“For the past forty years I had never folded my own quilt, made my own bed, or poured out my washing water. I had never even washed my own feet or tied my own shoes.”
Pu Yi, From Emperor to Citizen ch. 8 (1964)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Gang of Four. This is half-page worksheet on the political faction of the Chinese Communist Party that rose to prominence (and included in its small number Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao, owing to her marriage, of course, to Mao Zedong) during the Cultural Revolution, and not the highly esteemed British post-punk band.
If you know anything about post-revolutionary China, you may know that the Cultural Revolution was another highly ideologized social and cultural movement which aimed to extirpate all vestiges of capitalism and Chinese traditionalism from the nation’s culture. Like the Great Leap Forward, it was an unmitigated disaster. As many as 20 million people died during the Cultural Revolution.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Chinese Historical Periodization: Although there are indications of an ancient dynasty called the Hsia, the first indisputably historical Chinese dynasty was the Shang (or Yin) and dates back not earlier than 1766 BC, Centering on the Yellow River, with its capital at An-Yang, it saw the emergence of civilization in China, including the formation of cities, the use of writing, and fairly complex social organization. Of particular interest are the Shang dynasty bronzes and oracle bones, inscribed with an advanced form of writing, unearthed in excavations in the late 1920s.
The Shang was followed by the Chou dynasty (1027-256 BC). Basically a feudal society, the Chou was the age of the philosophers: Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, and Mencius (372-289 BC). It was a period of great intellectual ferment, and later Confucians would look back to the early part of this dynasty as the Golden Age of Chinese civilization. The royal house of Chou was destroyed and china unified for the first time in 221 BC. Ch’in Shih-huang, the first emperor of the Ch’in dynasty (221-206 BC), standardized weights and measures and the writing system, imposed Draconian legal codes, and completed the Great Wall. The Ch’in emperor also commissioned armies of terracotta soldiers who accompany him in his tomb; these figures have recently been unearthed in northwest China. The short-lived Ch’in was followed by the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), which witnessed great developments in science, literature, and the arts. Confucianism was systematized and established as the dominant ethical and political philosophy. Records of the Historian (Shih chi) was composed during this period.
The fall of the Han gave way to an extended period of political disunity. During the Three Kingdoms period (220-280) China broke up into three mutually hostile kingdoms: Wei, Shu Han, and Wu. The period is the subject of many legends and literary works, the most significant being the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This fragmentation continued into the Chin (265-316) and Six Dynasties (222-589) periods until China was finally reunited under the Sui (589-618) and the T’ang dynasty (618-907).
The T’ang period is generally considered to be the golden age of Chinese civilization. It saw the vast expansion of the empire, the rise of Buddhism, especially Ch’an Buddhism, and many new developments in literature, science, and the arts. There was much contact with the outside world, and there was a passion for foreign things and ideas. Islam, the Christianity of the Nestorians, and the teachings of Zoroaster were introduced at this time. Poetry reached heights unequaled in later centuries. The An Lu-Shan Rebellion drove the imperial court out of North China temporarily and marked the beginning of the decline of the empire. The Buddhist persecutions of 875 also had a great effect on the development of Buddhism in China. Japan was influenced by all aspects of the T’ang dynasty culture.
The Sung dynasty (920-1279) was a period of cultural growth during which great urban centers first developed. The philosopher Chu His (1130-1200) established a revitalized Confucianism. In 1126, the northern territories were lost to the Jurched Chin and the capital was forced to move south. The Sung is particularly famous for its fine porcelains and monochrome landscape paintings, as well as its literature, especially that of Su Tung-P’o (1037-1101).
The Yuan dynasty (1280-1368) was established by the successors of Genghis Khan, who integrated the conquered China into the Mongol empire. There was large-scale contact among the peoples of China, Central Asia, and Europe. Marco Polo’s visit (1275-92) was made during this dynasty. The Mongols despised traditional Chinese thought and institutions and caused serious dislocations for the scholar-official class, which turned its creative energies to drama and literature.
The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) followed, famous for its naval expeditions to Arabia and Africa, its enormous volume and variety of printed works, and for Ming porcelain. A second nonnative dynasty, the Ch’ing (1644-1911), was established by the Manchus, who quickly adopted traditional Chinese institutions and values. The K’ang-his period (1661-1772) was one of China’s most powerful and glorious periods. During this time, China began to have extensive contact with Europe. By the end of the Ch’ing, however, the weight of internal corruption and encroachment by Western colonial powers combined to cause the dynasty to collapse. In 1912 it was replaced by the Chinese Republic, which lasted until 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was established under the leadership of Mao Tse-Tung.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
This week’s Text, in this blog’s ongoing observation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2021, is a reading on the transcontinental railroad in the United States along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
The utility of this reading lies–or would if I were teaching it–in the scant mention it makes of the labor force that built the first transcontinental railroad in this nation; indeed, the one mention of it is in the “Additional Facts” section, which I always include in the activity, but for many students by their own admission is an afterthought. The fact remains that without Chinese laborers, progress on building the first transcontinental railroad, a critical piece of infrastructure in the then rapidly expanding United States, would have proceeded at a much slower pace.
As many as 20,000 Chinese workers helped to build the railroad; hundreds, perhaps even a thousand, died in the effort. For their work, these Chinese railroad workers were rewarded with unfair labor practices, general bigotry, and in 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act.
