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Madeline GeorgeI am Madeline George and I teach 8th Grade Language Arts in Imperial, California. One of our curriculum units focuses on WW2 and talks about the internment camps as well as the concentration camps. In my class, we discuss Asian cultures as related to other reading topics and news events. So, I am always looking to gain more knowledge of cultures with which I am not familiar.
Madeline GeorgeThe Korean Cultural Center was delightful before we even stepped into it! It’s garden was beautiful... a little oasis. The docent was so informative and really opened my eyes to the plastic surgery isssue in Korea. She also spoke to the issue of raising / retaining ones culture . I really enjoyed how we were shown the areas of the country and the docent gave her experiences with them. Even the instruments—she provided personal connections to them and their music. I was really struck by the beauty and craftsmanship of the home decorations and the clothing. I wish I could attend some of the classes but they seem to be mostly on weeknights and that won’t work with a 4 hour drive ☹️ Maybe bringing a smaller group of students up in vans would be doable.
Madeline GeorgeI did not know about Google censoring , which means we’ll have to look at the message even more! I agree that Ban Zhang was just promoting what she thought was appropriate for her times. Just like lots of women at one time thought that it was wrong for women to have the same education as men.. What I found surprising that it seems that women were fairly equal to men in value and honor and THEN, they became “less than” . That’s strange to me!
Madeline GeorgeAnd.... after our visit to the Korean Culural Center and what our host had to say about how she felt entering Korea... It makes me really appreciate what these women are protesting against! It’s probably really difficult to be that not perfectly “Barbie” girl in a land that everyone is manically obsessed with becoming. I thought the perfect beauty culture was bad in the US. Wow. So the struggle against that perfectionism must be really difficult. I think Celeste is correct... the word for it is Bravery.
Madeline GeorgeSweet Bean is a beautifully filmed movie. Bright cherry blossoms, steam, pots of beans and even the pancakes frying on the griddle are pretty. The story revolves around three characters: Tokue, and old lady with leprosy, Sentaro, a man convicted of manslaughter who makes dorayaki , and Wakana, a teenage girl who doesn’t want to go to high school. All three seem to have a secret and all three seem a little broken in the beginning of the film.
In the beginning of the film Sentaro is making the dorayaki, that people apparently tolerate,but don’t enjoy. Wakana visits the shop and takes the reject treats to feed to her beloved canary, that her mother and the landlord are making her get rid of. Tokue is a kooky old lady who shows up at the little shop asking for a job. She’s in her 70’s and Sentaro turns her down, sending her on her way with one of his subpar dorayaki. Wakana also says she would like a job as his assistant. The next day, Tokue shows up critiquing Sentaro’s dorayaki, she says the pancakes are decent but the bean paste is just not good. She leaves him with a container of her homemade bean paste. Of course it is incredibly good and the next day when Tokue shows up again, he hires her to make the bean paste for his dorayaki. He learns, and suddenly people are lining up to buy dorayaki at this shop. Ultimately the shop’s owner’s wife shows up to tell Sentaro he must fire Tokue because Tokue has leprosy . Sentaro doesn’t fireTokue and no one is coming to buy dorayaki anymore. Ultimately Tokue is fired and Sentaro and Wakana go to visit her at the sanatorium. .
The bosses wife comes to the shop and tells Sentaro her nephew will be cooking hence forth and Sentaro falls into a depression. He and Wakana return to the sanatorium to find Tokue has died of pneumonia . Toque’s friend bequeaths Toque’s cooking tools to Sentaro and Gives the two visitors a recording left to them by Tokue. The final shots are of Wakana happily going to school and of Sentaro happily selling dorayaki in a local park.
Madeline GeorgeIt is interesting to read the essays written by the supporters of communism in order convince women that communism is the best choice for them. In The first essay it’s all about where and from whom you are going to get your bowl of rice. You don’t want to look lovingly upon your husband; you just want your bowl of rice, Men are cruel and unjust the essay states.. communism will allow you to not be dependent upon men for your rice. My little brain went to, so now the government is going to give you your bowl of rice? Another essay decries the family. The family is the source of evil. Children must be raised by the society in which they will live. It sounds a little like raising cattle and my mind went to Animal Farm. The same article seems to berate marriage and how silly it is to enter that state, I think it would be interesting to have my students read these essays and outline the reasoning, and distinguish. Between fact and opinion.
Madeline GeorgeVirtues, Talent and Beauty are apparently are what need to be developed to be an ideal woman under the Confucian construct. A woman needs to mold her childrens’ morales, developed her own insight, logical reasoning and be able to argue effectively. Wisdom is more important than beauty, but inner wisdom should manifest outer beauty. However, the Daoist vision.......seems WAY more complicated. And if only a few women in history have been able to achieve the ideal..... it may be truely difficult to achieve. Daoism claim femininity is the highest ideal. And then it gets complicated... I’m looking forward to the lecture tomorrow in order to clarify all this.
