep and they will feel nothing. Is it right to outcry?" I am so glad Professor Eileen Cheng has done research study on the Chinese father of Literacy, who was a peomient libertarian who wrote in the early decades after the CHinese republican revolution of 1911 to voice him out for those lonely pessimistic existentialists. His metorphorical images of Chinese who were so weak to wake up themselves to face the cruel reality, and they prefer die in the sleep to be awake to fight for their fates. When I was little, my Chinese teacher presented his literature, essays, short novels, and others, we could barely unterstood what he was talking about, but the character "Ah Q" was deeply embedded into our minds. Ah Q is a quintessential sub-man who is " one day, a monarchist, the next day, an anarchist, or anti-republican.". Lu Xun placed  Ah Q among the nominally libertarian revolutionaries who claim that they are fighting for the freedom of others.Ah Q dreams of his social superiors" kneeling before me, twittering with fear", which reveals his violent , selfish motivations. Many years later, we still remembered Ah Q an dused this character as metaphor to those selfish cowardish individuals existing in the society. Acutally, Pefessor Cheng made it very clear by peoviding the Lu Xun's backgroud info. whihc made the big sense for us to understand the historical background the author lived in to better understand his pieces of literature reflecting the society and its people. Actually, there are so many Ah Qs in modern Chinese society who prefer die in the sleep not fight for their fate. Ah Q spiritually inspire many individuals live in their our world an dbelief not caring about anything happens elswhere.

[Lin Kuang]

After reading Professor Sheehan's article about Bo Xilai, who was actually a hero in pocla people's mpmoeries becasue he actually led the inductiral weighed down city back to its leading position internationally wide with its economic growth and fame. Downtown Chonqing was embraced by Changjiang River and Jialing River and surrounded by mountains, which was famous for " Mountainair City without nights". AS soon as Bo swore to his position as a Mayer there, he acutally did many projects that really benefited himself, as well as the people and the future images of Chonqing. His " Beautifying Chongqing policy sent people all over the country to search for Gingco trees to plant on both sided of the major streets and removed all the original trees which now are shading and beautifying the entire city, even though many of them died becasue the inapproriate methods to plant the Gingcos tree without enough space and depth of the digging holes. THe surviving trees are now reallu decorating Chonqing treats and alleys as beautifully as they could. I actually evidenced the great change of my hometwon right after he took positions. Enen though he was gulity for his corruptions, but he did contribute to his society and people as well. His wife comitted murdering to an British Business, but whateven she did just ultilizing his power. I believe he had no idea about the affiar between them.But comparing to teh crimes he commited, his accomplishments are much bigger as people in the city told us all. The extreme strategies he used to " Hunting Down The Gangs in CHongqing" actually destroyed all the gangs and their power and suecure the society. The overused pwoer created fear for all people related, so many ran away to overseas to avoid be murdred without trial.He also encouraged people " Singing Red Revolutionary Songs" purposefully to challenge the power of the central govenment, but he finally was put down.

[Lin Kuang]

1. Wow, Dr. Dube really refreshed my mind from his presentation about the Up to the mountains, and Down to the Villages. The authentic pictures and videos just brought the real part of Chinese history to our front. I wondered how could the chinese govenment run the states while all the educated youth had gone out of classrooms and to the wild fields farming like peasants? How could they organize their living, housing, and their daily activities? How could that generation later survivie when they finally got chance to leave the villages and came back to their cities? WIth those questions, I actually picked up phones and talked to my Chinese friends who had certain experience about it. One of my friends told me his niece was assigned to his village where his parents lived and stayed with their parents and learnd how to farm till thy went bavk. How about those hwo had no relatives or friends in the villages? He told me they acutally organied very well to welcome those educated youth from the urban area to settle in the villages. Definitely, they missed the opportunities of gloing to colles universities till later when the govenment resumed the National Entrence Exam system. This is an emtreme belief to run the government without thinking or conserning their people's needs. Fortunately, our generation was born into that eara, but out of the impact. Probaly, that's why we studied so hard to try to pass the exam to squeeze into the universities we dreamed.

[Lin Kuang]

1. Wow, Dr. Dube really refreshed my mind from his presentation about the Up to the mountains, and Down to the Villages. THe authentic picture and videos just brought the real part of Chinese history to our front. I wondered how caould the chinese govenment run the states while all the educated youth had gone out of classrooms and to the wild fields farming like peasants? How could they organize their living, housing, and their daily activities? How could that generation later survivie when they finally got chance to leave the villages and came back to their city lives? WIth those questions, I actually picked up phones and talked to my Chinese friends who had certain experience about it. One of my friends told me his niece was aggigned to his village where his parents live and stayed with their parents and learnd how to farm till the end. How about thos hwo had no relatives or friends in teh villages? He told me they acutally organied very well to welcome those educated youth from the urbon area to settle in the villages. Definitely, they missed the the opportunities of gloing to colles universities till later when the govenment resumed the National Entrance Exam system. This is an emtreme belief to run the government without thinking or conserning their people's needs. Fortunately, our generation was born into that eara, but out of the impact. 

[Lin Kuang]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/american-companies-in-china-shouldnt-fear-tariffs-they-should-fear-a-boycott/2018/04/10/6ec85fe0-3c35-11e8-974f-aacd97698cef_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.94fc6b500964

I just read this articlie from The Washington Post this morning on Facebook. What should American companies fear, tarrifs or boycott? I really think the later should be our serious concern since they haven't already launched that before when Starbucks opened its store in the Forbidden City in 2007. When we looked at the trade deficit " in 2017, the United Stated exported $131 billion in goods to China, while importing $506 billion", from here we can easily undderstand that there's no much for us to win. Instead, we have to think of our services and companies in China. If Beijing persuaded customers to Boycott Starbucks again like they did to Japanese services and compabies years ago, it would be a disater for Starbucks company as they expect China to eventually be its largest market. 

[Lin Kuang]

This link shared here is very useful for us to understand  why the  two countries are relying on each other in various ways. Even though they are trying to limit each other's developments so that they could send the clear messages to the world their leading pocitions in economic, educational, and other fileds. China's fast gorwth  threatens the leading position of USA in the world, so that US government tries to intervene.to keep the powerful lead.

[Author]

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