[Nira Sun]

Hi David,

I'm impressed by your questions of "Do they teach men to care for females who will do anythhing for them or to do as they please since there will be a female around to help pick up the pieces?" I think this is a really good question to be asked now. Back in the days, I believe, that women's social status were never brought to the same level as men. Hence, no such consideration was ever evaluated in ancient China. When they constructed books to teach women how to behave, it was a sign that women were supposed to live under restrictions. I don't think there was ever a book that taught men how to behave. That gave the impression of men had the freedom of choosing their lifestyles without the need of taking women's feelings into consideration. That's why, in ancient China, men could have more than one wives. Yet, a woman was expected to serve and be loyal to one man only.

I am glad that some changes have been made now. Even though there are still men with traditional perspectives out there, some expectations have been set on men in modern China now. For example, the popularity of "暖男" (warm guy) in China indicated some sorts of "promoted images of men". Men who are sensitive to women's emotional and physical needs are getting apprecited more and more. Another huge change is that women finally have the right to choose the men they want instead of being assigned to a man.

[Nira Sun]

I was very intrigued by the quotes presented by Prof. Tran. One of it said:

“the family is the origin of all evil. Because of the family, people become selfish. Because of the family, women are increasingly controlled by men… because of the family, children – who belong to the world as a whole – are made the responsibility of a single woman”

I didn't get the time to write down whose quote it was. It had quite an insight on how women have been tied up to family and all the responsibilities that came with it. We don't normally blame family for anything. Instead, we saw family as a place where cooperation existed. Is that the fact at all? Since when was the image of housewife imposed on women? How come there was never a saying of househusband"?

It is indeed true that a lot of women sacrificed their dreams and careers for children and family. After quitting the jobs, women inevitably became dependent on men who provided them food and money. What's around a woman's life is the house and children only. How was such situation justified throughout the history?

Meanwhile, I also wanted to point out that family is not really the fundamental issue here. The philosophy that molds the dynamics of a traditional family is the root of the entire issue. In my opinion, the belief of women being in the position of assistance to men is to be blamed. If it wasn't for that belief, women didn't have to take the sole responsibility of raising children. Nowadays, women are promoting the idea of being independent which comes from having one's own career and holding one's own thoughts. He Zhen was way ahead of her time to practice such idea. This is something that we are still fighting for today.

[Nira Sun]

Hi Gerlinde,

I agree with you that He Zhen was way ahead of her time. Women were taught to be the dependents of men generation by generation. There is an old saying in Chinese which is husband is in charge of outside work and wife is in charge of housework. It portraits of how women cannot have a career like what men do. If a woman doesn't see marriage as the only path, she is not considered as normal. He Zhen promoted the real independance of women because she taught women to have independent perspectives. This was the only way to release women from the oppression of men. 

[Nira Sun]

This is my second time visiting the Korean Culture Center with the seminar. I sent some pictures of the center to one of my students who were very interested in Korean culture. What was interesting was that she said "Wow, I used to be really into those pop stars in Korea!" The word "used to" caught my attention. It indicated how fast the generational change was in pop culture. A lot of famous stars in Asian countries became popular almost in one night. Suddenly everyone loves him/her to the point that he/she is on the front page of everything every single day. Sometimes it was just one song or one movie. If the star really has the skill of singing, dancing, or acting, his/her success may last longer. If not, it will just be the flash in the pan. He/she will no longer be the talk of public anymore. I'm curious to know how many boy or girl bands ever existed in Korea.

I also passed on the information of them offering Korean Language class to my students as well. I didn't know about it last time I visited this place.

[Nira Sun]

Although it was quite a brief visit to the JANM, I definitely enjoyed everything we learned from our docent. I also found the picture bride an interesting fact in the history. As you mentioned, it was an earlier version of matchmaking. What is happening now is that people are selecting their interested people to date via online by looking at the pictures first. However, in the past, majority of the marriages did last till the end. I couldn't imagine what types of hardship the women went through to stay in the marriages. It also made me thinking what makes the differences between the marriage in the past and now. There must be huge changes in women's social status for women to feel the freedom of choosing the right relationship but not depending on it instead of the pressure of staying in certain relationship to maintain basic living needs. I wonder if there is any documentary showcasing the life of these picture brides.

