[Taylor Bub]

 What did the Shang rulers hope to learn from heaven? 

I loved the oracle bones text.  I found it so interesting that not only were the bones themselves used in the divination rituals, but that those same bones were then used as a place for the inscriptions.  It reminds me of many other cultures (thinking Egyptian, Greek, etc.) that look to divine powers to discover a lot of different information.  The Shang rulers used these bone rituals to divine things like whether a child born would be 'good' (a boy) or 'not good' (a girl). This made me think of how in Chinese culture, boys are of more value than girls - when it comes to giving birth in more recent years, I believe that perants in China were only able to have one child (I believe this law has been abolished as recently as 2015), but many were able to petition the government to have another child if their first child was a girl.  I wonder if the value of children is something that has stayed consistent from before the late Shang (ca. 1200-1050 B.C.).

[Taylor Bub]

Q 3: I loved the comparison of household expenditures.  I want to use this with my advisory students to help them plan for their own future.  One thing I noticed was that in China, Japan and South Korea there is a higher amount of money put toward education and less toward housing when compared to the US. It would be interesting for students ot explore the cost of living in these countries and make comparisons between cost of living here in the United States.

[Taylor Bub]

Q 2: For the second question about aging societies, I think automatically of healthcare systems.  When looking at many East Asian cultures, the video mentions how many of these cultures respect and revere their ancestors and the elder members of their communities.  There seems to be a responsibility for family members to care for their older relatives.  I can’t help but compare it to America, where it is common for elderly parents and grandparents to be put in the care of nursing homes instead of staying with their families.  I think that aging communities are a great thing because it means that people are living longer and our older populations have a certain knowledge and experience from their lives that they can share.  It also raises ethical questions about quality of life for certain individuals, as well as questions about the responsibility for caring for those individuals who are unable to live alone.  

 

[Taylor Bub]

Q1: In California, access to clean water is difficult.  Southern california relies on northern california for our water supply.  Just driving up the 5 or 99 freeways on the way to northern california, you can see that there are massive amounts of farmland.  But much of this land is dry and water is clearly scarce.  I wonder if China experiences some of the same issues that we experience when it comes to the politicization of the availability of water.  Are there areas in China and other East Asian countries where water is very scarce and they must rely on other areas?

 

[Taylor Bub]

Hi everyone My name is Taylor Bub and I teach 11th and 12th grade students at Kennedy High School in LAUSD.  I teach anatomy and physiology and sometimes Biology for 9th grade students.  I am excited to learn about East Asian Origins.  I think it is so important for all of our teachers (no matter the subject that they teach) be educated in different cultures.  I am looking forward to the things I will learn in this class and will definitely share them with my advisory students!

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