[Natali Ramon]

Nira,

I agree with you that migrating to bigger cities does not necessarily equate to a better life.  And surely, it seems that in China, just like in the US, most migrants get stuck with the "lower class" menial jobs nobody wants to do.  Regardless, I feel that these menial jobs are essential to the functionality of a city, so despite the fact that migrants don't always have a better life in urban cities, their work is essential to the sucess of a city. In Los Angeles, there is a popular saying/wonder about what life would be "without a Mexican", and it is likely that the city would shut down because the contributions of immigrants are essential to the survival of Los Angeles.  In a similar way, I wonder what life would be like in  a city like Beijing if rural immigrants were to banish.  Certainly there would be less crowding, but to what lenght would the functionality of these great cities be affected?  Jonathan Woetzel offers a lot of compelling evidence that "migrants are the future of productive societies." At the same time, I ackonledge my positionality as a Mexican-American and of course my thoughts on immigrants are colored by my personal experiences.  You probably know a whole lot more on how rural immigrants play into the social fabric of China's big urban centers. 

[Natali Ramon]

Jonathan Woetzel’s video on how to change a billion people brought up a lot of new points for me to consider about urbanization.  Based on China’s development, it seems that urbanization has been crucial to China’s economic development.  Woetzel showed a number of graphics depicting how migration to urban centers has helped to increase China’s productivity and GDP. As I saw all these graphics, I was reminded about the issues or relocation that China faces as caused by Hukou.  Based on the evidence posted, it seems that migrants have been critical to the economic development of urban cities in China. It is a bit baffling to me that just as the US, China has a hard time allowing immigrants to integrate in mainstream society. Additionally, another thought that occurred to me as professor Woetzel reviewed the maps of the world economy throughout history is the role of colonization.  As professor Woetzel went from showing the map of the year 1500 to the map of the 1938, he noted that part of the reason why the western world lit up as China and India dimmed was due to the industrial revolution.  However, I was curious to know how colonization and economic sacking played a role in growing the economies of the US and the European countries as the economies of China and India went dim.    

 

[Natali Ramon]

When I traveled to China, one of the ways in which our cohort of teachers kept in touch was through WeChat. Having had some experience with this social platform, I was very interested to see the video on the latest developments in this social media application as well as its impact on the social fabric of China. It was especially striking to see that within the social reality of migration, people have found WeChat to be instrumental for keeping in touch.  And it is also quite interesting how the use of this application has by and large been influenced by the complexity of the system of characters. For example, since it is quite difficult to type in characters, people have turned to voice recording and emoticons to communicate.  It would be interesting to know how Chinese speakers notice that our social media interactions are shaped by the nature of our language.   

 

[Natali Ramon]

I viewed Li Hongbin’s lecture on China’s  education inequality. When I traveled to China with a group of teachers, we spoked to high school aged students who seemed to very stressed out by the “gaokao”.  I feel like this lecture by professor Hongbin provided a lot more detailed that in retrospect allows me to better understand why these students were so stressed about an exam.  According to the lecture, college entrance exams can be fate determining and it comes as no surprise that students to great lengths to prepare for this momentous exam.  However, learning about the intricacies of the inequalities that are embedded in China’s system of education reminded me of the barriers my students face.  For example, Hongbin talks about how the test is administered only once a year, but kids from higher social classes often take the test more than once and they experience the benefit of scoring higher the second time they take it.  I also took note of the fact that the most prestigious institutions are located in urban centers.  This, of course, once more bestows another benefit to higher class children.  In thinking of this pattern connects to the Los Angeles context, it is worthwhile to note that Los Angeles houses some of the most prestigious institutions and it also has a great variety of social classes, including the working class, which my students belong to.  Nonetheless, because of gentrification, a lot of working class families are being pushed further and further away from the city.  With this growing patter, I feel that Los Angeles will someday resemble what patterns of contemporary China in which urban centers are  mostly reserved for the higher classes whereas rural areas are for the working class.  

[Natali Ramon]

I viewed the short film Invisible Wall and it was very compelling to see how Hukou affects children.  What really stands out to me is that one of China’s greatest challenges in an imbalance in development.  It seems that urban centers are teeming with economic and social opportunities while rural areas seem to be desolate.  In the film Meng Yun’s mother notes that in their home province there are no opportunities and when they move back, they will essentially start from nothing once again.  I can only imagine that these “floating populations” cause a great deal of overcrowding challenges, however, it is very important to note that the migration of rural people to cities is not the issue itself, rather they are a symptom of a development problem in China.  In order to fix the problem of migration populations, China must consider how to develop rural areas so that people don’t have the necessity to migrate in the first place.  It might be a personal positionality thing, but in many ways this video reminded me of the migration issues we face in the United States.   