[Nira Sun]

I’ve always enjoyed USC seminar due to its varieties of topics and rich information. I was very interested in gender and generation in general. This seminar provided an opportunity for me to learn gender and generation situation in East Asian countries that I’m able to bring back to my classroom.

Gender:

A lot of times, we focused too much on traditional values and perspectives when learning specific language or culture. We tend to overlook the change in perspective in contemporary society. I found it’s interesting to learn about Ban Zhao who concluded the “Instruction for Chinese women and girls”. All the virtues and skills introduced in this book set a certain expectation on women and girls’ behaviors that have been passed on to this day. Not only will it help students to gain understanding towards traditional values on women, it may also trigger students’ curiosity in regards to how the expectation looks like in modern society. Meanwhile, students can learn to compare these values to western perspectives to investigate the similarities as well as differences. For example, as students learn the societal reasonings behind foot binding, we may guide them to compare the reasonings behind cosmetic surgery. The fundamental motivation behind both behaviors was to “please the outside world by changing one’s certain physical features”. As opposed to foot binding being IMPOSED MANDATORILY on women only, cosmetic surgery is a VOLUNTARY decision that applied to both men and women nowadays. In addition to that, cosmetic surgery is becoming a trend in both eastern and western worlds. I can imagine this being an interesting topic to my students.

Generation:

From Ban Zhao’s standard of being an exemplary woman, we can ask students to consider what “being exemplary” means to them. There will definitely be differences from person to person and from girls to boys. I’m thinking about having students to select one character (ancient vs. modern, eastern vs. western) to represent the most important value(s) that fit their expectations. From all these characters they select, we will get to discuss how expected virtues have changed along with the progress of the society. For example, why are those Korean boy bands so popular even among students in America? I remember my students used to tell me that their songs are so catchy. There is a concept called “fast food culture” which describes a sudden but brief success of a thing or person. Such culture also leaves significant impacts in our perspectives towards relationship, family, and other aspects of life. This is something that’s definitely unique in our generation.

 

Overall, I definitely felt the need of being more knowledgeable as a teacher in order to guide students to successfully perceive different cultures. In addition to learning language only, such topics will intrigue their interests in understanding in how language is influenced by culture in general. This is one major benefit that I’m bringing back to my classes.

 

[Nira Sun]

I absolutely agree with your thoughts on the significance of building connection with students. That was my lesson learned when I taught Chinese in a high school with 99% of Latinx. There are so much difference between the two cultures yet so much similarities as well. At that moment, how I could make my students willing to stay with this subject trumps how deep of content knowledge I can provide in that classroom. Understanding their cultures and values helped me so much in building and maintaining the connection with my students. So when I heard one of our Spanish teachers claimed that she couldn't relate to non-heritage Spanish speaking students, I was speechless. 

Sometimes, I feel like we are educating young souls more than feeding knowledge to them. From the connection we build with them, it not only makes classroom management easier, it also creates opportunities to introduce righteous characters and values to students who are still molding their mindsets. 

 

[Nira Sun]

Talent, one of the necessary womanhood promoted by Liu Xiang, reminded me of another saying in Chinese “女子无才便是德” which is translated to “a woman’s virtue is to be ignorant”. I was wondering if it’s a contradiction or a development of theory. I got the chance to have this discussion with Prof. Wang during the break. I would like to share the information I got from her with everyone:

In 列女传 written by Liu Xiang, he complied a list of ideal womanhood, hence the word “列”. Being talent was highly promoted during the Xi Han Dynasty. Women has built strong and powerful images throughout the Tang and Song Dynasties which somehow threatened males’ authority. During Ming and Qing Dynasties, the society felt the need of suppress the growing of women power. Hence the prevalence of demoting women to be intelligent. Although there are different interpretations in terms of the intention of女子无才便是德, the most popular and influential interpretation is that there is no need for women to become knowledgeable and educated. Growing up in China, you would constantly hear comments on how women supposed to behavior, whereas, not so much of rules and restrictions for men. I am sure this is not uncommon in other cultural values either. 

