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Hi Folks, -- it was Americans who identified Bruce Lee as a famous Japanese! Pretty awful. He was born in Hong Kong and came to the US. The survey was referred to by Bill Tsutsui, a friend of mine who used to teach at the University of Kansas and now teaches at Southern Methodist University. You can watch his presentation via UCTV: http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=9929. Bill is the author of a wonderful book -- Godzilla on My Mind.

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Hi Folks - I'm sorry that discussion of the tsunami, etc. took away from our time on late imperial China. We'll discuss China 1800 to today in May when I get to rejoin the group. In the meantime, please use the forum to talk about the readings for these sessions and some of the ideas you have about how to teach kids about these important issues.

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Hi Everyone,
Please read this collection of materials (and the one labeled "war and revolution") prior to our 3/22 session at the UTLA building.

This collection includes:
1. Ebrey, "Placards Placed in Guangzhou," Chinese Civilization.
2. "Treaty of Nanjing (Nanking)"
3. deBary, et aI, "Taiping," Sources of Chinese Tradition.
4. deBary, "Self-Strengthening," Sources of Chinese Tradition.
S. deBary, "Kang Youwei," Sources of Chinese Tradition.
6. Ebrey, "Liang Qichao on his Trip to America," Chinese Civilization.
7. deBary, "Sun Yatsen," Sources of Chinese Tradition.

You may find it useful to bring the readings with you to class on 3/22.

We are distributing the readings for the 3/22 session as pdf downloads. The later readings will be provided to you in a reader that we will give you on 3/22.

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The Chinese government, through its office of Chinese language promotion (Hanban) has been providing teachers to Los Angeles area schools for a few years. Here's a 2008 article about one of them who is now back in China. David Pierson, the LA Times reporter who shadowed him, is now a correspondent based in Beijing.
http://articles.latimes.com/print/2008/mar/01/local/me-teacher1

The possibility of Hanban support for a Confucius Classroom in Hacienda La Puente stimulated a lot of debate there. Ching-ching Ni, the reporter, was born in China and did some great reporting for the Times from China.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/04/local/la-me-confucius-school4-2010apr04
The debate was originally covered in local Chinese language newspapers:
http://worldjournal.com/view/full_news/6472670/article-%E6%8A%97%E8%AD%B0%E5%B1%85%E6%B0%91%EF%BC%9A%E8%A6%81%E7%BE%8E%E5%9C%8B%E4%B8%8D%E8%A6%81%E5%85%B1%E7%94%A2?instance=m1b

Daily Show piece on the Hacienda La Puente controversy:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-june-7-2010/socialism-studies

edited by Clay Dube on 3/10/2011

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Hi Folks,
To my knowledge, there aren't any Confucius Classrooms in LA Unified. But there are Hanban selected and supported teachers in LAUSD. Here's an article about one of them who is now back in China. David Pierson, the LA Times reporter who shadowed him, is now a correspondent based in Beijing. You can send Dave a note if you want to comment on his article.
http://articles.latimes.com/print/2008/mar/01/local/me-teacher1

Here's an article about the Hacienda La Puente controversy. Ching-ching Ni, the reporter, was born in China and did some great reporting for the Times from China.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/04/local/la-me-confucius-school4-2010apr04

Daily Show piece on the school board theatrics:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-june-7-2010/socialism-studies

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Hi Folks,
Our students have prepared a map of the Confucius Institutes in the US and a map of the Chinese universities tied to those institutes. Check it out (mouse over the states to see the institutes that have been established).
http://www.uschina.usc.edu/article@usct?map_of_confucius_institutes_in_the_u_s_14774.aspx

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I've pulled select slides from most of the presentations. It seems to me that these could be used in some classes, either as part of a lesson, to launch a discussion, or perhaps to generate a research project. For example, one slide from Albert Park showed that wages for rural migrants rose during the financial crisis. Given how unemployment has risen here in the US, how can we account for this development? Slides from Barry Naughton and others help explain that China's demographic change means that the supply of labor is gradually narrowing. Other slides link to this question, noting how China will need to move to more capital intensive/technologically sophisticated production and will require a better-educated work force.

Please take a moment to look at the slides (I've attached a ppt version and a pdf version) and think about how you might use them with your students. Please share your ideas on what you might do with students (e.g., having students investigate US stats, for example on how minimum wages or health insurance premiums vary across the US, about the balance between industrial, agricultural, and service sectors of the economy).

