Debate Rules + Exam Review Sheet

Semester Exam Review Sheet here.

Debate Wednesday:
Rules:

1. Absence on debate day = maximum C- (70/100)
2. Print your speech (be smart and print it in larger font to help you keep eye contact).
3. See below for your room number.
4. See below room numbers for rhetoric requirements.

B1: 
IN ROOM 321:
Commies A:
Riki
Kevin
Natalie
Han Joon

Cappies A:
1. Sung Won
2. Jongha
3. Cillian
4. Joseph

IN ROOM 301
Commies B:
1. Sarah
2. Hillary
3. Angela
4. Lena

Cappies B:
1. Nia
2. Marianna
3. Lakshmi
4. Susan

B2:
Room 321:
Commies A:
1. Caitlin
2. Megan
3. Vanessa
4. Jonathan C

Cappies A:
1. Zach
2. Garret
3. Alex
4. Summitt

Room 301:
Commies B:
1. Jonathan L.
2. Lars
3. Hansen
4. Michael

Cappies B:
1. Eric
2. Joy
3. Chente
4. Chris
5. Will

Debate Rhetoric Requirements: I want you to use 2 of the following 3 "tricks" of persuasive speaking (failure to do so results in loss of 1/2 a grade):

1. Reductio ad Absurdum (Latin for "reduce to absurdity"): Again, the example we used in class was the argument that Leonardo's sketches of submarines and helicopters were examples of European "technology."

To reduce that argument to absurdity, argue it like you believe it at first, but then steer it to a conclusion that shows how silly ("absurd") the agrument is. Example:

Leonardo's submarine was such impressive technology that you could tear the drawing from his journal and drown as you tried to drive it underwater; similarly, his helicopter was so impressive you could tear that drawing out, hold it over your head as you jump off a cliff, and plunge to your death under it. Great technology, those drawings. But only if Europe could actually make them--which it couldn't. We're talking technology here, not fantasy.

2. Analogy: Comparing two dissimilar things to draw out the difference. Example:

    A Ming ship was a Lexus. A European ship was a wheelbarrow.

Much more memorable than the boring, straight, and literal "China's shipbuilding was superior to Europe's."

3. Irony: Saying the opposite of what you mean. Example:

If you want an example of a supremely tolerant religion, look no further than Christian Europe. The Christians were more tolerant of non-Christian beliefs than all other religions combined.

The overwhelming historical evidence, from Crusades to crimes of heresy, shows the opposite is true. The audience gets the joke. And the audience likes you more for saying "Christian Europe was intolerant of other religions" in a more clever way. Irony is great.

PRC 1960s: Mao, Cultural Revolution, Death

Film/discussion in class.

HW: Read the five articles (7 pages) in this Cultural Revolution packet. Annotate, be able to discuss next time. 

Guiding question: What sense do we make of the Cultural Revolution and Mao? Of China today? Better? Worse? From whose Point of View?

Gift: Outline of entire Mao film. I do these while I watch. Use for review. Again, you will be debating Mao versus Deng, yesterday's Communism versus today's Capitalism, next week. They'll also help for the final.

(Self-monitor, Sartaj. Have a good weekend, Marijones. Don't forget your shovel, Genki.)

Update: Wow. Friday Night, new documentary by a Singapore filmmaker downtown called  Feet Unbound: Women of the Long March.   You'll notice a couple of the "child bride" women from the documentary we watched about the ROC are interviewed in it, still alive and kicking, 20 years later.

ROC Ends, PRC in the 1950s

Wasserstrom Readings: 1. 49-57: 1949-Famine (the '50s)

ROC Review Sheet: 20 point quiz next class on these terms and significance

PRC Terms and Timeline: Know and be able to explain the significance of.

Republic of China Part 2--Jiangxi Soviet to End of Second Civil War/Birth of PRC

More rested now.
By Monday, Read Wasserstrom on Republic of China, pp. 38-49. Some will be repetitive, but the Long March section to the end is new. (Note this is the book you used for the Opium War to Fall of Qing. You downloaded it last week. Here's an extract of just the assiged pages, if you want it.)

Also watch these clips:

1. The Long March Part One:



2. The Long March, Part Two: Crossing the Grasslands (this is just horrifying)




WW II: Japan Invades: Xi'an Incident: : Should Chiang have fought Japan?