From The gender dynamics reading, I got that yang is the obvious or foreground ... it is sex, while yin is the background , Inplied .. it is gender. The two must be in harmony. I look forward to clarification!
Madeline GeorgeThe filial stories about filial conduct makes me think of the Bible stories I learned in Catechism... But Greek and Roman mythology elements seem to come into play as well. ...The boy being forgiving and doing all that he should despite the family not behaving like family. Thirst would make for a good lesson on universal themes. We talked about Cinderella. Joseph and his coat, I think that the kids might have fun making connections between stories old and new.
Madeline GeorgeI can see reading any of these selections with my students. They seem engaging and appropriately leveled for my 8th graders I think they might be particularly interested in the Folding Beijing novella My students like to point out other’sflaws and share how they would “fix them”. It’s sounds like Folding Beijing had a mirror up to not only Beijing, but the rest of the world as well. It seems to lend itself to discussions on resource equity, social equity .... lots of equities that we should all be working towards.
Madeline GeorgeThis was my first selection ... and the story seemed very simplistic from a teaching perspective. Yet it does ring true. You need to make a connection with students... “ they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” A student who has been written off or abused in a class make have a tough shell built up. Finding a connection in order to penetrate the shell and get the student to learn is key.
Madeline GeorgeAfter reading the article, I can’t wait to watch one of Ozu’s movies. The description makes it sound kind of like a Jane Austen novel. Simple plot, but it’s all in the way it plays out. There are apparently tons of era context clues that the WW2 era would see, recognize, and understand within Ozu’s movies. One example being the daughter in one of his films getting treatment for mlanourishment due to the war era shortages and this treatment postponing her possibly finding a husband. I would like to see if I would catch onto to these era impied plot details. I’m interested in hearing what our lecturer has to say about this topic.
Madeline GeorgeAfter reading the article, I can’t wait to watch one of Ozu’s movies. The description makes it sound kind of like a Jane Austen novel. Simple plot, but it’s all in the way it plays out. There are apparently tons of era context clues that the WW2 era would see, recognize, and understand within Ozu’s movies. One example being the daughter in one of his films getting treatment for mlanourishment due to the war era shortages and this treatment postponing her possibly finding a husband. I would like to see if I would catch onto to these era impied plot details. I’m interested in hearing what our lecturer has to say about this topic.
Madeline GeorgeThose of you who did not attend the showing, REALLY missed out! It was a riveting journey as the filmmaker, Nanfu Wang, asked her family and village how the one child policy impacted them... She discovers that the repercussions of the policy have hit her home..... more than once. I was unaware that th Hines government was basically sanctioning the kidnappy and selling of the second or unwanted children. I was unaware that women were forced to have “ abortions”as late as 8 to nine months into a pregnancy. The government had successfully convinced the nation and those who suffered the atrocities of this horrible policy, that while it was tragic, it had to happen. One woman stating that the nation would have had to resort to cannibalism if the one child policy had not been enacted. The midwife who said she killed 20,000 - 30,000 babies in the name of the one child policy appears to be the only repentant perpetrator of the policy seeking redemption. She helps people with fertility issues. All the other enforcers, seemed to range in attitude from “ it’s what we were told to do,” to “ it had to be done for the good of the nation.”
The family that took the unwanted babies to the orphanages to keep them from dying and received money were sent to jail for human trafficking. Yet, the government officials did the same thing after ripping the babies from families who wanted to keep them. The orphanages sold these children to adoptive parents from around the world. It turns out that all these babies were not left by the side of the road. These babies are the nation’s cash cow.
The ultimate irony is that the government that spent 35 years convincing its people that they must only have 1 child to save the country is now putting the same effort into now convincing the nation to drink the two child kool aid.
I marvel at the tenacity and courage of Nanfu in returning to China, not just once, but at least twice to make this film. And apparently taking her infant son along with her. I guess it is appropriate as her son is what made Nanfu decide to investigate the one child policy and document it’s effects.
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Madeline GeorgeKorea seems so progressive ..... they educated their girls, they gave them equal inheritance rights... and then the warring aggressive society takes over and it all goes away. The long term societal shift makes me question the long term impact of our administration and its attitudes.
Korea seems to be “just like us” in their children are challenging their gender norms... and maybe more open in that they have the androgynous boy bands that are ever so popular. Yet... all the plastic surgery. They are obviously image and beauty motivated. It seems like a paradox.... I don’t know.
Madeline GeorgeThank you for the resources and ideas for lessons for my middle school students! I am astounded by how the Japanese are super misogynistic .. as a country it seems that the men have been trying to downplay and control the women. Not that this is new... or unusual, but women had to crawl on their knees because their clothes were so heavy!?!?!
i didn’t understand when doing the readings last night as to why the woman would hide that she knew how to read.... it wasn’t that she knew how to read, but rather that she knew how to read Chinese and that was banned. Controlling the women by not letting them know the language of power / government. Diabolical yet typical. It might hurt their little heads :/. Or maybe the men were intimidated by the women! I will think more about this later...
