Two parts of the lecture that were striking to me:
1) Zheng He (yes, the talk about eunuchs as well) and his status of "World's Greatest Sailor; at one point the man reached the coast of Somalia, almost 60 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue! A number of seminar participants have pointed out the image of Korea at night as one that will last in their memories a long time. For me, an even more striking image was the picture of Zheng He's gargantuan ship illustrated next to the comparably puny Santa Maria. Can I fit this into my Japanese course? Ha! I will try. Even more striking perhaps is China's subsequent dismantling of these ships and refocus on struggles within the region.
2) Another point of interest was a description of the advantages of the elite during the Ming Dynasty as it related to the civil service exam system. The current exam-focused education system in Japan faces a similar issue, as the students from wealthy families can afford to go to the best juku (cram schools) after they finish their "studies" with the rest of the students during regular school hours. In fact, many of these elite students have studied the in-class material long through juku long before it ever comes up in the general curriculum. These students proved my greatest challenge in establishing good classroom management. My host family said that the Japanese tend to think of themselves as almost all middle class (this was back in 2000). Such a disparity in the education available to students as early as elementary school leads to a slightly different conclusion. The exam taken at the end of 9th grade (the last year of middle school) can determine whether a student moves on to an academic high school on one end of the spectrum (and potentially to Tokyo University and beyond), or to a fishery school on the other (leading to...?).
