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Topics: children's literature, chinese american, japanese american, internment, world war II

Icy Smith is a writer and businesswoman. She's written a book entitled Mei Ling in China City. She'll be appearing in downtown Los Angeles on Feb. 7, 2009. The Japan American National Museum is hosting this 2 pm event.

Here's the museum website:
http://www.janm.org/

Here's the book blurb:
Based on a true story of events during World War II in Los Angeles China City, a 12-year-old Chinese American girl named Mei Ling Lee loses her best friend Yayeko Akiyama when she and her family were interned in the Manzanar War Relocation Center. By writing letters to each other, both young girls recount their painful separation and their lives in China City and Manzanar. The vivid watercolor paintings warmly portray the real scenes of the forgotten China City in Los Angeles and Manzanar. This unprecedented children's book depicts the hardships and cross-cultural experiences of Americans of Chinese and Japanese ancestry during the war years. Close to 50 never-before-published paintings and historical photographs of China City are presented for the first time.

Ages 6+, 10" x 11", 44 pages, available in English only, Bilingual English/Chinese and English/Japanese editions

Hardcover, ISBN: 9780970165480-English, 2008, $18.95

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Thanks, Dottie, for mentioning Icy Smith. I've met her at a conference once. She's an entrepreneur and a children's book author. She'll be speaking at the Japan America National Museum on 2/7:

http://www.janm.org/events/#07

Mei Ling in China City by Icy Smith
events/China_City100.jpg

Through her new children’s book, Mei Ling in China City—a true story of friendship between a Chinese American girl in China City and a Japanese American girl in a concentration camp—author Icy Smith (Sui Bing Tang) will present the history of the Los Angeles’s early Chinatowns, and the Chinese and Japanese American experiences during World War II.

2 pm

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Hi Susan -- Thanks for sharing the news of your students. Please note that it's the lunar rather than Chinese new year. And a lot of East and Southeast Asians who are not Chinese mark it. I think it's great that the students created their own images to share (please don't hesitate to attach photos to posts to share the best student work).

The elementary school ideas thread (http://uschinaforum.usc.edu/showpost.aspx?PostID=384&PageIndex=6) includes other ideas about the lunar new year. For the year of the ox, students may also be interested in stamps celebrating the holiday:
http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=1343

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The Japan Society's NY office is hosting a 5 day, 30 hour workshop for educators Feb. 17-21. The program emphasizes activities geared towards young learners. These include the tea ceremony, martial arts, food and cooking, and other experience-driven learning activities.

http://www.japansociety.org/event_detail?eid=471a6526

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I hope that we can continue this conversation -- via the forum and at later workshops. US-China ties are crucial for the future of not just our two countries but the world as a whole. We have just posted video lectures on the subject and would love it if folks would watch and talk about them. Also - we'd love your comments on the US-China relations documentary that we distributed to all participants. The individual segments are also available on YouTube. Links:

Conference talks -- especially the presentation by Tom Christensen
http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=1329

Documentary
http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=1191

YouTube
A higher quality version of the documentary is available at our YouTube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/uschinainstitute

Please view any or all of these and offer up your comments in the Contemporary China thread in the Asia in My Classroom forum:
http://uschinaforum.usc.edu/showpost.aspx?PostID=6185

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Great questions / comments about the differences among Chinese dialects. Those differences are enormous - a Cantonese speaker can't talk with a Mandarin speaker and be understood. If both are literate (and that is the norm today), they will write things out and have no problem being understood. This reminds us of how powerful a force a standard writing system can be. This might be the most important governmental tool adopted by the Qin 2,200 years ago.

There are, it should be noted, many other languages than Chinese that are spoken within China. Tibetan, Mongolian, and Uyghur are the best known but there are dozens more. Mandarin is taught everywhere and the power of tv, films, and music have done much to increase general understanding of Mandarin, even among peoples who don't speak it in every day life.

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Hi Folks,
Please remember to change your subject lines to reflect what you'll be discussing. Rather than keeping "web resources" or "elementary school ideas" as the subject line, please change it to your specific topic. For example - "visual literacy lesson - korea" would help readers quickly know the main thrust or focus of your comment. Thank you.

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You might be surprised and your students might be interested in how many different governments issue stamps to mark the lunar new year. The stamps are interesting cultural artifacts and also money makers for the postal systems since many are purchased and never used to mail letters.

Governments issuing such stamps include those places where the holiday is universally celebrated (China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong) and others where significant numbers of people mark it.