Japan's "Rape of Nanking"



Japan's "Burn All, Kill All, Loot All" campaign (The "Three Alls" Campaign) and the Second United Front (stop at 8.40)



I'm exhausted. Schedule about an hour of documentary watching for the weekend. We'll have a seminar and possible short quiz on it on Monday. I'll have the video clips and study guide up by Friday 3 pm. You won't have to do any text reading. The entire ROC content will be taken from the video and the overview lecture and study guide.


Check back Friday.

Republic of China Part 1--Foundation to Shanghai Massacre

In Class:
Study Guide here.
Textbook here.
Background on Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism here.

1. Overview mini-lecture on the Republic of China (ROC).
2. Read and follow the Study Guide.
3. Documentary movie, first few minutes.

HW: 
1. (If not finished in class): Finish the readings you didn't finish in class, and

2. Watch the three ten-minute videos below, and prepare for a scored discussion Thursday on

• the strengths and weaknesses of the GMD and Chiang Kaishek, plus 
• the strengths and weaknesses of Mao and the Communists. 
• Beyond that, you'll be allowed to discuss anything you found significant or interesting--
• I'd suggest paying attention to the differences between the peasant Communists and the wealthy Nationalists. Which are most admirable? What judgments do you make based on their behavior and language in the interviews, and the historical footage? (Most of you have probably never known a Communist or a peasant in your life. In this movie, you see them up close and very, very personal.)
• What do you think of the role of the Westerners and the Soviet Union?

Quiz, Seminar, Weblog Journal Assignment

In Class:
Open-note quiz and seminar.

HW: Read packet, write reflective journal entry on blog. (Reflective journal assignment and rubric here.)

These two clips from the recent Chinese blockbuster, "Confucius" (so-so if you're not educated about Confucianism, but interesting in really subtle ways if you are),  really bring out the angle on Confucianism as focused more on social beauty than on social morality developed by two Western Confucian scholars here:

"Ritual actions, invested with the accumulated meaning of the tradition, are formalized structures upon which the continuity of the tradition depends and through which a person in the tradition pursues cultural refinement. Like a body of literature or a corpus of music, these rituals continue through time as a repository of the ethical and aesthetic insights of those who have gone before. A person engaged in the performance of a particular formal action, taking meaning from it while seeking himself to be appropriate for it, derives meaning and value from this embodiment, and further strengthens it by his contribution of novel meaning and value."

--Roger Ames and David Hall, _Thinking Through Confucius__New York: State University of New York Press, 1987.

1. "No Need to Bow..." 
Just watch Confucius as he approaches the palace in the first minute or so of this clip. That one detail is pregnant with meaning: 



2. Confucius and the Concubine
The whole scene is rich, but the end is particularly. The details of the camera, the emotions of Confucius and the Concubine are begging for a blogging film critic.

Ming-Qing transition: Jesuits, Ricci, Rites, Kangxi, Canton Policy

In Groups:
Stage One:
You have 30 minutes to prepare a Google Presentation that includes the following information.
--Create Google Presentation
--Share to your team members
--Share to me

Group 1. Christian Missionaries in China ("The Issue of Rites" reading in packet from last class, pp. 9-14): Matteo Ricci and "Christian Accommodation"; Rites Controversy: Causes (what were the issues? How was the Vatican's/Pope's position different from that of Ricci?); Result (Kangxi's meeting with the Vatican representative and final decision--include quotes showing Kangxi's character and thoughts in this conflict)

Group 2. Kangxi Emperor (last four pages of Christianity packet from last class): Who were the Manchus? Queue; How long Kangxi reigned; how he won Han Chinese loyalty (cultural projects, examples of Confucian behavior); his relation to Europeans and Christians; Manchu customs; tax reform; Valedictory Edict: what it shows about Kangxi's character.

Group 3. Canton Policy: definition; when; causes; how it worked ("rules"); how the Portuguese and Spanish reacted to it; the British East India Company and the Britain-China trade

Stage Two:
After Preparing, Teach in two 10-minute rotations:
Two from each group rotate and are taught by the other two groups--take notes so you can teach your teammates in Stage Three.

