{"id":18277,"date":"2018-06-21T17:22:17","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T00:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=18277"},"modified":"2018-06-21T17:22:17","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T00:22:17","slug":"rebellion-in-never-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/rebellion-in-never-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebellion in never easy"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first opened up\u00a0Boxers & Saints<\/em> by Gene Luen Yang, I was surprised to see a graphic novel. I love graphic novels, I have been reading them for most of my life. The one thing about graphic novels is they are a quick read but they convey so much through the artistic medium. In other words, if all you do is read and skim the pictures, you miss out on over half of what the creators are trying to convey. The same is true for our reading this week. If you are a moderate reader you can read them both in one sitting. If you get into the art of the story you can linger for a long time. The two novels are the story of the Boxer Rebellion told from the point of view of two Chinese, one who takes the road of rebelling against “foreign devils” the other rebelling against her family and becoming a Christian.<\/p>\n

I have heard of the Boxer Rebellion, but that is where my knowledge stopped. So I decided to do some reading about it, It came back to Western powers inflicting their desires upon a sovereign nation. As I have talked about in other posts, the wrong done to a country or a people from an outside group seems to have repercussions that are still felt today. “Boxers came from various parts of society, many were peasants, particularly from Shandong province, which had been struck by natural disasters such as famine and flooding. In the 1890s, China had given territorial and commercial concessions in this area to several European nations, and the Boxers blamed their poor standard of living on foreigners who were colonizing their country.”[1]\u00a0 The idea of coming into a country and bringing it “civilization” can seem like a noble pursuit. If in bringing civilization you destroy a culture then what have you actually done. I do realize there are implications of helping a society move forward,\u00a0 bringing clean water, electricity modern medicine, the message of Jesus Christ, in my opinion these are all good things. It is hard to find the fine line.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the most compelling things about these novels was there did not seem to be a side that did the right thing. Both the Boxers and the Christians\/Foreigners were guilty of crimes against each other. Whether it was the Christians stealing and killing from the local citizens to the Boxers slaughtering innocents neither, at the end of the day, can say I was completely good. At the beginning of the Boxer novel, you have a hooligan stealing and getting beat for it, he comes back two weeks later with a Christian priest who makes the decision to take from the man who stood up to him in the name of “justice” he then destroys the villages idol Tu Di Gong, while telling the gospel. [2] This only escalates until murder is the order of the day. This causes the books hero, Little Bao, to seek justice and retribution which results in mass death for both the Christians, the foreign government officials, and Chinese Christians, as well as his whole group and himself.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Saints novel introduces the reader to Four Girl, so named by her grandfather because she was the fourth girl, born on the fourth day, of the fourth month. The explanation being that four is the number of death.[3]\u00a0She is mistreated by her family and ends up running away and becoming a Christian. In the end she is killed by Little Bao for not recanting her faith. The two of them seem to have the best heart of any of the characters. They are both led by the spirit world, Bao by an ancient Emperor and Four Girl by Joan of Arc. Both are led down paths where they begin to understand the implications of their sides. Bao sees the Emperor as a force for good to destroy the invaders but finally understands his guide was a “conflicted” man at best and a murderer as worst. Four Girl thinks Joan is her example as a warrior but at the end sees that Joan died for God as she must as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

These books give an interesting look into the heart of Chinese culture, from the anger of invasion to the soft spirit of understanding. They are well worth the time to help the reader to begin a journey of understanding, albeit a brief understanding, of Chinese history.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0“Boxer Rebellion.” History.com. 2009. Accessed June 20, 2018. https:\/\/www.history.com\/topics\/boxer-rebellion.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0\u00a0Yang, Gene Luen.\u00a0Boxers & Saints, 1: Boxers<\/i>. New York: First Second, 2013. 10-19.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[3]\u00a0Yang, Gene Luen, and Lark Pien.\u00a0Saints<\/i>. New York: First Second, 2013. 1.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first opened up\u00a0Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang, I was surprised to see a graphic novel. I love graphic novels, I have been reading them for most of my life. The one thing about graphic novels is they are a quick read but they convey so much through the artistic medium. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18277"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18396,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18277\/revisions\/18396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}