Click on the link below to see stamps issued for 2009, the Year of the Ox. Older students might discuss the styles used, the politics of marking the holiday, and research how long the particular states have been doing it. They could even discover what such stamps garner in the marketplace (e.g., a Hong Kong ox stamp from 24 years ago, or the first US year of the ox stamp....). Younger and older students might like to try their own hand at coming up with a design. They might also be interested in how card companies and others are using the holiday to sell, sell, sell.

http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=1343

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Lynn Parisi, a colleague at the University of Colorado has developed new resources that merit attention from all those looking for solid ways to bring Japan history alive for their students.

Imaging Japanese History contains five modules:
• Heian Japan through Art: Dour Great Emaki
• Medieval Japan through Art: Samurai Life
• Tokugawa Japan through Art: Views of a Society in Transformation
• Meiji-Taisho Japan through Art (forthcoming)
• From Postwar to the Present through Art: Tezuka Osamu and Astro Boy.

Each module includes an introductory essay and an interactive lesson that engages students in close readings of art as historical texts in order to better understand the period. Designed for secondary social studies and art history teachers, the modules touch on major questions and content from the National Standards for World History. This curriculum is funded through a grant from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership. Four of the five modules in the series are currently available at
http://www.colorado.edu/cas/tea/imagingjapan

I look forward to reading your evaluations of these materials.

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Hi Folks,

The NY Times and its subsidiary, the International Herald Tribune, published an interesting article about continuing discrimination in Japan against the burakumin.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/16/news/japan.php

NONAKA Hiromu is a buraku, but also the second ranking official in Japanese government. The Japanese PM ASO Taro is said to have remarked, "Are we really going to let those people take over the leadership of Japan?"

The article discusses the 48 buraku neighborhoods of Osaka (where we visited the museum in 2006 and 2008).

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Hi Folks,

Do you remember Pingyao? Many of you thought it was our best destination in China. Here's the first of several photos from Pingyao. They are part of a Xinhua (New China News Agency, the state media company) photo gallery for Chinese new year.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/18/content_10678855_3.htm

Click on the numbers to see additional photos.

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Minhua and Christina are right about this treasure in our midst. The museum also has "family fun" Saturdays about once a month. Those usually feature performances and craft experiences for kids. It's a private museum and survives on grants, memberships, and donations. It's relatively small and the displays are much improved in terms of layout, labelling, and coherence.

The history of the museum is interesting as well. Perhaps someone can learn a bit and tell us more in the museum thread of the Asia in My Classroom forum. It's at:
http://uschinaforum.usc.edu/showpost.aspx?PostID=1754&PageIndex=6

Please be sure to do as you have here and put the name of the museum in the subject line.

I think it's great that Christina and Minhua have found this underappreciated website and museum! For S/SE Asia, Pasadena has another great museum, the Norton Simon (which is better known for its Van Goghs and other works).

Please be sure to check the exhibitions section of our web calendar:
http://www.china.usc.edu/calendar.aspx
for information about current, upcoming, and past exhibitions (what possible use could such info about past exhibitions be I ask). Of course, our Talking Points and Teaching about Asia newsletters also highlight such exhibitions.

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I understand and generally agree with the points Dawn and others are making here. The way the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT) was supposed to work is that if you agreed to not build weapons, you'd get assistance in building power plants. The trade off was access to peaceful technology in exchange for giving up the possibility of developing weapons. North Korea withdrew from the treaty in the early 1990s.

Here's the treaty website (part of the UN site):
http://www.un.org/events/npt2005/npttreaty.html

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Adelina is right about several aspects of this movie. I think it rates as one of Zhang Yimou's worst efforts -- a great disappointment since it also represented his return to collaborating with Gong Li, one of the great actresses of our day. Chou Yun-fat also comes off badly in this flick. Ang Lee got a much better performance from him in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Zhang got his start as a cinematographer and the colors and spectacle of this film are dazzling. He's become over-reliant on CGI and gore. The Tang dynasty was a skin-filled time at the palace, though probably not in the way shown here. There was also plenty palace intrigue then and at other times. The scale of this film, though, suggests why Zhang was the perfect choice to oversee the Olympic ceremonies.

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I agree - I think that there are many selections in the Ebrey collection of translated primary source materials that 7-9th graders could handle. And there are many that befuddle university undergrads.... The trick, as always, is to select materials judiciously.

Please don't forget that Patricia Ebrey also oversaw the creation of a wonderful website -- a visual sourcebook of Chinese civilization. See it at:
http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/contents.htm

BTW -- to make links hot, the trick is to click on the "link" icon (it looks like a link in a chain). That will open a little dialogue box. You can name the link (e.g., visual sourcebook) or leave it blank so that readers can see the full address.

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