I remember my mom used that phrase quite a few times. When I heard some teachers mentioned how Asian parents “forced” their children to participate in multiple extra curriculum activities, such as painting, dancing, playing musical instruments, and etc, I realized that I was never put in that position at all. I never gotten the chance to ask my mom her intention of not making me as multi-talented as other kids. However, she did implicitly mention how insignificant it was to push me to go beyond my ability like how other Asian moms did.  Ironically, on both my mom and dad’s sides, among 20 something of my other cousins, I was the first and only one who graduated with a Bachelor’s degree and then advanced to receiving my Master degree. Now my job is to educate younger children. One thing I do appreciate my mom was that she never really intervened with my decisions on choosing majors and colleges.

 

[Nira Sun]

In Prof’s Wang’s lecture, she mentioned that in the “I Ching #37 hexagram (易經)”, the great appropriateness of heaven and earth was described as women belonged to the inside of house and men belonged to the outside of house.  You’d be surprised how this perspective got to spread and internalized in Chinese cultural values. Nowadays, there is still a quite popular saying in China that is always mentioned whenever male and female relationship is involved in a conversation. The saying is 男主外，女主内 which is literally translated as “men’s work centers around outside and women’s work centers around the home”. What is promoted here is that men are the breadwinners and women are the homemakers.

The typical role of women has changed a lot in modern China which led to some of the newly invented terms such as “女汉子”. “女” as in female and “汉子” is an informal way to refer to strong and courageous man. As you can guess, 女汉子 is to describe the type of women who are capable of dealing with heavy lifting or physical labors as men without seeking help from men. More interestingly, most of the 女汉子 will normally end up being 剩女 as in leftover women. This is due to their extremely independent characteristics in terms of financially and mentally.

From my friends’ perspectives, they see me as a 女汉子. You may wonder if it’s a commendatory term or a derogatory term. Well, it all depends on your perspective. Younger generation merely treat it as a simple label that doesn’t really define the person. In workplaces, 女汉子 demonstrates with strong work ethics and insightful opinions. In personal life, 女汉子 enjoys being surrounded by friends as well as being alone. They usually build personal interests in wide variety of activities. In terms of love life, they are usually seen as failure due to the long-term single status. In my personal opinion, as a female, the most important thing is to know your needs and be able to fulfill the needs with or without external helps. Sometimes our needs change as life develops into a different phrase. At that time, self-awareness will assist us to become adaptive to changes and new environment.   

 

[Nira Sun]

After Prof. Bernards’ wonderful lecture, “Folding Beijing” definitely caught my interest and attention. I was able to find the Chinese version online which I will use as a reading material in my AP Chinese class. I have not gotten the time to read through the Chinese version to understand its literacy level but I think it’s an interesting introduction to the topic of social issues in China. I can’t wait to see my students’ feedback on this literature.

I really appreciate that Prof. Bernards provided so many Chinese literature sources for us to use in our classes. Finding interesting yet challenging reading materials is always time and effort consuming due to the work on selecting appropriate literacy level to fit students’ needs. However, that doesn’t mean I can only use Chinese literature in my advanced classes. With my novice level students, I can still introduce them with some readings so that they can start seeing what Chinese writers mainly focus on in ancient or modern literature and how they reflect the issues in their writing.  

 

[Nira Sun]

I would like to say that I totally enjoyed the film Late Spring even though we were only shown with a few clips. I now will go to YouTube to watch the entire film.

From a few scenes I watched so far, I somehow feel the portrait of the coexistence of traditional and modern perspectives. These two seem to be conflicting to be presented together yet its wonderfully crafted in this film.