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My big aim with the intro was to highlight that while Americans "get" that China's rising economically, but they don't have a clear sense of the size of the progress that's been made, how China compares to the US, and some of the economic challenges the country faces. I've attached a pdf of my opening presentation.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

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Kenneth Turan reviewed Last Train Home for the Los Angeles Times in September 2010. The review begins,
"Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping may or may not have actually said "to get rich is glorious," but his country acted as if he did, pushing China to the first rank of global financial players. The Chinese economic miracle, however, came at a wrenching human cost, one that is beautifully explored in an exceptional documentary called "Last Train Home."
"Directed by Chinese-born Lixin Fan, "Last Train" takes its name and its overall framework from Chinese migrant workers who toil for most of the year at factories far from their home villages. They return, often by train, to see their children and parents only for the Chinese New Year."

Click here to read the full review.

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The Sun Village effort (the subject of the Children of the Sun documentary and China Daily article mentioned above) has English and Chinese websites.

Click here for the English site.

Click here for the Chinese site.

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In 2005, China Daily ran an article about the Sun Village project. Entitled "You are my sunshine," the article by Xing Yangjian begins
"With turkey and gifts, the children of the Sun Village had an early Christmas last Wednesday.
"Each of the children has got a gift they wanted for Christmas, and we have also received gifts for our students at the Xi'an Sun Village," said Zhang Shuqin, founder of the Beijing Sun Village Research Institute for Helping Special Children.
Affiliated with the China Charity Foundation Relief Aid Department for Special Children, the Beijing Sun Village was formally established in Banqiao, Shunyi District of Beijing in December 2000. Another three Sun Villages were set up in Shaanxi and Henan provinces.
Today, the Beijing Sun Village supports 115 children between the ages of one and 18 years old, coming from Beijing as well as several other provinces within China. They all have one thing in common: they are the children of incarcerated parents."

Click here to read the full article.

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A second student-produced documentary introduced during the China's economy workshop was Children of the Sun. It was made by USC student Justin Feldman and Communication University of China student Xiao Beidi. It looks at an NGO-run residential community for the children of incarcerated parents. The film focuses on the heart-wrenching situation of one boy.

Click here to watch the film at the USC US-China Institute website.

Click here to watch the film at the main page for the films produced during the 2009 collaboration between USC and CUC students. Several other interesting films are available here.

Click here to watch the film at the USC US-China Institute YouTube channel. This version provides the most flexibility (run it at higher resolution, run it full screen, embed it within your own page), but is blocked within China.

Please share your thoughts about this film. How might it be used with students?

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Invisible Wall, a short documentary by Adan Avalos (a USC film student who migrated as a boy to the US) and Xie Han (a Communication University of China documentary film student), was discussed at the China economy workshop for teachers. It focuses on a migrant family that successfully runs a bath house serving a community of migrant workers on the outskirts of Beijing. The family's daughter is ready for middle school, but because the family's household registration (hukou 户口) is not in Beijing, the girl can't go to school in Beijing. The parents debate what to do. Dad says he wants the girl to have the brightest possible future, to have the chance to continue on, perhaps even to university. Mom says that the family's economic prospects are much better in Beijing, running the bath house, than they would be back home. What should they do? This film takes us inside the hard choices migrant families must confront. The film has both Chinese and English subtitles. It was produced in 2009 as part of a joint program between USC and CUC.

Click here to see the film at the USC US-China Institute's YouTube channel. (Click on the "360" button to increase the quality of the resolution to 480. You can run the film "full screen."

Click here to see the film at the USC US-China website.

Here's the main page for the 2009 USC/CUC project. (You can view all the USC/CUC films produced that summer via this page.)

What do you think of this film? How might it be used with students?

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Hi Folks,

Please post your comments about websites in the web resources forum. It's here: http://uschinaforum.usc.edu/forum66-web-resources.aspx.

When you get there, please follow these guidelines.
1. If it's a new website that others haven't discussed, please create a new thread. Please put the name of the site in the subject line.
2. If it's a website that others have discussed, you should just click on the reply link to their post, and then add your comments. You can put a fresh title in your subject line (e.g., my favorite Japanese geography site or?)

Thanks for your website reviews. I know that many people appreciate learning about the sites you've found and their strengths and weaknesses.

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,
The reflective essays should be posted to the seminar forum rather than here. For those in the fall USC/NCTA seminar at UTLA, that means they go here:
http://uschinaforum.usc.edu/forum65-utla-fall-2010-east-asia-seminar.aspx.

Thanks!

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