By: Mary Walker on June 20, 2018
Here is the web address for my Prezi, “The Road to Finishing Well” https://prezi.com/p/tvqokz_ojf3t/
By: Katy Drage Lines on June 20, 2018
“Let me become a cat or a dog, but not a woman”[1] Throughout the narrative telling of twentieth-century Chinese history, we observe the move from traditional society to idealistic Communism, on to the Cultural Revolution—a power-centric second iteration of Communism, and the messy outcomes of years of distrust and revenge. Jung Chang’s Wild Swans: Three…
By: Mike on June 20, 2018
Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers and Saints is a gruesome story told in a graphic-novel format based around the Boxer Rebellion in China. Yang offers two opposing fictional perspectives via a visual medium in a comic-book style presentation. One perspective, Boxers is anti-Christian that displays the “Boxers,” skilled in martial arts, driving out the Colonial devils…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on June 19, 2018
Reading Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang was an interesting introduction to the Boxer Rebellion that I was not previously familiar with. I enjoyed the lighter version of reading and found it a very creative medium to communicate such a horrific story. Wesley Yang (a different Yang 🙂 ) summarized it well by stating,…
By: Kristin Hamilton on June 19, 2018
There is no way to capture the sadness, disgust, awe, and prophetic fear I felt when I read Jung Chang’s Wild Swans. This is what rolled through me when I tried: “We are so much better, so much more civilized;” Western eyes roll in disgust; Atrocities through three generations; But don’t we have our…
By: Kyle Chalko on June 18, 2018
Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang is a graphic novel with a style similar to anime, that tells a story not meant for children. (My four year old found this book and started thumbing through the pages because it looked like his cartoons. I was panicked when I saw him turning the pages and…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on June 17, 2018
I was reflecting upon my early years. One of my best friends in elementary school had family from Hong Kong. They were a very well to do family. They moved into a very affluent community and lived their lives in a very traditional manner. Her parents rarely showed affection for one another. I always knew…
By: Greg on June 16, 2018
It is almost a utopian scene to describe a world that everyone works, lives and strives for the betterment of everyone else. This “imagined community” in which all work together sounds like something only possible if you are smoking something the hippies call Ganga. This image of communism is such a stark contrast to those…
By: Jean Ollis on June 15, 2018
There are many important themes in Jung Chang’s text, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. This text highlights family – and the love within a family – as well as loyalty, self-sacrifice and the connection of the three (family loyalty and self-sacrifice as women). As we’ve learned through reading Simon Chan’s, Grassroots Asian Philosophy, Jackie…
By: Jason Turbeville on June 15, 2018
When I first started reading Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang one of my friends stopped by my office, she saw the book sitting on my desk and asked, “Are they having you read romance novels in your class”? Of course, she was joking with me but in actuality this book is a…
By: Chris Pritchett on June 15, 2018
The secret untold story of the cultural revolution in China in the 1960s came as just that – a huge surprise to me. I had no awareness of the atrocities of Mao and his youthful army. That’s a little embarrassing. It’s a part of the world of which I am quite unfamiliar. Jung Chang is…
By: Jay Forseth on June 14, 2018
I have a twin sister named Sandy. No we are not identical–she got all the hair and brains, all I got was the height (it is surprising how many people ask if we are identical). My twinkie Sandy is a VERY courageous woman, as she proves DAILY, through one of the most selfless acts humanly…
By: Stu Cocanougher on June 14, 2018
As I sit down to write about the history of Hong Kong, it would be easy to put a black hat on Great Britain and a white hat on China. England is often cast in the role of the power-hungry colonizer who sent ships across the world in order to take advantage of less powerful…
By: Chip Stapleton on June 14, 2018
As a history major in undergrad, I am acutely aware of the fact that nothing happens in a vacuum. History – at least the good, important, interesting and useful kind is only partially about what happened. It is also and maybe especially about why something happened: what societal and/or systemic factors contributed to the outcome;…
By: Jennifer Williamson on June 14, 2018
The General’s wife told her to sit down. My grandmother had to make a split-second decision. In a traditional Chinese household, where one sits automatically reflects one’s status. General Xue’s wife was sitting at the north end of the room, as befitted a person in her position. Next to her, separated by a side table,…
By: Kyle Chalko on June 14, 2018
Wild Swans by Jung Chang is a revealing look inside what real life was like in China during Mao’s reign. At the time of it’s publishing, details of life in Mao’s China were still coming to light. Chang’s family story was a disturbing tale of life in closed communist world. Its biographical and auto-biographical in…
By: Lynda Gittens on June 14, 2018
The early years of China although challenging and prosperous, politically it had its challenges. Its decision to return to the Communism was a surprise. “The Hong Kong identity that emerged was based on a shared outlook and a common popular culture which blended traditional Chinese culture with that imported from overseas, with…
By: Dave Watermulder on June 14, 2018
Have you ever read any James Michener novels? Michener is a master of the historical fiction genre, and is known for taking the reader on a long journey, across generations and time, to tell the story of a place or a people. In preparing for our South Africa advance last year, I read The Covenant, which…
By: Katy Drage Lines on June 14, 2018
When we moved to Kenya, we spent our first twelve months learning the language and culture of the people we were living among. There were no language schools, and very few books about Turkana, but we read what we could find. We hired a language helper to guide us in learner-directed language acquisition. During that…
By: Jim Sabella on June 14, 2018
Most of my recent in-depth reading within the context of world history has been focused on Europe, particularly on former Eastern Europe and it’s communist history. This is my first more in-depth look further east toward the eastern Asia region and at Hong Kong in particular. What little I do know about Hong Kong and its…