Stage Three:
Then groups come back to home base and teach both topics to the other two for an additional 20 minutes.

HW:
1. Watch my 20-minute video podcast on the First and Second Opium Wars below (check out the wild comments on my YouTube page to see how emotional people are over this, if you're interested)
2. Read Wasserstrom, pp. 24-32 (from "How did the dynasties interact with foreign countries?" to "How did Qing rule finally end?")
Main focus:
1. Opium War and Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) (podcast)
2. Arrow War (Second Opium War) and Treaty of Tianjin (podcast)
3. Taiping Rebellion: causes and effects
4. Sino-Japanese War
5. Boxer Rebellion and Foreign Response
6. Fall of Qing

Here's the podast:


(Part 2, which you don't have to watch, deals with the Taiping Rebellion of "Jesus' Little Chinese Brother--which killed about the same number of people as World War I--and the Boxer Rebellion. It's here, but be warned: I got carried away and made it 50 minutes. I add it just in case you're interested.)

There will be an open note quiz on the podcast and readings next class worth 30 points (notes must be hand-written), plus a seminar worth 20 points. Seminar guiding questions:

1. To what degree was the collapse of China caused by Qing government weaknesses?
2. To what degree was the collapse of China due to Western influences?
3. To what degree is it justifiable to characterize Western actions as criminal or barbaric?
4. To what degree were the Chinese justified in trying to rid their country of Christianity and Christian missionaries?
5. What does the entire history of China's experience of salvation religions possibly teach China's leaders today? Is freedom of religion such a simple issue to China?

Zheng He, Part 2, Christianity in China

Watch rest of movie:

B1: Start at 26.51
B2: Start at 27.35
B3. Start at 36.30

Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under US president Richard Nixon in the 1970s (Kissinger was the first American politician to visit Communist China under Mao), writes this in his new book, On China:

Since my first visit, China has become an economic superpower and a major factor in shaping the global political order. The United States has prevailed in the Cold War. The relationship between China and the United States has become a central element in the quest for world peace and global well-being. Eight American presidents and four generations of Chinese leaders have managed this delicate relationship in an astonishingly consistent manner, considering the difference in starting points. Both sides have refused to permit historic legacies or different conceptions of domestic order to interrupt their essentially cooperative relationship.

It has been a complex journey, for both societies believe they represent unique values. American exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world. China’s exceptionalism is cultural. China does not proselytize; it does not claim that its contemporary institutions are relevant outside China. But it is the heir of the Middle Kingdom tradition, which formally graded all other states as various levels of tributaries based on their approximation to Chinese cultural and political forms; in other words, a kind of cultural universality. (emphasis added)

This last paragraph will be the focus of much of the rest of the semester. In a nutshell, both the West (both American and Europe) and China consider themselves "exceptional"--better than, or more special than, all other civilizations. Your task will repeatedly be to argue the case for both sides as we move through the rest of China's history. This is where bias--"my culture is best because I was born in it"--meets the evidence of history. You'll decide and argue, based on that evidence.

---

Next: Read this website about a stone inscription Zheng He left on Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and answer these questions:
1. How did Ceylon (Sri Lanka) treat Zheng He on earlier voyages? How did Zheng He react? How would Da Gama have reacted?
2. How many different religions were there in Sri Lanka during this time? Who were the main gods?
3. What was the Chinese reaction toward this religious diversity, based on the evidence of the trilingual inscription left by Zheng He?
4. How would the Christian explorers probably have reacted to this diversity?

Next: Download this file and read to answer the following questions:

Page 8: The Pope on Newly Discovered Lands:
1. What is the Romanus Pontifex, and what does it show about how the Christian (Catholic) Church thought about non-Christian cultures?
2. What is this idea of the Monarchia Universalis, and who would be the "universal monarch"?
3. Did the missionaries during the Portuguese and Spanish Age of Exploration--remember, only six or seven decades after Zheng He's voyages ended--show any curiosity about foreign ideas of religious truth?

Page 9-10: Requerimiento
1. What's the basic message of this Christian (Catholic) text to all non-Christians in the North and South American continents.

Stop there. Save the file, we'll return to it when Christian missionary Matteo Ricci--an amazing man--reaches and lives in Ming China 150 years after the Zheng He voyages are canceled.

