thoughts about session 6 on 7/25 w/Dr. Dube

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,
I think Toni makes a great point distinguishing footbinding from the sorts of things that adults or older teens might do to themselves. The young girls didn't choose to have their feet bound. But this wasn't the only matter where parents decided things for kids. Marriage was another. Marriage in pre-modern East Asia was the joining of two families, not two individuals.

[clay dube]

Jillian's got a great idea to compare two remarkable women, Wu Zetian, who ruled in her own name during the Tang Dynasty, and Ci Xi, who dominated China during the last part of the 19th century.

Ci Xi is getting better treatment these days, at least in a recent soap opera she's depicted as wise and open-minded.

Here is a website offering a summary of opinions about her rule.
http://history.cultural-china.com/en/48H6545H12214.html

Here's a 2008 article confirming that the Guangxu emperor was poisoned in 1908, something long suspected. Most assume that the dying Ci Xi ordered him killed.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-11/21/content_7226663.htm

[Anonymous]

Sorry to open the can of worms, but to defend my position close to 50% of Americans circumcise their newborn boys which is not recommended as a routine procedure by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Religious and cultural changes to the body is body modification, right? I would also include infant and child body piercing in this category.

[Anonymous]

Foot binding really a form of body modification that could be compared to modern times where women use to bind their waist so tightly that often they fainted from the restraints. This was done so that their waistline would remain small. Even after giving birth they also bind their waist and stomach to make them smaller.

[Anonymous]

I find the Taiping Rebllion to be rather interesting. I am very interesting in the descriptions of how the rebels treated other people, as well as how they worked with each other. I find it interesting there was equality of the sexes, but separate (the whole "separate, but equal" phase of the civil rights movement appears as a loose parallel, but again, only happened years later in the United States). In some ways, the "old" country of China seems, at times, to be more "forward" thinking than others. Through my research for my students (for future readings, as China is seriously neglected in many classes, and really only brought up for the rebellions and opium wars prior to the 1949 end of the revolution and time with Mao), I have found a secondary source or two I am interested in reading in order to see if there are other ways of introducing history and including an easier transition than a text to my students. One of them is a book by children's author Katherine Paterson called Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom, http://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Heavenly-Kingdom-Katherine-Paterson/dp/0140376100/ref=la_B000AQ1NEG_1_34?ie=UTF8&qid=1343526788&sr=1-34. I am interested if anyone else has something similar to offer with other periods within Chinese history.

[Anonymous]

I worked at a fluent Catholic school in a border town in CA. Of my students, 90% were/are still from Mexicali, Mexico, which is a border city. Parents place their children in these schools to learn English. Their children, mostly boys stay in the US to further their college education, but eventually go back to run family businesses in Mexico. The girls are brought up to really only find a husband with money to be taken care of.

I am giving you a brief history because I just read how South Korean families are making choices to send their children to New Zealand or America to become proficient in English. That is a great similarity between both cultures. The parents in Mexico as in South Korea are paying outrageous money to keep their children in these schools. The parents in Mexico only travel across the border everyday instead of moving miles from their homes.

The other similarity is the foot binding done in China. If I understood the lecture, it was a done to give their daughters a sense of empowerment. To make them more desirable to men. So, in summary, they wanted to their daughters to find a good husband and be taken care of. The girls at the school, I worked at would have any type of procedure done. Most of their fathers were plastic surgeons, so they did procedures on their daughters and mothers. I had a student who had lipo suction done in 8th grade. Once more, I believe to make her more desirable for a future husband.

[Anonymous]

Aesthetically, there are some things I will never understand, not just in cultures that I am not immersed in, but in my own as well. When it comes to religious practices, that falls under a different domain as far as circumcision goes. From my understanding foot binding was done to make one more desirable or attractive. Those pictures are painful. Can the effects of the binding be reversed?
edited by kleroy on 7/30/2012

[Anonymous]

I think that the discussion of foot binding could be very useful for the classroom because it could help students start a conversation about different cultures and what we find acceptable or unacceptable. There are many fashion choices or body modifications throughout the world that are considered acceptable in one place that other cultures find very odd or offensive.

The neck stretching of Thailand comes to mind, extreme piercing/tattoos/implantation in the US, and of course the fashion choices of the past and present: high heels, corsets, hoop skirts, bustles, powdered wigs, kilts, etc.

Many times my students are so focused on their own culture, and this could be an effective discussion to talk about our worldview and if society norms should dictate behavior or choices, or if there are certain customs that should not be allowed.

[clay dube]

Thanks to Diann for mentioning the two fictional works by Anchee Min on Ci Xi (Tzu Hsi). I think Min is a fantastic writer and her first book, the memoir Red Azalea, is an excellent window into life in Mao's China. Her husband, by the way, used to teach journalism and English in Rowland Heights!

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Hi all,

Please share your thoughts about the 6th session here.

[Anonymous]

It was the Manchus that forced the Chinese into the act of submission by requiring men to wear a certain type of braid. This braid was called a "Que"

[Author]

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