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: