[Sara Newman]

Prior to taking this class, I hadn't had any formal education/exposure to Asian history and culture. I learned a bit about Asian art in my AP art history class and a bit more in one sociology and one anthropology class I took in college, but I lacked the confidence to talk with my students about a part of the world of which I had so little knowledge/exposure. Additionally, previously I'd taught only Latino and African American students, so I was used to making things culturally relevant to them, but this year was my first year teaching Asian students as well, so I was really grateful for how this course made me spend a lot more time thinking about how to make things culturally relevant for them as well.

I think that learning more about the complicated histories that China, Korea, and Japan have with each other was one of the most interesting parts of the courses for me. Specifically, I'd known that Japan was part of the Axis powers during World War II, but I was really interested to learn both how and why Japan became an imperialist power in the East. I was also really interested to learn about the modern political, economic, and social issues affecting each country. The intimacy of and reasoning behind the close relationship Japan has to the United States today was one of the most surprising things I learned from this course. 

As an English teacher, I generally tend to teach texts mostly from the 1900s-present day in part because I'm most familiar with and comfortable talking about the historical context of texts from this time. After taking this course, however, I've both become more aware of how westernized the texts and topics I explore with my students are. I plan to begin including more short stories and poems from China, Korea, and Japan in my classroom in the future now that I finally understand how to talk about the historical and cultural context of such texts. Additionally, when exploring texts written in the aftermath of World War II (such as The Universal Declaration of Human Rights), I plan to discuss how the events and ideas from World War II in the East, as well as in Europe, influenced fears and desires of the time. Additionally, I want to find more texts the would help students understand how the Cold War was fought and understood in Korea, Vietnam, and Asia in general.

[Sara Newman]

Last night I was at LACMA for one of their Evenings for Educators nights and they had an amazing new exhibit by Korean artist Do Ho Suh. LACMA describes the exhibit as "a 1:1 scale model replica of the artist’s former apartment in a historical 19th-century building in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood. Do Ho Suh’s works elicit a physical manifestation of memory, exploring ideas of personal history, cultural tradition, and belief systems in the contemporary world. Best known for his full-size, fabric reconstructions of his former residences in Seoul, Providence, Berlin, London, and New York, Suh’s creations of physicalized memory address issues of home, displacement, individuality, and collectivity, articulated through the architecture of domestic space.": https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/do-ho-suh-348-west-22nd-street 

Essentially, the artist spend four years handsewing a fabric reproduction of the apartment he lived in while in New York City. Part of the beauty of the piece is the vibrant, sheer fabric he works in and the almost fantastical quality the colors create. Even more enthralling, however, is the incredible detail of the building. Not only does he create walls and doorways, but he handstitches the letters on a note from the utility compnay and separately sews each individual piece of the air conditioning unit. I can't recommend visiting enough!

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Sara Newman]

Hi Angela, 

Thank you so much for sharing this article! I found it fascinating to read, and I trust that your students will too. The following passage stood out most to me:

"And in a society that for centuries held that a woman’s place remained in the home, women now have a major presence in the work force — one of the few positive legacies of China’s repressive Mao era. While the number has been declining, 61 percent of working-age Chinese women participated in the labor force last year — higher still than many countries, including the United States (56 percent) and Germany (55 percent.)"

It's intersting how dehumanizing government structures can in some ways lead people to focus on a person's ability to work rather than gender stereotypes about them. I wouldn't have thought that so many more Chinese women worked than American women. It could be intersting to do a see-wonder-think chart about gender roles in Asia, America, and Europe to have students explain their assumptions before reading more about the realities for women in these different cultures. 

[Sara Newman]

Hi Kurt, 

I'm so glad that you brought up the different ways that zen can manifest! I know that one of the teachers at my old school used to have a bonsai tree and practice mediation with his students after nutrition. At first they thought it was kind of weird, but over time they grew to really look forward to it. Are there ways that you think you can infuse your apprecation for zen into either your classroom decor or your classroom routines/practices? 

