[clay dube]

Hi Folks,

Google Maps/Earth allow you to visit Shanghai and other cities. This site offers an artist's rendering of the city, every skyscraper, etc. is displayed. You can move in any direction. An inserted map provides street names. Let your cursor linger on a building and its name pops up.

A downside -- yes, it's all in Chinese. But it's worth a visit. How could you use it with students? You can certainly awe them with the diversity of the Shanghai skyline. You can contrast the Bund with the hypermodern structures opposite it. Give it a try --

http://sh.edushi.com/

[clay dube]

America is an aging nation, that is, we as a people are getting older, the median age is increasing. Many forces help account for this, including lengthening life expectancies, native born parents raising smaller families, and higher levels of education for women (the most accurate predictor of how many children a woman is likely to have). We also know that while this aging means that we need fewer schools, we need more nursing homes. And that the Social Security old age pension system is going to come under increasing strain as baby boomers (the 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964) retire.

But America is relatively well-off in this global demographic transition. In 2050, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore will have much older populations than the US. In those four cases, if present trends continue, the median age will be over 54. China won't be quite so gray, but unlike those places and the US, China is the first country to grow gray before it becomes affluent. The one child family policy is mainly responsible for this. And those kids bear heavy burdens as their parents and grandparents age (one child, two parents, four grandparents).

The Center for Strategic and International Studies has been examining this and has produced a number of books on the subject. Their Global Aging Initiative website offers free executive summaries of these as well as some audio and video resources. The latest is The Graying of the Great Powers.

summary:
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/080630_gai_majorfindings.pdf

initiative site:
http://www.csis.org/gai/[Edit by="Clay Dube on Nov 6, 3:14:37 AM"][/Edit]

[clay dube]

Hi Amanda,
James has noted that computers can play vcds, so can most dvd players. VHS machines never took off in China and elsewhere in Asia. VCDs deliver similar picture quality as VHS and were widely used in China. Since they are digital copies, duplication was fast, simple, and copies did not suffer the degradation in quality that plagued tape to tape copying.

This site offers some help:
http://www.videohelp.com/play

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,
I couldn't resist jumping in to note that plastic surgery is also taking off in China. Nancy Chen, a USC student, has written of the phenomenon in the most recent issue of US-China Today.

http://uschina.usc.edu/ShowFeature.aspx?articleID=2750

And if you want to see Chinese/Japanese tatoos gone wrong (sometimes horribly wrong), you've got to check out Hanzi Smatter.

[clay dube]

Footbinding was a cruel practice. None of those who study it will describe it differently. All acknowledge the pain and suffering it meant for girls. It's important to remember also that plastic surgery, tattoos, piercings, and so on are generally undertaken by adults (well informed adults? that's another question, sober adults, yet another question). Also, these are generally reversible (not pain-free and not necessarily easy, but reversible). Footbinding was carried out on children by adults and left them permanently injured.

Prof. Pitelka will be discussing footbinding with the group before too long in his session on women in East Asia. He will note that in addition to being cruel, it was an act of love and an act designed to serve the family. Please listen carefully to these points.

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. Below is a link to 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.

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9687.php

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 2004 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.channelcanada.com/Article638.html

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,
We didn't quite get through to the last emperor and the death of the Qing dynasty in our 10/21 session, but we got close and we'll pick up the story there when we meet again.

As for Dorothy's question about the last emperor, he did die not long after the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. The 1987 Oscar-winning film, The Last Emperor, is very loosely based on his ghost-written autobiography. William Jenner translated the book: From Emperor to Citizen. The boy's tutor, Reginald Johnston, also wrote a book of his experiences Twilight in the Forbidden City and this book is another of the sources for the film.

I agree that one of the themes of the film is the loneliness that plagued the fellow throughout his life. Even more significant, though, is how little control he ever exerted over anything. Apart from having near total control of his immediate servants, he really couldn't affect the policies or direction of the governments he supposedly headed.

