[Wen Shi]

Thank you for the very inspiring lecture about random pictures and questions.

Regarding to the Chinese currency that is replaced by Mao,I think it indicates that the communist party want to centralize the power and continue Mao's legacy. In my opinion, Mao is a controversial person. Regardless the mistakes he made in his later years( cultural revolution, the four-people gang), he unified China in 1949. For me, the image of Mao represents a strong centralized government which is what the Xi government prmoting or working on. The currency is a symbol or an indicator of what's going on or what will happen in the future. To my understanding is that the Chinese government will regain its legacy and rejuvinate the country despite numerous issues in Chinese society nowadays.

To bring the lecture to my classroom, I am thinking about in my social studies and world history, I could combine ancient china, medieval China and contemporaty China all together so that students could get the big picture of China's history and what's going on nowadays. The challeng for me is the reading materials that I am going to present my students. Ideally, it has to be authentic matierals like newspaper and news on TV or internet. However, I may need supplenmary materials to present the information.

[Wen Shi]

The lecture of Japanese animate was very interesting and inspiring. As a person who grew up reading a lot of Japanese manga/animate, professor Coats provided me with a new perspective of the famous or the classic animate in Japanese culture. At it's regarding to some content of the animate, it could be traced back to the history of Japanese theatre art. My understanding is that animate is representative of Japanese culture which is rooted from its own aesthetic tradition which isn't confucianism.( it will be helpful if the professor could have clarified what it is ) It will be nice for the professors to talk about different publish houses of Japanese manga as well.

 I grew up reading lots of girls comics and watching animate. For my mandarin class, I train students by assigning them listening practice from semi-authentic/authentic materials. There's a lot of animate available on youtube with Chinese translation with good stories such as people's daily life that students can relate to, e.g.Chibi Maruko Chan. I could show a clip of the enimate and have students listen and guess the meaning or rewrtie the story or even do voice act with the story. That's how I incorporate the animate elements in my language classroom.

[Wen Shi]

Professor Rosen's lecture was very inspiring and interesting in many aspects. For example, the Chinese government spent billions of US dollars to improve the national images how ever it didn't acheive much. My question is what's the purpose of spending such great amount of money to improve "national image" instead of giving the money back to the peope to improve their life quality such as fair eduacation,more efficient  healthcare system and senior care. 

Every year my students who take Chinese class would ask me lots of questions not only about traditonal Chinese culture, but also modern China including pop culture, policies and politics. For example, when asked if I am the only child in the family, my 6th graders were very surprised that I am because of one child policy. There's many different voices about the policies. Therefore, I plan to show students thoese different opinions so that they can come up with their own conclusion.

 

 

[Wen Shi]

The magazine cover sounds like a brilliant idea. I was thinking about political cartoon where students compare and constrast the economic and social gap between U.S and China either in an important year like 1978 or during a period of time like in 1940s.

[Wen Shi]

Professor Brown brought up a very important aspect when it comes to teach history: Musuems( authorization version of history) vs real life objects in the peirod of time which is being taught

I was inspired by the idea and thinking about the project of recreation of an art piece. After examing, analyzing the postcards of Japan from 19 century to 20 century, students choose a Japanese postcard  and recreate one. I assigned a similar project to the students before when we were in Renassiance unit. I noticed that a lot of students were tracing off an art piece from their laptop instead of drawing them. To encourage students to actually recreate the art, I will give extra credits to students who recreates the art piece.

[Wen Shi]

Do you mean Japanese postcards..? I don't recall there's any part of lecture talking about Chinese postcards..

[Wen Shi]

Hi Midori

I think your idea is brilliant! There's a big group of latin American students in my school and some of them just moved to the United States or are new immigrants to this country. I think interview their family or each othe will be a great opportunity for the students to understand the immigration expericne, what it meaning to be an American, adapting to a new culture and keep their identity. My school teaches IB curriculm and I can definitely see this activity applied in the "self-identity community, and world aroud us" unit.

 

[Wen Shi]

The poster is about opposition of Falungong, and Chinese people should firmly agree on the decision make by the Central government about dealing the illegal Falungong Organization. There's a family with a father, a mother and a daughter with a male solider saluting to the party with background of a city view and a banner indicating that Jiang zemin was the president of PRC. The red star on the top left corner indicates the communist party. There's three people in the background representing soliders, farmers and workers respectively.

So the entire poster is sending the information that Chinese people unanimously support the decision made by the Central government.

The poster uses warm color mainly red and orange and it makes people feel welcoming and also becasue red is the color of communism.

The people in the picture all have firm and positive look in their eyes and the people in the backgroud all look very happy about the decision. This message is conveyd in a very positive way.

I think the time period of the poster is from  early 2000.

