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Ying YuMarco Polo was so famous and I would like to find some films about him.
Ying YuRecently, there is a very attractive drama:A Dream of Splendor (梦华录) 2022 ‧ Romance. The drama reflected somehow the bustling of Song dynasty. Maybe teengages will like the drama.
The economy in Song dynasty was fantastic. They exported many products to other countries. I like this dynasty not only because the economy, but also about literature. Song poems are so famous and romatic. I will teach my students Song poems for their language learning.
Ying YuI still have no idea about how to teach Chinese philosophy for my young age students, but I really love this topic! I can tell that there is a big difference between western Philosophy and Chinese philosophy.
I didn't read the arts of war, but I know this book is so famous in western countries. Maybe I can tell some stories from this book to my students. They will understand better about Chinese philosophy from this book.
Ying YuThose lectures are so informative. My family believes in Buddhism and Taoism. But I didn't learn those religious knowledge so systematically. I also like to know more about Muslims in East Asia, not only in China. I don't know if Japan and Korea have Muslims. In my college in China, we have Muslim restaurants. I love that Muslim food, especially Lanzhou noodles.
Moreover, thanks for mentioning Zen Koan! I read some stories in magazines about philosophical Buddhism stories when I was young, but I never realized that they had a name called Zen Koan. Koan reminds me of when I was teaching Mandarin in Tzu Chi, a Buddhist organization, where the faculties there always played some Buddhism stories to enlighten young students.
I plan to use what I learned from USC in my future language teaching. Religion is complex, but students need to know about how diverse this world is. They need to know how to show their respect to other religious people.
Ying YuThe topic of religions is so interesting that I didn't teach them in the previous lessons. However, now I plan to use this topic in my teaching. I plan to teach them basic knowledge about a different religion and use some picture books to guide them to have a better understanding of religion. I also plan to combine some activities like Kung-fu and meditation in my teaching activity. The movie “Kung fu Panda” will be fun for my students. Also, doing some meditation activities will be good for their concentration.
Moreover, I plan to teach my students about Islam and Buddhism in China. I plan to use the videos in this lecture in my lesson plans, for example, how Buddhism became so popular in China and how they emerged Zen(Chan) developed during the Song dynasty. Also, I'm curious about how Muslims formed in China and what they look like today. I plan to use many PowerPoint to introduce that historical knowledge to my young students but not too deep. Like Leshan Giant Buddha and some pictures from Muslims in Xinjiang will be put into my slides, and students will feel interested in those topics.
Ying YuI'm considering how to use those Japanese history materials for my teaching. Maybe it applies to high school teaching. However, since I'm not a high school teacher, I assume I can use some of them for my future education.
I want to teach some folk stories from Japan to my young students, like The story of Princess Kaguya is suitable to teach girls how to understand the world better. Some cultural-related activities from these Japanese lectures many also beneficial for my students. For example, tea ceremonies and flower arrangements are also significant for my teaching. I plan to lead my students to tea houses or Japanese gardens.
Ying YuI also attended an online event about Japanese Crafts. The event hosted in Tokyo and the leader of Japan Craft 21 addressed some dilemmas of handcrafs in moden society. Lack of students,low efficiency, and small markets are three reasons that constraint the development of Japanese handcrafts.
From my own experience, the dilemmas of handcrafs are the same in China. Most people choose to buy cheaper industry products instead of handcrafts. There are many handcraf men show how they make those items only by hands in some tourist attractions. However, most tourist only watch how those handcraf men do their job, but not willing to pay extra money to buy those high-priced handmade goods.
I will post this question to my students when I teach them some art crafts. How should we do to protect those ancient skills? I will also teach them to make some simple handcrafts, like bamboo dragonfly.
Ying YuThe picture of Qianlong is so interesting. Countries in our world are combined together. We definately cannot lock down on single country and set apart the country to learn from other countries. The arrogant attitude of Qianlong had taught Chinese people a lesson that no matter which country, we should stay humble and learn from other countries. I may use this as a teaching material for my future lesson plans.
However, based on some historial recordings, Qianlong or the whole Qing govenors were afraid of rebellion of Han people, so they afraid that if ordinary people learned so technologies from other countries, Manchu people might lose dominance. That's a reason of self-seclusion policy.
Ying YuMing dynasty was not that far from our modern society, but when I read some books about Ming dynasty, I found that the culture of Ming dynasty was not that familiar. I read a book that called "Those things happened in Ming Dynasty" and ”1587, a Year of No Significance“. Those two historical books was so impressive that I understood more about confuician spirit in ancient Chinese society. Loyalty, righteousness, benevolence and filial piety are core principles in those scholar and official class. I was touched by what they did for the Ming Dynasty.
Ying YuLast Saturday, I visited two different museums:Chinese American Museum, National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. They are both located in D.C area.
According to Wiki:The Chinese American Museum DC is a cultural museum in Downtown Washington, DC established through the efforts of The Chinese American Museum Foundation, private benefactors, and the general public. There were a few people visited the small museum, and mostly were asian. We watched a film about how miserable life Chinese American were during the CA railway construction time. The second floor was an exhibition for teenagers and children who won the drawing competition. Those pictures was so fun. I was impressive about a picture that a typical American Eagle wear a Chinese style headwear, which makes the eagle looks so pretty and adorable. The third floor displayed many handcrafts from different area of China, even some minorities can do n outstanding embroidery. The fourth floor shows: at the period of the founding of the U.S, how was American people the trade with China.