[Natali Ramon]

I viewed the Al Jazeera film on China’s single men and it provided a deeper understanding of the issue of gender imbalance in China.  I never considered the other effects the overabundance of men can have on a country, but I am really glad that this documentary exposed me to how this social issue is related to other global issues such as human trafficking.  Seeing how people distribute the decks of cards with the pictures of missing women, really reminded me of the femicide in Juarez, Mexico.  I was also really struck by the way in which this film showed the social pressures men face in China. For example, it was noted in the documentary that unmarried men are considered gang good, or dead branches.  I am usually more aware of the social pressures women face when it comes to marriage and child bearing and it was interesting to see how these familial traditions affect men.  

[Natali Ramon]

Hello everyone, 

My name is Natalí Ramón and I am a Spanish teacher at Mendez High School in Boyle Heights.  I have been an avid participant in these institutes and I am delighted to see that a new topic has been created.  I have visited China twice, and I am always interested to learn more about this country.  More specifically, in my school Mandarin is a language we offer within the world langauge department, and I always welcome an opportunity to learn about China so that I could collaborate with your mandaring teacher.  

 

-Natali 

[Natali Ramon]

 As always, it was a pleasure to be part of this summer institute because I continue to learn more about Asia with each seminar I attend. I really appreciate that I was exposed to a variety of visual and audio media because a lot of my students are visual learners and it makes quite an impression on them when I can help to build understanding by showing authentic materials such as the ones that were presented during our institute.  As a Spanish teacher, it can be quite tricky to think about how I can incorporate Asia into my classroom but I think one of the greatest opportunities for incorporating Asia into my content area is creating opportunities for my students to do cultural comparisons. 

One of the most practical ways in which I can create an opportunity for my students to compare the culture of Spanish speaking countries with the culture of Asian countries was inspired by the session by Kerim Yassar. I really appreciated how in depth he went into the artistic elements of the films he showed us, particularly Tokyo Story.  Watching parts of this film really reminded me how similar this time period in Japanese cinematography is to the Mexican Golden Age of film.  I feel that this offers a great opportunity for my students to analyze the similarities between films in both countries.  Additionally, films that explore family values such as Tokyo Story can offer a great opportunity for my students to see how family dynamics develop in Japan and how these contrasts to family values in Latin America.  Another lecture that reminded me a lot about some visual I have seen in Latin America were the images shown by Michael Berry, particularly the prints that show Liao Bingxiong.  Seeing these prints reminded me a lot about protest and political cartoons I have seen throughout Latin America.  Providing visual material from Asia into my classroom would allow students to see how the power of print visuals is a tool that is used universally.

Lastly, I always enjoy being well versed in Asian culture because it arms me with more knowledge to collaborate within the world language department at my school.  I am fortunate enough to work at a school where Mandarin is one of the options students can take to fulfill their world language requirement and our Mandarin teacher and I always think of ways in which we can collaborate to create connections between China and Latin America.  The content presented in this seminar has certainly fueled our ideas on ways in which our language classes can connect.        

[Natali Ramon]

Jennifer,

I also appreciated that the museum offers a lot of artifacts and narrative to help the content come alive. Like you, I like that this museum is accessible to children but I also think it’s accessible to our students who are more visual learners as well as our students who can take in the content by touching and seeing as opposed to solely reading captions.  In thinking about the students at my school, a lot of my students are LTELs and as a result they are currently developing their literacy skills in English so it was really nice to see that the exhibit would have been accessible to these students who predominantly read in Spanish.  

[Natali Ramon]

This was not my first time in the Chinese American Museum, I had visited months ago with the intention of collaborating with the Mandarin teacher to plan an excursion for our students and I was really delighted to see that just in putting labels in English, Spanish, and Mandarin the museum is very inclusive as it tries to reach a wide audience. As a Spanish teacher, it’s really nice to take my students to a place that caters to the language of the discipline.  It really takes the leg work of having to translate in order to turn in work for our class.  One of the things that strikes me the most is that the museum does a wonderful job of capturing the immigrant experience and tracing how a community both creates its own space and integrates itself into the country.  I think my Latino students will really identify with the narratives they see and draw on the similarities between Chinese immigrants and immigrants in their family.  In this was, I hope to help my students draw similarities and develop empathy and respect for all communities in Los Angeles.    