[Wen Shi]

The poster is about opposition of Falungong, and Chinese people should firmly agree on the decision make by the Central government about dealing the illegal Falungong Organization. There's a family with a father, a mother and a daughter with a male solider saluting to the party with background of a city view and a banner indicating that Jiang zemin was the president of PRC. The red star on the top left corner indicates the communist party. There's three people in the background representing soliders, farmers and workers respectively.

So the entire poster is sending the information that Chinese people unanimously support the decision made by the Central government.

The poster uses warm color mainly red and orange and it makes people feel welcoming and also becasue red is the color of communism.

The people in the picture all have firm and positive look in their eyes and the people in the backgroud all look very happy about the decision. This message is conveyd in a very positive way.

I think the time period of the poster is from  early 2000.

[Wen Shi]

Professor Yasar talked about a few Japnaese directors and films and Tokyo story immediately drew my attention. The movie focused on the details in daily life like cutting vegetables and conversation between family members, which makes me feel like the story is happening right infront of me whiling watching. Tokyo story reminds me of Little Miss Sunshine which is also a low budget family movie. I think it will be interesting to have students watch both movies and havea discussion comparing the time period, historical backgroud, family dynamics, filming techiniques, cutural differences between Japan and US..       

I think Hayao Miyazaki's movies will be very appealing to middle schoolers the age group that I am teaching. If taking the movie spirted away as an example, I will break students into groups and let them translate the movie clips in Mandarin. They can act out the part of the movie they choose and practice the language. The final project can be a presentation or act of the story. It will be a fun and engaging exercise for students to practice speaking and listening in Chinese.

Comments:

I always thought that animation is a big part of Japanese film industry. I wish the professor could talk about it.

[Wen Shi]

The afternoon session covered lots of topics, and some of the topics souded really familiar to me and some were not, so I was able to review what I knew and got to learn something new.

Lesson plan ideas:

The policital cartoon is definitely something I would have a classroom discussion about. I am thinking of assigning a jigsaw acitity that I will have a couple groups in my class. Each group gets a political cartoon of the second Sino-Japanese War. They will analyze the meaning behind their assigned caroon after they finishing reading the assigned the articles. We could have a whole class discussion afterwards.

The recreation/ combination of Chinese symbols and English letters as well as the children's book are something I definitely would try with my 6th graders Mandarin Introduction kids who think Chinese charcaters are amzing but also terrifying at the same time. By introducing the artform of calligraphy, the students will learn to appreciate the beauty and art style of Chinese calligraphy and able to udnerstand the meaning because of the spelling of English words.

The contemporary art work based on contemporary issues in Chinese society is something that I want to use art gallery or art walk in my class which students can pick one art work that they are interested in and research the social and politcal issues behind it. The final work will be students walk in the classroom and they get to ask questions to their classmates and answer questions from their classmates.

Sanmao is a great cartoon that I can use in class as a conversation/talking exercise for my immersion students. After learning about the history background of the story, students get to pick and choose a cartoon episode and they can put narratives next to each picture. The final presentation will be students tell the story of the episode they choose.

Takaways:

I just couldn't understand that how could billions of people were under control of a Gang of Four...

 

[Wen Shi]

I recall listening to a collection of stories called gold bell in kindergarten. The storeis are formated in a way that little kids could easily tell which is right or wrong, what should do or not do. Those stories are quite similar to the lazy pig. I think it's important to leave the moral to the child instead of telling them what should do or not to when it comes to a fictional stories becasue it is really about perspectives in the end. 

[Wen Shi]

Professor Kim's lecture was incredible and I learned quite a lot about the NK and SK.

Here are some ideas I would like to try in my classroom:

1 K-pop: I am inspired by the corporation of visual arts and pop music elements in K-pop The unit I am thinking is the unit about self identity where students learn about how to greet each other, introducing family members and community in Mandarin, etc. Students can start off creating the images representing themselves. Then they can work as a group to come up a conversation skit. The final project could be a musical video which they act out their skit in the form of k-pop with the lyrics in Mandarin as well as the images and video they select.

2 Perpective: I was inspired by how different western and NK portraied Kim Joung-il. By showing two clips of the video about the same event to the students after students finish their assigned reading materials. We can have a class discussion about what is history, who makes history.

The takeaway question:

Is there any kind of relations between North Korea political propganda movie and South Korea K-pop culture?

After being exposed to different generes of movies, how are north korean audience adapting to the situation that they would have to watch political propganda movies nowadays.

 

[Wen Shi]

Hi Catherine

Is there any reading assignment questions that we need to answer?

[Wen Shi]

Hello all

       My name is Susan Shi. I joined USC China institute by attending a book fair back in 2013 and made up my mind that I would pursue my teaching credential . Now I work as  a Mandarin and Social Studies teacher in Pacific Beach Middle School in San Diego. It is a very challenging teaching assginment for me and I feel the urge to keep learning to enrich my classroom. Being able to have this opportunity to attend this seminar hosted by USC is really a great honor to me and I am really excited about the classess and tours that we are going to have!! Looking forward to see everyone soon:)

   Susan

 

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