HW: Finish the readings from this week. Write a journal entry on your blog of 400-500 words, informal, aiming to show your thoughts about what you're learning from this history. Answer this question:

What do you think about the civilizational differences between East and West at play here? What were the main differences in the two civilizations that created such differences in their behavior as they explored foreign lands? Can you equally defend each culture's behavior?

The Arrival of the West and the Ming Voyages

If you missed class, here's the background mini-lecture (20 min) on the Song-Yuan-Ming connection--watch it, then do the readings in item 2 below:

1. Background:
S. Song ships--Yuan and Marco Polo--effect on European exploration

2.  Read Murphy:
--"Motives for Expansion," "Voyages of Exploration," "The Portuguese Commercial Empire,"  (213-15) and "Christians and Spices" (219-20)
Note the role of religion and economics in European motives and behavior in the explorations of the Portuguese, and use specific details from the reading to back it up.

3. Movie: "Emperor of the Seas"
--This Chinese "Age of Exploration" happened 80 years before Europe's. As you watch, briefly note the motives and behavior of the Chinese in these voyages. How were they similar and different compared to Europe's? (This short reading will be a good reminder for your HW.)

HW: AFTER CLASS ON FRIDAY, YOU WILL BLOG: Two fat paragraphs with topic sentence stating arguments for each paragraph, plus at least three specific examples per paragraph to support your claims from the readings and the movie, on this topic:

We're seeing civilizational differences between East and West at play here. What were the main differences in the two civilizations that created such differences in their behavior as they explored foreign lands?

Tang and Song Screencast Assignment

You're going to make a screencast. What's a screencast? Here's one from a student last year:



Download the assignment here.
Storyboard Template here.
Background reading here.
China Brittanica here.


Tang:
Websites (my Diigo links)

Books:
Poetry: (Li Po and Do Fu): Translations one and two

Chang'An and cities
Chinese Warfare
Calligraphy
Han Yu's anti-Buddhist letter to emperor
Clothing and fashion
Art and Culture
Museums

Song:
Websites (my Diigo links) more here
Books:
Footbinding
Confucian Exams
Scholar Gardens:

1. Excerpt from the Craft of Gardens
2. Chinese gardens slideshow
3. Chinese gardens book
4. Gardens of Suzhou video

Shipbuilding

Topics:

B1:
TANG:
Marianna: Poetry
Natalie: Cosmopolitan Chang'An
Susan: Buddhism rise, Empress Wu, Han Yu, decline
Lakshmi: An Lushan rebellion: Effects
Sarah: Xuanzong and Yang Guifei
Cillian: An Lushan general (inner court, military system, strengths and weaknesses)
Jong Ha: Jurchen invasion

SONG:
Lena: Confucian exams
Angela: Industrial and Commercial Revolutions
Hillary: Footbinding
Riki: Shipbuidling
Kevin: Song literati gardens (Suzhou, Hangzhou)
Sung Won: Sea trade

B2:
TANG:
Vanessa: Painting
Joy: Lyric poetry
Zach: Buddhism rise, Empress Wu, Han Yu, decline
Garret: Silk Road
Jonathan: Han Yu and Buddhism's threat
Michael: An Lushan
Alex: Yang Guifei


SONG:
Lars: Confucian exams
Megan: Tea
Summit: Foot-binding
Eric: Sea Trade and Industrial Rev
Will: Rise of Commerce (can I talk you into Scholar gardens?)

B3:
TANG
Allie: Porcelain and Landscapes
Genki: Lyric poetry
Sam: Chang'An
Aimee: Xuanzong and Yang Guifei
Nia: Tang women
Sartaj: Grand Canal

SONG:
Jae Yong: Foreign relations: Jurchens
Buo: Invasion/Southern Song
Jeffrey: Industrial Revolution
Adam: Shipbuilding and sea trade
Billy: Confucian exams
Amber: (can I talk you into Scholar gardens?)

Period of Disunity and Sui

From the "This is absolutely random but cool" Department:


Notecard DBQ Paper Resources:
1. How to outline. (Your 3x5 index card is your only resource for you to write your essay. In case you've never seen a good outline, here's a decent model for you to use.