[Sara Newman]

Hi Angela, 
I'm so glad you mentioned these two architectural styles! I know when I was younger I loved playing with sand zen gardens and zen buddah boards, and in some ways this was my first taste of Japanese architeture. I think that most people probably associate Japanese architecture most with paper walls and minimal furniture, so as you said, it interesteing that ornamental archiecture also plays such a big role. I can't think of any examples that I have of Japanese ornamental architecture outside of images of grand temples in Japan. I wonder if our students are familiar with either of these styles--either from buildings, items, or media. Do you cover architecture and art at all in your class? Is this something you might be able to bring into the history classroom as a visual aid?

[Sara Newman]

The contrast in messaging from China's Xinhua news publications and the other publications focusing more on Taiwan and Hong Kong are quite astounding. The calm, seemingly innocuous statement from Chinese President Xi Jinping explaining his desire "to build China into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, and harmonious" sounds fair enough until you consider how totaliarian governments from the past century have similarly framed their goals and plans. It was frightening to hear how China's attempts to pacify the Hong Kong protests invovle using British emergency regulations ordinances that hadn't been employed in over 50 years. Similarly, the great emphasis on unificiation in President Xi's speeches make me wonder how China could possibly use peaceful methods to reabsorb Taiwan when the Taiwanese president is so committed to defending "the democratic system that the people of Taiwan have established together." It just seems the like repressive, simplifying policies of the Chinese are so at odds with these two other entities that it's hard to imagine what the future holds. 

[Sara Newman]

I really enjoyed reading about Jung Chang’s new book, which focuses on the three Soong sisters and how their marriage to prominent Chinese political figures allowed each of the sisters to play a significant role in Chinese modernization. I know that personally, hearing about the experiences of specific people and helps me connect more with and care more about historical events and eras, so I think this sounds like a compelling book that would increase both factual knowledge and human understanding of what it felt like to experience the changing political structures in China during the 20th century. It’s really interesting to me how this book not only centers around the experience of Western-educated women, but also shows the continuity in the influence of women from the Soong family from democratic China to Maoist China. I wouldn’t teach the whole book, but I might consider excerpting a particularly vivid scene or chapter that relates to either a study of World War II (as we read Night) or a unit centered around collected informational texts about gender/freedom. 

 

“The Forgotten Women Who Shaped China in the 20th Century” by Suyin Haynes 

Published in Time in OCTOBER 29, 2019.

https://time.com/5710461/jung-chang-china-history-big-sister-book/

 

The three Soong sisters were precocious from a young age. But few could have predicted the level of influence they eventually had on the course of history in 20th-century China. Born in Shanghai in the 1890s to Charlie Soong, a wealthy merchant and missionary, the sisters were all educated at Wesleyan College in Georgia, traveling to the U.S. without an accompanying guardian. “Big Sister” Ei-Ling, was known as the brightest mind in the family, gaining fortune through her marriage to banker and eventual finance minster of China H.H. Kung. “Little Sister” May-Ling, married Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and became first lady of the mainland known around the world, even gracing the cover of TIME three times. And “Red Sister” Ching-Ling married Sun Yat-sen, the first President of the Republic of China and the opponent of Nationalist leader Chiang, before becoming Mao’s vice-chair.

One biography of the Soong family was published in 1986, and several biographies have since been written about Little Sister in her role as Madame Chiang Kai-shek. But a new book by historian and writer Jung Chang, Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China, reveals the fascinating intertwined story of the three sisters for the first time. Best known for her 1991 international-bestseller Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, which explored her own family history in China through the twentieth century, Chang researched previously unused documents from archives, including personal letters written by the sisters, to chart their fascinating personal and political lives. Chang spoke to TIME about the Soong sisters, their impact on history, and what has changed for women in China since their time.

What prompted you to write about the Soong sisters?

After my last book, the biography of Empress Dowager Cixi, was published in 2013, I was thinking about my next subject. I wanted to write about another program setter, so I started researching Sun Yat-sen, who is often called the father of China. Then I changed my mind — I was a little bored. I found that his wife and her sisters were much more interesting than him. They were political, but they also had other aspects about them: Their personal, emotional ups and downs, their dramatic lives, and their relationships. So I decided to write about them.

 

What was your most surprising discovery?

I was surprised about the relationship between Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. For many years after her marriage to Chiang Kai-shek, May-Ling was in a deep depression, and he wanted to get her out of it, so he gave her this present, which was a “necklace,” for her birthday in 1932. It encircled a whole mountain, and the jewel of the necklace was a villa, called the May-Ling Palace outside Nanjing. The roof of this villa has blue-green tiles which sparkle in the sun, and made it look like a real jewel. The chains of the necklace are made of French pine trees which Chiang had imported to China and planted like a real necklace around the whole mountain. The pine trees colour in a different way to the local trees, so in the autumn, if you took a private plane, which of course you could do if you were May-Ling, you see this spectacular necklace. This side of Chiang Kai-shek, in the personal relationship and his imaginativeness and sensibility to May-Ling was a bit surprising to me.

 

Why had their histories not been explored in depth before?

I think in Chinese history, so many things have not been written about which ought to have been written about. With the three sisters, there is too much politics involved with their lives, and inevitably you don’t get truthful, honest, scholarly writing. When I was growing up in mainland China for example, we all heard that May Ling had a bath every day in milk, which is why her skin was so fine. I remember our teacher saying gently, do you really think bathing in milk is pleasant? And of course, he was condemned as a rightist.

In this book, the paths of these three sisters were part of a major period in Chinese history. Between 1913, and 1928 when Chiang Kai-shek seized power, China was a democracy. This came as such a revelation to me, because no one talked about that period, and still they don’t talk about this in China. China had an artistic, literary, linguistic and creative renaissance simply because it was a democracy. During this time, there were three general elections, a functioning parliament, press freedom and freedom of expression, and of course women’s emancipation.

 

In a way, Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is similar to your earlier autobiography Wild Swans in intertwining the personal histories of a family with the broader arc of Chinese history. Is it your conscious choice to tell stories that way?

Wild Swans is about three women on the receiving end of history. We were small people in society. These three women were at the heart of power and they contributed in making these policies, they had a certain influence and an impact on how China evolved in those years. It is my conscious decision to write about characters and people whose private personal lives are intimately connected with the politics and history of the country. I think that’s much more interesting. For me, it helps me find answers to all these questions, the big holes in history books that don’t satisfy me.

 

Had there been any Chinese women as much as political power as the Soong sisters before? And would you say there have been any since?

No. The Empress Dowager was really powerful, and she was the ruler of China on and off for nearly half a century. She was the first modernizer of China, bringing medieval China into the modern age. The sisters were not policymakers on the same level as the Empress Dowager, but still they had extraordinary influence. Ching-Ling was Mao’s vice chair. May-Ling was China’s first lady for many years, and during the Second World War, she was one of the most famous women in the world. She was the face of wartime China and did a lot for the country. At the Cairo conference in 1943, she went with Chiang Kai Shek and she personally negotiated with Roosevelt’s representative. She made a difference and was a politician in her own right. Big Sister, Ei-Ling, also had tremendous influence on Chiang Kai-shek. For one thing, she converted him to Christianity and that softened his dictatorship, making it less harsh. The sisters made his dictatorship less harsh than it might have been.

No, there have not been people like them. The sisters were from a time when big things were happening and people of greatness were emerging because that was a very liberating period. After so many years of dictatorship, from Chiang Kai-shek to Mao’s, right up to the repressive regime of today, there isn’t this atmosphere or soil for people like them to blossom.

 

One passage from an essay by Ei-Ling referring to Confucius is striking: “His grossest mistake was the failure to regard womankind with respect.” How progressive were the sisters for their time?

This surprised me because she was a teenager when she wrote that and it was the beginning of the twentieth century. She was so perceptive: Without denigrating Confucius, she put her finger spot on on the major weakness of Confucianism, which is its contempt for women. She said words to the effect that a nation would not really become great without the liberation of its womenfolk. I found it extraordinary that she saw that then, when one hundred years later, many people still haven’t grasped that.

 

How has the role of women in Chinese society changed overall since the time of the Soong sisters?

As I live in Britain now, not China, my views and my experience there is very limited. Since writing the biography of Mao, I lost my freedom to travel in China. I can only go back for two weeks a year to see my mother. I have no contact while I’m there with the public and people beyond my immediate family. Any views of mine are bound to be not only limited, but may not be quite right.

But from the little I know, when I was in China under Mao, women were told that we held up half the sky. For me at the time, that meant we did things which were traditionally not for women. I was a steelworker and an electrician, although I dreaded going near wires. For people of my generation, women did a lot of physical labour and were traditionally reserved for men. One was also less conscious of one’s sexuality in those years. Any sign of people’s sexuality or female mind and character was not allowed to come to the surface. In those days, we couldn’t show what we wanted as a woman. I think today’s China has changed since then. All I can say is that it’s probably more difficult for women to excel.

 

Given that you’ve spent a large part of your life outside mainland China — although of course, not voluntarily — do you still feel like it is home?

No. My home is London, where my husband and my friends are, and where I feel most at ease. Having said that, of course I take an intense interest in China. That’s my native country, and it’s the country I somehow care so much about, and I worry so much about what might go wrong there. I really care and feel for the country and the people who have been so much and really deserve good lives. It’s a country I feel very emotional about.

[Sara Newman]

In high school I took architecture classes for many years, so I was really happy to see Tadao Ando & Shigeru Ban's work mentioned in the reading. I've long admired both of their work (especially Ban's), and been drawn to the elegance of their neutural colors and emphasis on natural materials. I really liked how the book focused on how "detail, light, and wind" help Ando not only create beauty in his strcutures, but also to deliver a socio-cultural statement. I really appreciate how his buildings manage to be not just stark, but also beautiful through their inclusion of minimal, but intentional details. 

Many of the curving structures from Shigeru Ban remind me of the fanciful, organic creations of Frank Gehry. Clearly Ban's designs include more basic colors and materials, but the curves in each architect's work clearly empahsize beauty over sheet utility. Because of this, I was surprised in the reading to hear about how the Kobe earthquake led Ban to focus more on emergency housing and shelters that prioritize utility and humanitarian need over artistry. I love that not only is Ban innovative in the environmental realm, but that he also priotitze immeasurable beauty in structures he's created around the world--especially the Centre Pompidou in Metz in France and New Zealand’s Cardboard Cathedral.

[Sara Newman]

When I think of Japanese architecture I tend to think of simple lines, paper dividers, and neutural colors, so I was really interested in how this reading explained the evolution of Japanese arhitecture caused in political and cultural shifts. The breakdown of how different periods correlated with different formats and locations for temples helped clarify things, and I also apprecaited how the text talks about the relationship between Japan and other places. Specifically, it was interesting to hear how not only Chinese design principals, but also international ideas brought back by ships returning to Japan influenced the aesthetic of the day. 

I wonder how modern Japanese architects try integrate modern design principles/expectations, ancient Japanese design elements, and their personal visions to create new buildings in Japan to meet the current demographic needs. It seems like such a tall tale to honor this rich design history while also having very specific issues/goals to address (aging population, environmentalism/sustainability, etc.)

[Sara Newman]

Last week I was reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with my 9th grade honors students, and because the document was written in 1948, we took some time to talk about how World War II and other preceding circumstances inspired the creation of the United Nations and this specific document. When we were talking about World War II, my students seemed to have a decent understanding of the European side, but mentioned nothing about the war in other parts of the world. I shared some of the thins I'd learned about the war from our class, and assigned each student to go home and learn more about the war and be ready to share out their finidngs the next day. Because that class contains many Latino students as well as some Korean and Thai students, I encouraged them to look up how South America, Korea, Japan, and other places also played a role in World War II. The next day, however, (despite my explicit urging), every one of my 28 students shared out about World War II in Europe. They mostly focused on Nazis (as Hollywood tends to do) perhaps because they're the easiest villian to hate, but I was disappointed not to see a greater variety of information found and shared. 

[Sara Newman]

While I really enjoyed the crane metaphor, unexpected change in the narrator's plans, and honors present in "Cranes," I didn't find any of these elements repeated or matched in "Kapitan Lee." This story more directly followed shifts in Korean power structures and helped me better understand how the shifting control between Japanese, American-influnced South Korea, and Russian-influenced North Korea would have made it hard for people to stay safe. But while it does a good job depicting the socio-political tensions of the Korean War, this story doesn't exactly give you anyone to admire or root for. The narrator is surely resourceful and clever, but the writer depicts his as disloyal and spineless. I also felt that unlike with the first story which has a surprising ending, this story has less tension/surprise to propell it forward. 

[Sara Newman]

I was so excited when opening up the "Cranes" reading to finally read something that's more in my wheelhouse after trying to make sense of the dense Robinson texts and so many other historic/economic texts that I don't have the context/preexisting knowledge to fully make sense of. I'm so glad that we're getting to consider how the writers of the time sought to make sense of the changing world around them. 

I was really struck by the timing of the story. It's interesting that Hwang Sunwon chose to write about the Korean War in 1953 while the events were still so current. It seems like nothing of the present time is often immediately written into literature, so I appreciate his timely response to what was his reality at the time. The story's really beautiful in its brevity and somewhat vague ending. It's so natural to sympathize with the narrator, but when the narrator contrasts his own decision to leave his father and chilren behind when the North Korean forces arrive against his childhood friend's decision to stay in their town in order to care for his father, it's clear that his friend is the more honorable and heroic of the two. It's interesting that hearing of his friend's loyalty seems to be what inspires the narrator to take the risk to set his friend free at the last moment. 

The title of this short story also reminded me of an essay I love from The Paris Review that's adapted from a Japanese folktale. It's mostly Western, but still has some link to Japanese (not Korean), and it's a BEAUTIFUL read (if anyone's interested): https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/07/16/the-crane-wife/

[Sara Newman]

Hi Liz, 

I'm do glad you're brining this up. It does seem like a far more extreme version of traditional gender roles than what we see in the United States today. Whether because of economic necessity or personal desire/ambition, it seems like a many (if not most) women today work outside of the home. The idea of mostly women remainaing housewives aligns more with Victorian America and Europe than modern expectations of men and women today. 

I think your point about divorce is really interesting. I just finished reading a book called Spinster about female writers living in the 1900s-1980s and the author talked a lot about how marriage was an economic necessity even for women who wanted to earn a living as a writer at the time. When women had the financial independence they were able to leave unhappy marriages, but divorce was a privilege. I wonder if the laws in Japan entitle women to much financial support if they choose to divorce their husbands. Also what are custody agreements typically like there? Or, if it fairly common for women to stay in unhappy marriages and/or endure infidelity because of their economic dependence on their husbands? 

[Sara Newman]

I'm so glad that you brought this up! I was also both afraid of and somewhat impressed when I'd read about kamikaze pilots in the past. It was shocking to think that a nation of people would be more committed to winning than to living, but the forced conscription of these fighters really changed my view of things. Like you I'd thought that it was the will of the people to fight the war against the Americans to the bitter end, but learning that it was forced upon them really changed my perspective of this. This could be an interesting example to have students study when writing about or debating about issues of loyalty versus freedom or obedience versus rebellion. 

[Sara Newman]

I’ve been familiar with Murakami Takashi’s art for a while now, and was entirely unaware that, as Professor Tsutsui’s pointed out, his art is not just a fanciful Alice-in-Wonderland-eque creation, but rather it’s part of a larger national tradition of Japanese artists trying to help the nation process and deal with the traumatic past of the two atomic bombs and World War II military defeat. Even now, I have a hard time seeing how the majority of his sunny, floral prints are in fact responses to horrific acts of violence and national trauma. Still, I am really intrigued by this idea of film makers, artists, and storytellers becoming responsible for helping a nation process their grief when cultural norms and expectations prevent people from talking about the loss and dealing with it publicly. I know that the tradition of art therapy encourages people to use art to process their own loss, but I wonder if students could use art to deal with intergenerational, local, ethnic, or national tragedies.

[Author]

Posts