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Hi Folks,
David Waugh has written about British machinations in the extreme Western Xinjiang city of Kashgar. Here's his description:

Daniel C. Waugh, Etherton at Kashgar: Rhetoric and Reality in the History of the "Great Game" (Seattle: Bactrian Press, 2007), 76 pp. This is a reassessment of British Intelligence activity and in particular the career of the British Consul P. T. Etherton at Kashgar (Xinjiang) in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Here's the link -- I'd love to hear what you think. The pdf file is 1.8 mb.

http://faculty.washington.edu/dwaugh/ethertonatkashgar2007.pdf

Site contents:
* Introduction 1; * Etherton's Career 3; * The Challenges of Being British Consul in Kashgar 6; * The Origins of the Kashgar Mission 8; * The Consulate's Intelligence and Communications Networks 15; * Confusion in the British Government's Policies Toward the Bolsheviks 24; * Etherton's Intelligence Activity 30; * How Serious Was the Bolshevik Threat? 40; * The Denouement of Etherton's Kashgar Career 50; * Etherton's Book as Political Discourse and Self-Serving Propaganda 55; * Selected Bibliography 68; * Map 72

Incidentally, when I visited Kashgar (Kashi in mandarin) in 1985. Foreigners such as myself were only allowed to stay in a large hotel that had been the Russian consulate there. Across the street was the British consulate. Muslim pilgrims stayed there as they prepared to cross the border to Pakistan and then on to Mecca for the Haj.

I have attached a photo I took back then of Uyghur women in the market.

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Thanks, Mia, for this review. Please also note the recent LA Times article about China's piano craze:
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-ca-wannabes27may27,1,7832353.story?track=rss

This picture is especially interesting:
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-et-mettle-ji92ajnc,1,5660526.photo

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Hi Folks --
PLEASE, PLEASE put your website evaluations in the "Asia in My Classroom" forum. There's a heavily used thread there called "Web Resources." Many of the evaluations posted here are detailed and excellent. It's a shame to limit these evaluations to those in this seminar. Please post them to the "Asia in My Classroom" forum. Please do the same with your film reviews.
Thank you.

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Animal Farm was one of Orwell's attacks on Soviet communism. It was read by some in China during the 1970s as a critique of the Soviet Union (the official Chinese line condemned the rise of a bureaucratic capitalist class there). You may be interested in the 2002 NPR report by Rob Gifford on the performance of a stage version of Animal Farm:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=845088

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John -- one of the websites mentioned in this section is devoted to 19th century photographs. The Nagasaki University photo database is a great resource. http://oldphoto.lb.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/en/

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Hi Folks,
Rebiya Kadeer is the Uyghur activist mentioned by Dru Gladney during the workshop. The essay below appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 30.

My Chinese Jailers

By REBIYA KADEER
WSJ, May 30, 2007; Page A19

Nothing compares to a mother's pain when her children are suffering. The anguish is even greater when the suffering is designed as an act of retaliation by a vindictive government determined to punish those who speak out against its egregious human-rights violations.

Upon my release in 2005 after five years in a Chinese prison, I was warned by the Chinese authorities not to speak out on human rights. I should not forget that I had family in China, I was told.

The Chinese government certainly lived up to its word. My family has been under constant pressure from authorities and my children have been repeatedly detained, tortured or imprisoned. Now my son Ablikim Abdureyim has joined his youngest brother Alim in prison. Ablikim received a nine- year sentence from a Chinese court on charges of "instigating and engaging in secessionist activities."

The real reason for his conviction is my human-rights activism on behalf of the 10 million Turkic Uighurs who live in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the former East Turkestan. Constantly being labeled terrorists for even the most modest attempt to preserve their unique culture, ethnic background and Muslim faith, Uighurs in Xinjiang continue to suffer under Beijing's repression and forced cultural assimilation.
China's long and powerful arm prevents them from finding safety in countries bordering Xinjiang, and Uighurs are harassed by Chinese agents even in Europe and the U.S.