Dynasties Research Paper, Step One: Decide on Your Topic
1. Read this "China in Five Waves" overview--only the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing sections ("Wave 3" and "Wave 4"). Choose one specific topic from the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing that you would be interested in learning more about in a research paper. Submit your topic for each dynasty on this Google Form by the end of class. 


Period of Disunity to Sui Unification

1. Other developments in the Period of Disunity:
1. Political/Dynasties
1. Three Kingdoms (220-280)
2. Western Jin: unification and collapse (280-316)
1. "Barbarian" conquest of the Yellow River: Sixteen Kingdoms (300-439)
2. Northern Wei: Xianbei barbarians unify North (Yellow River), "become Chinese" (Sinicize) (439-581). Important: Chinese culture "defeats the conquerors." This is a pattern we'll see repeated in the Yuan and Qing.
1. Important: China Shifts South: Han "exodus" south of the Yangtze--the "Southern Dynasties"
2. Eastern Jin (Nanjing), 317-420
3. Southern Dynasties (420-580)
2. Cultural:
1. Buddhism takes root
1. Reasons for its popularity
2. Confucian reaction
3. Taoist reaction
4. Artistic effects
1. Architecture: Pagoda (from India)
2. Sculpture: Dunhuang, Datong
2. Ethnic fusion
1. Fashion, music, art, food influenced by Silk Road cultures
3. Social:
1. Decline of Confucian Government
2. Rise of military-aristocratic families
1. a step backwards from the Han for Confucian values of education, benevolence, moderation, and pacifism
2. the great families rule by wealth, heredity, force
3. peasants reduced to near-tenancy
4. this is the cause of the dizzying number of dynasties during the period of disunity--wealthy families raising private armies had no virtue (de) to win loyalty via the Mandate of Heaven
4. End of Period of Disunity: The Sui Unification (589-618)
1.  Interesting details
1. The Sui unifier was a sinicized Xianbei--so China has a "barbarian" to thank for saving it from permanent, Europe-like division
2. Sui Wendi was a Buddhist. He declared himself a "Cakravartin King," meaning he was an incarnation of Buddha with divine right to order the material world. He used this ideology to justify unification by conquest--in a sense, making him a "Buddhist Qin Shihuangdi."
3. Also like Qin, the Sui contributed an enormously important and impressive engineering feat that, like the Great Wall, would change China forever. This is the Grand Canal, a manmade river of over 1,000 miles--1/3 the width of the United States--that linked the Yangtze in the south to the Yellow River in the north (and ultimately was extended to Beijing farther north). The economic effects of this were huge: commerce, resources, and troops from the south could now easily and quickly be transported north by boat, and commercial goods could flow in both directions. China's lack of a north-south river was set right by this feat. An imperial highway runs alongside the canal the entire length. And all of this was built in less than 10 years. The mind boggles.
4. Also like Qin, the Sui Dynasty lasted only a couple decades. The labor for the canal, as well as military attempts to annex Korea--three of them, the third with a massive force of 500,000 troops and a large navy, and all of which failed to tame those tough Koreans--stirred rebellion. The Tang Dynasty declared the Mandate.

The Pagoda: An Indian-Buddhist Influence

"The Vinegar Tasters": Confucius, Buddha, and Laozi React to the Taste of 'Life' Three "Religions" Co-existing--Without Holy Wars

Fri, Oct. 14: Period of Disunity, DBQ-Notecard Research Paper Assignment

In Class:

1. Museum trip: Sign up here (optional) and take my phone number so we can find each other: 9669-8536. 
2. Movie Clip: Red Cliff, John Woo's epic adaptation of the most famous battle scene of The Three Kingdoms.
3. Read the student blog post I assign to you, and reply with:
1. your own views on the readings (use your notes)
2. feedback on what you liked about their post
3. suggestions that might improve their writing.
1. Focus: Followed assignment, good title, introductory "hook," graphics, insightful interpretation. 
4. DBQ Notecard Research Paper: Download DBQ Packet here, and Assignment, Guidelines, and Rubric here, MLA formatting guidelines here for Works Cited page.

Three Kingdoms and Period of Disunity: The Birth of a Counterculture

The Orchid Pavilion, Lanting, Shaoxing (near Shanghai). Taken with my iPhone.