When I visited National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. First when I entered the museum, the wood door is such a typically Japanese style architecture. Then I saw an Penjing Museum, which is a typically Asian style build, that many penjing are there. Mostly are interesting stones. Also, there is an indoor display of Qing dynasty life style inside the Penjing building. When I went outside of the build, I was surprised about the Chinese Garden that is located behind the Penjing Museum. The door of the garden is big and traditional, and many plants are behind the front door, which is such an attractive architecture style.
Those museum is not that big, but very specially in the U.S. I learned Chinese American history and I will teach my students, especially Asian Americans how to respect their ancients in the U.S.
If I have a chance in the future, I will take them to have field trips to those museums.
Ying YuThis program is such an excellent program! Through months of learning, I got a deeper understanding of history for China, Korean and Japan. Their cultures have some kind of similarity, or overlaps over some parts, such as some traditional festivals. But mostly their cultures are different from each other.
I was so additive to those history lectures that some lectures I played many times for reviewing. I felt so sad about some parts of Chinese history, like Mongrols conquered Song Dynasty and Qing government forced Han people to changed their life styles. I also felt impressive about Japanese women writes and I would like to read those literature books from them.
For reflection part, I believe that I should do more research before each online discussion session. For example, read some papers, or watched related lectures. Those lectures from USC are in general and I need to know more about how the background was. For example, the professor Morgan Pitelka mentioned that there was a big fire in Kyoto during 15 centry, however, I have no idea what was happening so I had to searched online to find the related background information. Also, Professor Dube mentioned “Yuan Ming Yuan” was destoried by fires because of British army and French Army. Although I learned a little bit history about that event, I still felt confused about how they set up fires and how was the results after that.
Moreover, this program is so wonderful for school teachers to know East Asian history and teachers will know how to use some learning materials from this program to their teaching. I am considering to put a historical map to compare these three countries for specific history timeline for my students. There were some connections between those countries that history textbook may not mention very clearly. For example, during Ming dynasty, pirates who were from Japan and some parts of China damaged lots of area in China. During that time, Japan was under Sengoku period that lots Japanese people were under wars. However, during Qing dynasty, the pirates disappeared and Japan also went into Tokugawa era.
Thus, there are so many connections behind single history event. I would like to use maps to help my young age students to understand the logic behind history.
Ying YuLast year I also learned Japanese history from Professor Morgan Pitelka. Although China and Japan look close to each other, we have a lot parts of differences in culture. I feel so impressed by how Japanese people respect their history and culture. They protected their unique culture and related cultural items so well.
After I finished the Japanese history course last summer at USC, I searched many materials, and I also watched some Japanese films. I can feel that Japanese culture had a tone of sadness in their culture, based on their music, their movies, and some folk stories. In addition, in my eyes, the Bushido spirit plays a very important role in their culture, which is so different from Chinese culture. Maybe ancient Japanese people were faced with a harsh environment, so they had to fight a lot in the difficult environment.
Most Chinese people know Japanese history after the period Meiji Restoration. This is such a historical event that changed Japanese destiny. However, the second Sino-Japanese War harmed lots of countries in East Asian countries, which is an unforgettable memory for many generations in East Asia. Some of them are still worried about the repetition of history.
Thus, I would like to learn the history of Japan in WarII.
Ying YuI watched the speech on Youtube and understand how Muslim issues in Xinjiang nowadays. Machus were good at conquering areas around China, and Xinjiang is such a challenging issue because of religion and ethnicity. Chinese are much afraid of violence, so creating a safe public space is the priority issue. After watching the lecture on Youtube, I searched for what happened in Tiananmen Square in the year 2013. It was such an awful terrorist attack, but I didn't know until I watched the lecture today. I don't know if any other way is better than re-education to prevent the terrorist. In my opinion, this is a helpful way to save lives and prevent more violent accidents in the future.
Ying YuI didn't know much about Korean history so I watched those videos in a slow pace in order to know Korean better. However,based on my history knowledge, I found some mistakes in the video lectures.
First, the prosperity of Yuan dynasty was not because of Yuan's government, but they inherited the economy from South Song dynasty.
Second, according to" Wanli Battle of Korea" from Wiki : "Toyotomi Hideyoshi suddenly sent troops to invade in 1592, Korea was retreating steadily, and asked the suzerain Ming Dynasty for help. The Ming Dynasty immediately sent troops to support it." However, the lecture didn't mention that Korean people was under Ming's help. It may mislead listeners.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%90%AC%E6%9B%86%E6%9C%9D%E9%AE%AE%E4%B9%8B%E5%BD%B9
Third, I learned some Korean writings, basically it called Hunminjeongeum (训民正音) 。 According to Wiki:" In order to solve the problem of writing characters in the Korean nation, in 1443, King Sejong of the Joseon Dynasty organized a group of scholars to create a character system suitable for marking Korean phonetics - Hanzi. These characters were called "Hunmin Jeongyum" at that time, which means "teaching the common people to use the correct pronunciation"， so the original purpose of Korean writing was not to replace Chinese Characters.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%A8%93%E6%B0%91%E6%AD%A3%E9%9F%B3
Ying YuAt begining of Qing dynasty, people were forced to have bianzi and changed their cloth styles(剃发易服). Those cloth styles in Ming dynasty mostly represent Confucious beliefs. However, Qing governers just barbarous destoried the culture and killed those people who did not want to change their life style. According to google search, around one million people died for this policy.
Overall, Qing dynasty is a depressive dynasty. The government enslave majority people in China. They didn't trust Han people and had litrary inquisition(文字狱). Moreover, the government was corrupt. Office workers saled position to earn money.
