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?