Assignment: Re-download the Counterculture packet. I’ve edited and adapted the translations to give them what I consider a better voice than the original translations. I’ve also thrown in some more images.

You got enough of American counterculture from the Summer of Love readings.

Now read the Ruan Ji, Xi Kang, Wang Xizhi, and Tao Qian sections (pp. 9-21).

Some of you will blog (see list at bottom of this post), and the rest of you will reply to the blogs, so all of you, as you read, do the following:

• highlight whatever details or uses of language strike you—positive or negative—about each writer. (And don't let Xi Kang's letter or poem scare you. If you trust him, that 7'8" giant of a lute-player will take you places.)

Bloggers:
B1: Kevin, Cillian, Natalie, Angela
B2: Zach, Joy, Hansen, Summit, Lars
B3: Aimee, Jeffrey, Adam, Ding Wei, Billy 

• write a quick, informal paragraph about three of the four writers you liked most that:
• includes three of your highlights for each
• includes one image that enhances the mood of your post
• briefly explains why you highlighted what you did
• closes with the paragraph about the writer you liked best.
• has a title worthy of a writer
• can you note any essential differences between the lifestyle of these rebels compared to those of the American 'sixties?

In other words, be a literary critic. Culture is part of history.









I intentionally chose only ethnic Chinese students for this one because a) it's their heritage, and b) they might find more to add from talking to their parents or relatives. Have they heard of these writers? Do they have anything interesting to add? It’s optional, but if they do, it would make your writing more interesting for the newness.


Closing Note

This short experience offers you an opportunity to become truly educated--instead of merely schooled--about Chinese civilization.

If there’s one assignment I hope you’ll actually do before midnight, with an alert mind and a real desire to “get it,” it’s this one. It gets to the “other heart,” the non-Confucian and sublimely nonconformist one, of Chinese culture.

As I told you, I took a little “pilgrimage” to the Orchid Pavilion last summer. It’s a quiet little park now that is still maintained and preserved to honor the little party there 17 centuries ago.* I can’t recommend it highly enough. It felt pre-industrial and more natural than nature itself.

But the most striking thing of all is how many people were there, young and old, and how proud they were of this piece of their history. A Chinese high school student stood next to me in front of a 12-foot-high stone slab with the "Preface" inscribed on it in Wang's calligraphic style, reading that ancient "time capsule to the future" softly to himself--and I was crazy envious of him. He sort of laughed at me for claiming to understand Wang, and he was kind of right (and kind of wrong). I hear Wang across that ocean of time, but only in translation. Meanwhile, that lucky little brat gets to receive the whole package.

----
*Cooler still, the tomb of Yu looks down on it from a nearby mountain ridge. Yu is said to have died there on a hunting trip during the Xia Dynasty, which of course we cannot prove. But that touch still added—to risk a “historical hippie” pun—to the “trip.”

Fri, Oct 7: Han Dynasty, Wang Mang to End; Literature: The Three Kingdoms

Here's the Three Kingdoms file--the entire novel. It's a .zip file, which you should have no problem opening. Once it unzips, you'll find a folder called "ROTK" (it stands for Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and don't be mislead by the horrible word "Romance," which has nothing to do with Valentine's Day because as a literary term it's the French word for "novel").

Read the first two chapters. Excerpts will be included on your DBQ, so read them for how they represent the world and the situation of the Late Han. Make connections to the content of today's discussion.

The hero is Liu Bei, a descendant of Liu Bang and hero of the novel. He meets the other two heroes in Chapter One as the Eastern Han is collapsing under the double threat of Yellow Turban revolts and eunuch domination of the Inner Court.

See the quick video below on how to open the ebook. (Short version: Once downloaded,
1. open the .zip file
2. find the "ROTK" folder
3. open it
4. double-click "index.htm"
--that will open the table of contents in your browser. Click on Chapter titles to open them.)

Monday, Oct. 3: The Han Dynasty, part 1 + Presentation Zen

**Update**: HW clarification
If you didn't catch it in class:

• Read the Han section in the textbook (pp. 41-52)
• Use the Study Guide linked below (Han section follows the Qin) to give yourself a sense of what to look for as you read, especially the Ten Guiding Questions. 
• Notice some items in the terms in the term list have an * after them. I'll hit those in class, so don't stress about it. Additional info.

