Class 1: Cultural Traditions
Class 2: Alien Influences and the Demise of Imperial China (1911)
Class 3: Looking for China's "Glue": Chinese Fighting Japanese and Chinese Fighting Chinese (1940s)
Class 4: "Liberation" and Mao's China (1950s)
Class 5: The Cultural Revolution (1960s)
Class 6: Late Cultural Revolution and then a Big Change (1970s)
Class 7: Post Mao China: The Four Modernizations: (Deng Xiaoping & Jiang Zimen-1978-2005)
Class 8: Post Deng China: The Emerging Superpower (4th generation: Hu Jintao) (2005-Present)
III. A Word About the Chinese Written and Spoken Language
1. Importance of family
a. Ancestor worship
b. Reverence for the past
c. Filial piety and thus loyalty
d. Authoritarianism, patriarchy and paternalism
e. Patrilinealism
f. Remonstration
g. Proper language and behavior (decorum)
h. Importance of ritual ("li") (e.g. wedding, funeral)
i. "Fengshui" (geomancy)
j. Reciprocity
2. Hierarchy, rank and status
3. Inequality (unequal relationships)
a. Familial: father-son, husband-wife, older-younger brother, friend-friend, ruler-subject
b. Social: scholar-bureaucrats, peasants, artisans, merchants
c. Gender: male child ("Big Happiness")-female ("Small Happiness")
d. Age: older-younger
4. Group over individual
a. Concept of "face" (embarassment, shame, loss of virtue, not following "li")
b. "Group" shame and punishment (extended family)
c. Individual self-cultivation, self-control, self-criticism for the public good
5. Role prescription
6. Mutual responsibility (baojia--a kind of communalism or communism)
7. Family as microcosm of the state: order, stability, harmony, unity
8. Ancestral rituals to maintain power
9. Cultural homogeneity and continuity
a. "Cultured" vs. "Barbaric"
10. Emperor as "Son of Heaven" ruling by "Mandate of Heaven"
11. Correlative cosmology: Wu Liang Shrine
12. State power: corruption and nepotism ("guanxi") -- (rule of men vs. rule of law)
13. Wu ("command ethic=laws")-Wen ("virtue ethic=moral force") amalgam (Confucianism and Legalism)
14. Age over youth, past over present
15. Education and power (education as indoctrination)
16. Autocracy vs. individual rights (no political opposition)
17. Cyclical conception of history (dynastic cycle) vs. linear ("progress")
18. Guilty until proven innocent: magistrate(moral and intellectual) as detective, prosecutor, judge and jury
19. Localism and mediation: "The mountain is high and the emperor is far away."
20. Justice: particularism vs. universalism (everyone not equal in the eyes of the law)
VI. Key Themes/Topics to think about China in the 21st century:
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Confucius: |
Han Feizihttp://www.history-of-china.com/spring-and-autumn-period/hanfeizi.htm |
Laozi
http://rummelpinera.blogspot.com/2008/01/about-ashoka-great-and-laozi.html |
Emperor Qin Shi Huang dihttp://www.crystalinks.com/chinahistory.html
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