The type of marriage that Noriko entered was typical arranged marriage in which major traits to be considered as a decent husband was his degree, job, and reputation. The demonstration of the conflict was when Noriko’s friend, Ayako, who persuaded her to enter this arranged marriage with a modern perspective of having the freedom to leave it whenever she wanted. Aya was portraited as a young lady who carried westernized interpretation of marriage and lifestyle yet she took part in persuading Noriko to accept a traditional arranged marriage. I’m curious to know how she dealt with such conflict inside of her.

If we compare the wardrobe of Noriko, Ayako and her aunt Masa, we’d find out that Noriko and Ayako dressed in western dress and Masa has always been in traditional Japanese Kimono. Appearance wise, Noriko is a young modern Japanese lady with a traditional perspective that I felt was quite similar to the filial piety we discussed yesterday. I can’t be sure of her intention of staying single and living with her father since I haven’t watched the entire movie yet. However, I’d like to assume that she was intended to sacrifice her happiness so that her father didn’t have to spend the rest of his life alone. Maybe it is not uncommon to be a conflicted hybrid individual. I’d say that director Ozu made an advanced step to let us see the inside of ourselves 70 years ago.

 

[Nira Sun]

I was having the similar thought as we went over the film clip by clip. What I usually do in a classroom is to have them watch the entire film all at once followed by discussion or questions. I found Prof. Yasar's approach worth of trying in high school classroom as well. Due to the time limit of each class session, showing clips might help to minimize the loss of instructional time. In addition to that, it seems to be more effective to break down the film and select targeted scenes that reflect the objective(s) of that lesson. 

I have had my students compare the Disney version of Mulan (1998) and the Chinese version of Mulan (2009) before. Since I didn't have 4 hours to play both movies in class, I assigned the movies as homework as preparation of their debate. Now looking back, if I were to revise it, I would choose to show clips that represent the perspectives that I would like them to notice and analyze in both movies. I would also design discussion sessions after each clip to actively engage students in critical thinking process. I have always found it's fascinating when mix of thoughts and interpretation come into contact with one another. I believe that's a good educational moment to guide our students to appreciate others' perspectives. 

 

[Nira Sun]

Hi Gerlinde, 

I'd say sending children to study abroad is trending now in Asian countries. Reason one is that, with English as a universal language, U.S. and other English-speaking countries do provide authentic language environment and, presumably, better quality education per Asian parents' perspective. Reason two is, in Asian parents' eyes, with increasing employment pressure in Asian countries, having study abroad experience will help to strengthen their children's competitiveness in terms of job hunting. In Chinese, there is a word to describe this phenomenon which is called "镀金" as in gold-plating. As you can see, it's a common social perspective that with a degree from the other country somehow will help to improve one's socio-economic status. Hence, as long as it's financially affordable, Asian parents would be more than willing to send their children to English speaking countries at very young age. 

There was a Chinese TV drama called "A Love for Separation" featured four typical Chinese families who all went through their own difficulties yet still striving to send their children (all middle schoolers) study abroad. This TV series intended to bring an overlooked issue, on top of the financial stress, to audiences' attention which was the huge psychological impact to both the international students as well as the families that stayed behind. I assigned this TV series to my incoming AP Chinese students as their summer assignment. It definitely provides an interesting angle to understand some of the ongoing issues in contemporary China. It is available on YouTube but, unfortunately, without English subtitle. 

Some of the young international students who came from middle to low class families really strive to achieve high in academic performance, just like your student. Some, especially those we call "rich second generation", are totally different stories. I'm glad that she's got a good teacher, like you, who appreciated her devotion and effort. I wish her best of luck in college. : )

 

[Nira Sun]

I don't know if there's any Korean film, dramas or commercials that are specifically produced for male audiences. The prevalence of plastic surgery reflected equaly on male and female performers. I'd guess, similar as how they attract female audiences, that they will use the performers from the girl bands to attract male audiences. That's probably why we don't normally see male car show models. 

[Nira Sun]

China produced a documentary called "Twenty two" which looked at the lives of comfort women survivors. 22 meant that there were only 22 comfort women still alive at the time of the filimg. I'm not sure if it's appropriate to be introduced in classrooms. 

This documentary is available on Netflix if anyone is interested. 

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