Download

• this Qin-Han Study Guide. Use it to take notes today.
• this Presentation Rubric.
• this Presentation Tips handout.

Fun at the Movies

Still Life, with Chickens:

Check out B2 getting all sissified when Jing Ke almost got his head slammed into the wall!...

Oh, the Elegance: B1 Knows How to Seminar!...

The Secrets of the First Emperor (Documentary):
Sima Qian described Qin's tomb as so fantastical that modern historians doubted it. (They doubted Sima Qian's history of the Shang until the Oracle Bones were found in 1899, too--which proved Sima Qian's history accurate.) Watch this 10-minute, very Western but very cool documentary for some great dramatization and visuals (a bit of Harry Potter, Zhongguo-style):

Want more great Qin Shihuangdi/Sima Qian cinema?  
Watch the entire "The Emperor's Shadow" by clicking through to the Youtube playlist on my History of China channel. Here's the first 10 minutes of a great film:

Tuesday, Sep 27: Seminar and Reading Sima Qian Like a Historian

Film Seminar: Questions:


HW: Read Sima Qian like a historian. Download this document and be ready to discuss in class next time: a seminar worth 25 points.

weekend reading Lu buwei

Here's a translation of the Lu Buwei biography from Sima Qian. Read for the seminar. If you want to research more, knock us out with what you find.

At go eagles event so bye. If I die of heart attack, bang a drum

Wed, 9-21: Emperor and Assassin (movie)

HW at the bottom of the post.

In class:
--Make folder (follow directions)
--Discuss next seminar
--Background on Sima Qian's Shi Ji (Record of the Grand Historian) (the source of the movie and our knowledge of Qin)
--Watch 1 hour of Emperor and Assassin.

Hit "Reply" and respond, in 3 minutes, to these questions:

1. Based on your textbook reading, how might Qin Shihuang be seen as a "monster"? Specify at least 2 reasons.

2. How might he be seen as a "hero" or "great man"? Again, 2 specific reasons.

3. Summarize what happened in the film so far: Who are the characters? What happened at the end of clip 3?

HW: Download the Sima Qian chapter about the "Assassin Jing Ke." Read it and annotate/take notes in response to the questions on the file.

Week Six: Qin Dynasty: Evil, Heroic, Tragic, or What?

Two things I learned over the weekend:

1. The free Moodle server is unreliable. That won't do. So we're moving here to Blogger which, run by Google, will have no reliability issues at all. Google never goes down.
2. Dropbox--SAS's file-sharing tool of choice--has a bandwidth limit for downloads. So we're moving to SugarSync, which doesn't. This won't require anything from you. You'll still just click links to download files. I'm just letting you know we shouldn't have to worry about file-sharing surprises like the one Dropbox threw us this weekend. (Good job using Skype to file-share for the Late Ones.)

So: Bookmark this page. It's our new home.

Schedule for the Week:

Monday, Sep. 19: 

In class: Xia, Shang, Zhou test

HW: Read and Watch Film (three clips below: 30 min.)

1. Read East Asia textbook, pp.35-41 (Stop at "The Han Dynasty").


Objectives as you read:
•    Describe the political, social, and cultural changes enacted by Qin Shihuangdi as he established Imperial China. They’re all huge.
•    Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the Qin Dynasty.

Key Concepts to Focus On:

•    Centralized Government

•    Bureaucracy

•    Legalism

•    Commanderies

•    Standardizations

•    Mutual Responsibility System

•    Censorship

•    Mausoleum

•    Great Wall

•    Xiongnu

The Big Questions
•    To what degree (if any) was Qin Shihuangdi justified in his policies of oppression, censorship, and forced labor?
•    In what ways was Qin Shihuangdi a hero? A monster?

Watch: The Emperor and the Assassin, parts 1-3. 
Chinese cinema is so worth discovering. 

The Emperor and the Assassin is one of the most expensive films made in Chinese history. It's about Qin Shihuangdi during the Warring States Period, as he's trying to end it by conquering all the states. It's by one of China's greatest directors, and stars its biggest male and female stars. It's epic, so enjoy it. (And it's based on Sima Qian's Han Dynasty book, Records of the Grand Historian.)

The question: How convinced are you by this framing of Qin Shihuang as a "tragic hero"?