[clay dube]

Footbinding is one of the topics that every teacher needs to discuss when looking at the varying experiences of Chinese women. It emerges about a thousand years ago and survived into the last century.

Not all women had their feet bound. Many non-Han ethnic groups such as the Hakka and Manchus did not bind their women's feet and it was much less common among ordinary people in the South than it was in the North, probably because women in the South usually joined in agricultural labor.

How are we to understand this custom and role men and women played in perpetuating it? How should we raise the topic with children? Is it enough to note that our own culture imposes standards of beauty that cause some to endure suffering, surgery, or psychological damage?

Below are some web resources on footbinding that you may find interesting.

California resident Beverly Jackson is a longtime collector of the shoes worn by Chinese women with bound feet. She traveled to China and interviewed women who had their feet bound and produced a lavishly illustrated volume Splendid Slippers. Her website offers short excerpts from the book, reviews of it, and -- of course -- a link to buy the volume. Combined with works by Howard Levy and Dorothy Ko, this is a good resource to draw upon in introducing the practice to students.

http://www.silcom.com/~bevjack/

Levy, Howard S. Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom, Foreword by Arthur Waley. Introd. by Wolfram Eberhard. New York, W. Rawls, 1966.

Ko, Dorothy. Every Step a Lotus : Shoes for Bound Feet. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001. Click here to see the UC Press webpage on the book. You can download and read chapter 2. It includes terrific images. Prof. Ko has also written "The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth-Century China," The Journal of Women's History 8.4.

Feng Jicai, one of China's most popular writers, authored an interesting novel on the custom and its place in family and social life. Three Inch Golden Lotus. It was translated by David Wakefield and published by the University of Hawaii press.

Yue-qing Yang's recent film Footbinding: The Search for the Three-Inch Golden Lotus is available and includes interviews with Chinese about the custom. In the film, Dorothy Ko argues that footbinding is routinely misunderstood.

http://www.movingimages.bc.ca/catalogue/Cultdiverse/footbinding.html

[clay dube]

California resident Beverly Jackson is a longtime collector of the shoes worn by Chinese women with bound feet. She traveled to China and interviewed women who had their feet bound and produced a lavishly illustrated volume Splendid Slippers. Her website offers short excerpts from the book, reviews of it, and -- of course -- a link to buy the volume. Combined with works by Howard Levy and Dorothy Ko, this is a good resource to draw upon in introducing the practice to students.

http://www.silcom.com/~bevjack/

Levy, Howard S. Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom, Foreword by Arthur Waley. Introd. by Wolfram Eberhard. New York, W. Rawls, 1966.

Ko, Dorothy. Every Step a Lotus : Shoes for Bound Feet. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001. Click here to see the UC Press webpage on the book. You can download and read chapter 2. It includes terrific images. Prof. Ko has also written "The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth-Century China," The Journal of Women's History 8.4.

Feng Jicai, one of China's most popular writers, authored an interesting novel on the custom and its place in family and social life. Three Inch Golden Lotus. It was translated by David Wakefield and published by the University of Hawaii press.

Yue-qing Yang's recent film Footbinding: The Search for the Three-Inch Golden Lotus is available and includes interviews with Chinese about the custom. In the film, Dorothy Ko argues that footbinding is routinely misunderstood.

http://www.movingimages.bc.ca/catalogue/Cultdiverse/footbinding.html

[clay dube]

Since you are reading this, accessing the forum is not a problem for you. Still, you might appreciate access to a copy of the forum guide. It is attached in .pdf format.

The forum offers several advantages over email discussion lists, these include:

-- all the messages are housed in one location
-- the messages are organized by topic
-- you can use the search function to find messages
-- you can upload images and documents which the user can decide whether or not to download (important for those using dial-in modems
-- you can access this forum from any web-enabled computer (at home, work, library, on the road, in an internet cafe in China....)
-- if you've made a mistake in a message or want to add something, you can correct it via the edit function (try that with an email you sent to dozens or hundreds of people)
-- if you want, new posts to the forum are automatically emailed to you (go to profile and check the "enable email-tracking" box)

[Edit by="Clay Dube on May 6, 7:52:02 PM"][/Edit]

[clay dube]

Ed -- To get the html coding to work you need to be using Mozilla, Netscape, or Firefox. If you are using Internet Explorer, you can use the formatting tools.

The style and font commands, however, do not always display properly. Highlighting, bold, italics, color, underline, and links do work.

It is also possible to indent text using IE.