 

[Natali Ramon]

 This is my second trip to the Korean Cultural center and I always learn something new. Today I learned more about how Koreans integrate nature into their diets, clothing, and even into their architecture.  As far as I know, I don’t think we are as mindful about harmonizing with nature as much as Koreans are and this is probably a very crucial thing to do as we encounter environmental challenges with global warming.  As our environment changes we must continue to think about how we can continue to lessen our impact on mother nature as well as how we can adjust our way of living to the new realities we will face in the coming years.  I was also very impressed by the way in which the Korean diet was described.  Our host noted that obesity is not a big issue in Korean since food is not fried and it is cooked with the intention of optimizing the nutritional value of each ingredient.  I would be interested to know how the Korean diet has been impacted by fast food imported from western countries.    

[Natali Ramon]

Jessica,

I also noticed that the video we saw was aimed at encouraging tourism to Korea and it left out a lot of the contentions Korea has had to face. Like you, I was also fascinated by the way Korean was depicted and I deem the film successful in that it makes me very interested in taking a trip to Korea.  I feel that showing a film like this one might serve as a great lesson on literary for our students.  For example, we might see this video with our students and ask them who they believe is the intended audience.  We might also ask why the authors of this video selected to show certain information while excluding other pieces of information that are critical to the politics and history of Korea.  I would also be very interested to see what tourism media looks like for the US.  As a citizen of the US, I have never bother to look up any of these videos. It would also be interesting to create an activity with our students in which we examine what is included or excluded in tourism media for the US and it would be noteworthy to see what image the US aims to craft for itself in the world stage.

[Natali Ramon]

Kim,

I agree with you that Crazy Rich Asians was more palatable to American audiences since it attempted to combine Asian values with American values through Rachel as a Chinese-American.  As a non-Asian viewer I think I might have missed a lot of the cultural subtleties that Asian viewers caught on to.  I was lucky enough to get some explanation by some Asian colleagues on the more nuanced moments in the movie that made references to values in Asian countries. Ultimately, it seems that in the end of the film happiness on the individual level triumphed as the love story plot line unfolded.  I wonder how this ending was received in Asian, and I also wonder if there is a differing opinion from older generation and younger generations. I also think that comparison essay is a fantastic idea. It would be interesting to see how our students’ family values compare to those depicted in the film.  Values in latino families tend to be more family oriented and this seemed to be a prominent theme in Crazy Rich Asians.     

[Natali Ramon]

Today’s lesson on China’s “soft power” was very illuminating because this is the first time I have ever heard of this concept.  Most interesting was the idea that soft power aims to draw on culture and values so that other countries are compelled to cooperate more.  Most notably it seems that one of the most prominent methods of accomplishing this agenda is through the film industry.  The difficulties that Asian film industry has faced offers a great opportunity for reflection for American audiences and it seems that the way in which we have chosen to receive Chinese films has really impacted the way in which cinema companies have tried to reach US audiences.  Since we are not so open to films in another language or with other non-white faces, companies have opted to take a stake in US audiences by producing films with white American actors.  These methods also make me think about the way in which Latin American artists have had to navigate the preferences of mainstream American audiences.  For instance, as of late it seems that a lot of directors from Latin America have found their niche by directing films with white artists.  Some of the more recent films that come to mind are The Shape of Water and The Reventant. However, this does not address the issue of representation in films.  It seems that until US audiences learn to adjust their cinematic palate to include a wider variety of films, cinema from other countries will face an uphill battle winning US audiences over.

[Natali Ramon]

Donna,

            I agree with the comments you made during lecture and as I was listening to this lecture, I felt about

why Chinese films have to fight such an uphill battle to become popular in the US.  When I think about films I know that the faces and attractiveness of actors who come out in the movies have a huge influence in how popular a film will be.  I think the mainstream standards of beauty are very much rooted on imperialist values.  As I sat thinking about why Chinese films have such a hard time, I couldn’t help but wonder if part of the reason why Chinese films struggle so much is the faces that are portrayed in the movies.  Perhaps, I am projecting the social issues of media in Latin America to the Asian film context, but in Mexico for example, it is the artists that have European features who get most prominently featured in productions.  People who for example, have more indigenous features, are usually relegated to secondary roles if at all.  I wonder if these standards of beauty also apply to the way in which Chinese films are received here in the US.   

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