“Yama: In Indian mythology, the lord of death. The Vedas describe him as the first man who died. The son of the son god Surya, he presides over the resting place of the dead. In the Vedas, he was a cheerful king of departed ancestors, but in later mythology he became known as the just judge who punished the deceased for their sins.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Indonesia. The most populous Muslim-majority nation in the world and the fourth-most populous country in the world is an archipelago of over seventeen thousand islands, among them Java, to most populous island in the world.
Indonesia, by way of its Maluku (“Spice”) Islands, is the world’s leading producer of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. These export commodities attracted, inevitably one must suppose, the Dutch East India Company, which competed with the Portuguese Empire for dominance in Indonesia, became the dominant colonial power in the islands. Indonesia’s post-colonial history is bumpy to say the least.
In other words, Indonesia is a perfect case study for building analytical skills in historical inquiry, particularly in the fields of colonial and post-colonial studies.
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.
“Ibn Battutah (in full Abu Abd Allah Muhhammad ibn Abd Allah al-Lawati al-Tanji ibn Battutah (1304-1368/69) Medieval Arab traveler. He received a traditional juristic and literary education in Tangier. After a pilgrimage to Mecca (1325), he decided to visit as many parts of the world as possible, vowing “never to travel any road a second time.” His 27-year wanderings through Africa, Asia and Europe covered some 75,000 miles (120,000 kilometers). On his return, he dictated his reminiscences, which became one of the world’s most famous travel books, the Rihlah.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Saddam Hussein. This is a full-page document with a total of ten questions.
I’ll assume I needn’t belabor the relevance of the late authoritarian ruler of Iraq and war criminal, who remains au courant for a variety of reasons. He is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and elsewhere. He has the two distinctions worth discussing, I think: he served to destabilize the Middle East while both in and out of power, and he was both an ally and an enemy of the United States in the course of a generation.
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.
“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.
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