So, perhaps it’s time to lift the general erasure of this piece of American history so that students in the United States are exposed to the full spectrum of facts, in context, about the contributions of Americans of Chinese descent to the wealth of this nation.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Kamo no Chomei: (1155-1216) Japanese writer. Best known for his meditative Account of My Hut (Hojoki, 1212), which vividly describes the natural and man-made disasters he witnessed in the late Heian period. Chomei was also a prominent poet and theorist in the literary circle of Fujiwara Teika (Sadaie, 1162-1241) and principal compiler of the New Collection of Ancient and Modern Times (Shokinshu, c 1205). His Anonymous Notes (Mumyosho, 1209-10) includes the best definition of the elusive aesthetic ideal of Yugen (“mystery and depth), important in the poetry of his day but also in the later Noh theater. The Kamo family were hereditary Shinto priests at the famous Kyoto shrines of that name, but in 1204, Chomei became a Tendai Buddhist monk and adopted the life of a literary recluse. His last work is a collection of anecdotes (Setsuwa) called the Collection of Religious Awakenings (Hosshinshu c 1241).”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Emperor Hirohito, the longest-lived and longest-reigning Japanese emperor and one of the longest-reigning monarchs in the history of the world.
Emperor Showa, as he is now known in Japan, ascended to the throne on Christmas Day, 1926. He sat on the throne, therefore, during Japan’s imperial expansion, the nation’s militarism in the 1930s, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and, of course, the “Day of Infamy,” the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In other words, he was culpable in the acts that drew the United States into World War II. He was also culpable, then, in Japanese war crimes during that conflict as well. However, the degree of his culpability appears to be subject of intense and ongoing scholarly debate.
So he presents an interesting case study in war crimes, guilt, culpability and historical memory among other concepts and topics.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Since the Islamic suppression of Zoroastrianism in its homeland of Iran, just nine temples were left to maintain the Atash Behram—the Fire of Victory that must be continuously tended. The Atash Behram is the third and highest grade of fire, above the Atash Dadgah and the Atash Adaran, and can only be created by merging sixteen different sources of fire (including that incubated by a lightning bolt) in a long ceremony that requires the participation of thirty-two priests. Eight of the nine altars are now located in India, though one remains in the Iranian homeland, at Yazd, where it was inaugurated by a Sassanian Shah in 470 AD.
The symbolism of the number 9 embedded in the number of Atash Behram evolved over the last couple of hundred years but seems well established. The number is also manifest in the nine priestly families of Sanjan who collectively form a high priesthood, as well as the Zoroastrian belief in the ninth day of the ninth month as propitious.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Hagia Sophia, an august building which has actually been in the news recently.
Hagia Sophia rose in late antiquity, the year 537 to be exact, as the patriarchal cathedral of the city of Constantinople and one of the centers of the Eastern Orthodox Church. After Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, Hagia Sophia became, for nearly 500 years, a mosque in the rechristened city of Istanbul. In 1935, the secular Turkish Republic converted it to a museum. In 1985, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), added Hagia Sophia to its list of World Heritage Sites.
Just last year, Turkish authorities decided to convert Hagia Sophia back to a working mosque. As you might imagine, this was controversial: UNESCO announced that it “deeply regretted” this move; The Orthodox Church petitioned the United Nations to intervene and prevent Turkey from attempting to “erase the cultural heritage of Orthodox Christians.” Christians in Turkey fear marginalization–not exactly a new source of anxiety in this part of the world, but clearly not desirable if one wishes to avoid, say, religious strife.
So, this full-page worksheet (five questions) introduces a torn-from-the-headlines story that makes the history of this fraught building relevant to students, and a source of thought and discussion about a wide range of concepts and topics, including monotheism, paganism, Christianity and Islam, religious strife, conflicts rooted in philosophy, religion, and ideology, winners and losers in conflict, and nationalism, to name a few.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Akbar: (1542-1605) Generally considered the greatest of the Muslim emperors of India, of the Mogul Empire. Akbar unified vast areas of the subcontinent, introduced a variety of administrative and social reforms, and eventually declared a state religion, the Din Illahi (Divine Faith), which focused on himself personally. He was highly praised in historical literature, even by the Hindus, for the active propagation of communal harmony.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Black Hole of Calcutta–a topic which fascinated me as a kid.
In fact, I think we kids used a potential stay in the Black Hole of Calcutta, or its equivalent on the east side of Madison, Wisconsin, as a deterrent to misbehavior. In other words, one had better not commit pranks on Halloween night lest one end up cast into the Black Hole of Calcutta. I may have gotten onto the Black Hole while reading through the reams of Classics Illustrated Comics my father accumulated as a child, then conveyed to me. But it was part of the lingua franca of my crowd, so we may have also gotten onto it by way of cartoons, or something else.
We probably assumed it was a mythological place. As it happens, the Black Hole was in Fort William, in Calcutta. The British East India Company (which if memory serves, the CUNY–John Jay College of Criminal Justice, to be exact–historian Mike Wallace, characterized as “Wal-Mart with Guns” in Ric Burns’ magisterial eight-part documentary series on New York City) built Fort Williams to protect its trade in India. In other words, a colonial, mercantilist endeavor designed to enrich England at the expense of India.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.