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,
I'm delighted to see The Last Emperor discussed. Please remember, however, to discuss films in the "Film Festival" thread:
http://uschinaforum.usc.edu/showpost.aspx?PostID=389

By the way, here's a trailer for the film on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54o9ew4-AOo&feature=related

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,

The Korean peninsula remains divided (and the recent shooting of a South Korean tourist by a North Korean soldier suggests that real rapprochement remains a ways off), but just to demonstrate how rivals can come together for the greater good the USC Korean Studies Institute and the UCLA Center for Korean Studies are cooperating to bring Nick Bonner and his film "Crossing the Line" to Los Angeles on November 10. You may have seen part of the film on 60 Minutes. It focuses on U.S. soldiers who defected to North Korea and features an extended interview with one of the soldiers who continues to live in Pyongyang.

http://www.crossingthelinefilm.com

Bonner also made a wonderful film about how two young female athletes in North Korea prepared for the Pyongyang Mass Games. He's currently preparing to shoot -- of all things -- a romantic comedy in North Korea in 2009.

Here are the event details:

The Korean Studies Institute of University of Southern California proudly presents:

CROSSING THE LINE: a feature documentary
film screening followed by Q & A with Producer Nicholas Bonner
Co-Sponsored by UCLA Center for Korean Studies and Korea Society

Monday 4:00 PM
November 10, 2008
At the UCLA Royce Hall 314
Admission: Free
Parking Information can be found at :
http://maps.ucla.edu/campus/

Contact information:
Telephone : 213-740-0005
Email : [email protected]
Website : http://college.usc.edu/ksi/
http://college.usc.edu/ksi/">http://college.usc.edu/ksi/

[clay dube]

Hi Folks --
Steven Butler produced the "Master Kong Rap" for one of my earliest seminars and I've been using it ever since. I hope that someone will produce another masterful rap or song to convey central ideas for one of the other schools of thought. Could that someone be you?

[clay dube]

No Dorothy - I don't think the Nazis were inspired by Qin cruelty. Qin laws and practices were written down and Qin harshness is the chief reason the dynasty was short-lived.

You do raise a separate issue that is worth looking at and that is China's openness to displaced Jews from Europe. Many began arriving well before the 1930s, including a large community in Harbin that began following the Russian pogroms early in the 20th century.

Some of those Jews became important in China, including Israel Epstein, the longtime editor of China Reconstructs. There are quite a few who eventually came to the US, including two of my USC colleagues, Otto Schnepp (retired professor of chemistry and a science consul at the US embassy in Beijing 1980-82) and Peter Berton (retired professor of international relations and a former member of the Harbin orchestra). There was an exhibition of photos of the Shanghai Jewish community recently at the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance.

One valuable book on the subject is: Pan Guang, The Jews of China, Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2005.

As it happens, one fellow who documented Japanese wartime atrocities in China was a German businessman. John Rabe was member of the Nazi party, but helped save hundreds of Chinese during the Japanese invasion. He lived in China from 1908 to 1938. His diary is a vital source of information about the atrocities committed at Nanjing in December 1937. Here's a link to a NY Times article about Rabe:

NY Times, 12/12/1996

[clay dube]

South Korea has been an important source of adopted children for American and other foreign families. For years, though, it's been controversial in South Korea as many consider it a mark of national shame.

The NY Times reported this morning that the SK government is moving to reduce and eventually end foreign adoptions. Here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/world/asia/09adopt.html?th&emc=th

[clay dube]

Only one file can be attached to any post. To attach other materials, simply reply to the original post and add something to the thread title. For example, author - unit on heian literature, handout one.

In general it's best to keep new threads to a minimum. This unit could be added to the literature thread or the Japan thread.[Edit by="Clay Dube on Oct 2, 9:10:18 PM"][/Edit]

[clay dube]

Your father knowingly violated a significant law. You know he violated the law and that he did so willfully. What, according to your school's teaching, should you now do?

[clay dube]

adding

[clay dube]

The 2008 Olympics in Beijing certainly attracted the interest of students. I think we should seize upon this to discuss what the 1964 Tokyo games and the 1988 Seoul games meant for those countries.

Here's a good article on the importance of the 1964 games for Japan. It's part of a Japan Society collection of resources. It was written by Paul Droubie of Manhattan College.

http://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/content.cfm/japans_rebirth_at_the_1964_tokyo_summer

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