Embedding a graphic is also possible with IE. Please, do not embed graphics -- they create a number of problems if they are too large. Instead, copy the graphic to your hard drive and then upload it as an attached file. Then other forum members can decide if they want to see it and download it.
" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.international.ucla.edu/asia/images/uclaasiainstitute.gif [Edit by="Clay Dube on May 6, 9:51:05 AM"][/Edit]

[clay dube]

Most of you have the reader table of contents. In case you don't, I've attached a copy in .pdf format. Simply click on the icon beside the file name to open the file using Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free program.

[clay dube]

Here is another version of the reader in .pdf format. (100 schools.pdf) To download files, simply click on the icon beside the file name. [Edit by="Clay Dube on May 5, 4:02:02 PM"][/Edit]

[clay dube]

Congratulations on the great results, Jonathan! We're happy for you, for Connie and your family, and for ourselves. You've made this trip possible.

[clay dube]

A copy of the seminar assignment is attached. The core requirements are active participation in each of the seminar's sessions, discussion via this web forum and the Asia in My Classroom web forum, construction of a simple web page, and the creation of a unit -- using materials and methods introduced in the seminar -- to use with your students.

[clay dube]

David Schaberg will not be able to be with us on Saturday. We will, however, briefly review some of the poems he's selected and discuss the place of poetry in China.

We will not use the computer lab on Saturday -- instead we'll use it on Tuesday, May 11.

On Saturday, May 8, we'll:

1. Discuss Chinese philosophy and have a four sided debate among proponents of Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, and Legalism.

2. Examine the early Chinese empire: the Qin and Han dynasties.

3. Discuss Cosmopolitan East Asia, Chinese literature 200-1300 with distinguished scholar Yang Ye, UC Riverside.

[clay dube]

We'll spend a lot of time at Beijing University (Beida as the Chinese call it, or Peking University at the PKU's marketing department pushes it) -- here are some web resources you might find interesting:

main website (Chinese)

main website (English)

1996 American teacher on bringing Tiananmen account to her Beida students
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/go/gizmo/gizmochinablues.html

1998 Beida students protest anti-Chinese attacks in Indonesia
http://www.huaren.org/focus/id/081298-03.html

1999 AsiaWeek reporter looks unsuccessfully for radicals at Beida
http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/99/0604/sr3.html

2001 spy plane demonstration
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~dcc/pub/china/china_free_speech.html

2003 students sent up info booth on Iraq war
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/iraqwar/story/0,4395,180419,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/story/0,12809,926151,00.html

2003 campus bombing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,902674,00.html

[clay dube]

The Schools -- feel free to use the discussion forum to begin to identify the most useful passages/challenges

Confucians
Maribeth Borowski, Elizabeth Buck, Maria Elgueta, Tamara Hoffman, Larry Krant

Mohists
Corey Daddario, Brian Lee, Diana Roston, Edward Shorer

Daoists
Myrna Battle-Ellis, Evangeline Galicia, Catherine Majkut, Linda Sutton

Legalists
Mark Clark, Magda Ferl, Chris Forfar, Brandon Nakama, Lynne Shifflett, Sally Yamada

Have I missed anyone?

[clay dube]

The questions to be debated on Sat., May 8 are:

Is education necessary? What is a well-educated person? What would such a person know and what could s/he do?

To whom or what does a person owe loyalty? What is the nature of this loyalty? Are there any limits to such an obligation?

What would the ideal society look like? How would it be organized? What role, if any, does government have in such a society? Can government help to create an ideal society? Be sure to consider issues such as social stratification, relations among people, and the qualifications/responsibilities of leaders.

In addition to fully understanding your own school's positions on these matters, you'll also need to know the views of your challengers so as to offer an adequate defense and to note the shortcomings of other schools.

[clay dube]

There are two chief restrictions luggage-wise. The first is that you'll need to lug your stuff around and will appreciate not having brought things you won't use (and use a lot!). Get some sort of rolling bag. The second is that domestic checked luggage restrictions are tighter and firmer than international ones. At the orientation we were told we'd be limited to under 20 kg (44 pounds).

[clay dube]

Chinese women do wear shorts while at home and at leisure, but skirts and dresses are the norm at work and are also common at home, while shopping, and sightseeing.

It will be hot and in several places it will also be humid.

[clay dube]

Two books worth looking at to understand how politics, philosophies, and practices have produced an environmental crisis in China:

Vaclav Smil (also author of the excellent, though dated The Bad Earth), China's Past, China's Future: Energy, Food, EnvironmentCurzon Press, 2004.

Judith Shapiro (co-author with then husband Liang Heng of the classic Son of the Revolution), Mao's War Against Nature, Cambridge UP, 2001.

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