Ablikim's arrest, detention, trial and sentence were all in violation of China's Constitution: My son should have had access to a lawyer; he did not. My son should have had the right to a public trial; yet no family member was allowed to attend his trial or even notified of its existence.
Numerous attempts to simply determine his condition were met with stonewalling and frustration.

Unfortunately, mine is just one of countless Uighur families that have been devastated by the Communist Party's use of vaguely defined "state security crimes." In the same week, and in the same court that my son was sentenced to nine years imprisonment, Uighur-Canadian Huseyin Celil was sentenced to life in prison on charges of "terrorist activities"
and "plotting to split the country." No evidence against Mr. Celil was made public. In addition, Beijing acted in defiance of international law by refusing to acknowledge his Canadian citizenship and denying him consular assistance.

In recent years, and especially as the 2008 Beijing Olympics approach, Chinese leaders have repeatedly claimed progress on human rights.
President Hu Jintao has again and again stressed the importance of respecting the rule of law as a cornerstone of a new and improved China.
In a speech at Yale University last year he promised to "protect people's freedom, democracy and human rights according to law."

Yet true rule of law is still a foreign concept in China, for any ethnic group, including the majority Han Chinese. Imprisoning its own people and stripping them of their legal rights at the whim of the authorities is just another way that the Chinese government seeks to eliminate any form of dissent. Polished political leaders in Beijing are eager to say what they believe the world wants to hear, while other government officials, particularly on the local level, routinely break the laws of their own country. All too often the international community is content to listen to the false promises of China's politicians and ignore the miserable reality of China's human-rights conditions.

China will only become a great nation worthy of world-wide respect when it adheres to international legal and human-rights standards throughout its territory, and can guarantee those standards to all its citizens. If Beijing really wants to show the world that it is serious about improving its human-rights record, releasing my two sons and Huseyin Celil would be a good place to start.

Ms. Kadeer is the president of the Uyghur American Association and World Uyghur Congress.

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Don Eldkins and Weijun Chen have made a documentary about democracy in a Wuhan elementary school. Please visit http://www.whydemocracy.net/film/3 to read more and see a clip from Please Vote for Me.

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On April 20, former US ambassador to China J. Stapleton Roy addressed a USC US-China Institute audience on "The Future of US - China Relations." Roy retired in 2001 from the US Foreign Service after a 45 year career holding the service's highest rank: Career Ambassador. He subsequently went to work as Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, a strategic consulting firm.

You can see his talk at:

http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=61

What do you think of his assessment of what Americans know about China and where China is heading?

The website includes copies of papers and presentations.

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Hi Folks,

Please post your web reviews in the Web Resources thread in the Asia in My Classroom forum. There are hundreds of reviews already there and you'll benefit from looking through some of them.

Please post film reviews to the Film Festival thread in the Asia in My Classroom forum.

We post those reviews there because they will be of interest to teachers beyond the confines of the PV seminar.

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Hi Folks,

In advance of the trip, you may find the current Economist cover story ("China's next revolution") interesting and worthy of discussion. I've attached a copy of it, but it's also available at the Economist website.

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Hi Folks,

I, too, regret that our debate time was too short! It wouldn't be a bad thing, though, for those who have points to make to articulate them here. As Troy knows, these topics engage the kids and they might (as Troy had his students do using the forum a long time ago) try to blend the aspects of the different teachings they find interesting. Anything that causes them to connect ideas about people, about society, and about governance is a good thing -- posters, parables, 30 second commercials, and so on, there are many ways for students to wrestle with these ideas and with those we'll encounter in other places and times over the course of the seminar.

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Hi Ron and others,

Thanks for getting this topic off to a terrific start. In the Asia in My Classroom forum, the film festival section has many film reviews and comments. I love how you folks are picking out the teachability aspects of some films and how others are just great to enjoy.

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The attached Wall Street Journal Article (9/15/06) by Andrew Browne tells of one of our tour stops: ZHENGZHOU.

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This is the handout we used in our second web session.

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