To be updated.

Thursday: Evening dinner and screening of Finding Samuel Lowe

Paula Madison grew up in Harlem knowing her Jamaican roots, but unaware that her maternal grandfather was a Chinese migrant worker. After retiring from NBC Universal as an executive, she began tracing the footsteps of her Hakka grandfather from Kingston to her ancestral family village by Shenzhen. Ms. Madison is the Chinese American Museum's 2015 winner of the Chinese American Heritage and Legacy Award and a board member at the Center for Asian American Media.

A few links for your reference:

• Finding Samuel Lowe (film site)
• "From Harlem to China: how an African-American tracked down her Chinese grandfather," in The South China Morning Post (17 May 2017).
• Paula Madison keynote speech to RootsTech 2016 (YouTube)

Friday: Screening of excerpts from China: A Century of Revolution

Please use the link below to submit your unit II assessment as either a Word document (DOC, DOCX) or a PDF.

Left: photo of the author Lao She. Right: scene from the 2010 CCTV production of Teahouse (茶馆)

Background: Lao She (老舍, 1899-1966)

• We get a nice synopsis about the author before the excerpts begin.
• Here are two fascinating additions about his literary legacy from writer Paul French in the Los Angeles Review of Books:
  • “Set in the first half of the 20th century, his work describes the lives of dispossessed Chinese: Mr Ma and Son, his London novel, describes the experiences of being a Chinese in a Yellow Peril-obsessed Britain of the 1920s; Crescent Moon describes a family’s impoverishment and descent into prostitution; Rickshaw Boy, perhaps his most important and enduring novel, tells the futile and desperate story of a Beijing rickshaw puller; and Teahouse is a sprawling social commentary of one Chinese family from the late 19th century to the cataclysmic year of 1949. Along the way he produced numerous short stories, plays, and even an early Chinese science-fiction novel, Cat Country, which imagined a Chinese astronaut stranded on a Mars populated by debauched and decadent drug-addicted cats. His readers understood his commentaries on contemporary China, but the godfathers of China’s literary establishment didn’t always appreciate his modernist critiques and vernacular style—especially after the revolution, when Lao She fell foul of Mao’s Red Guards.”
  • “And still Lao She is censored, remade in the image of the Party, the only image allowed in China, then and now. In 2010, CCTV, China’s state broadcaster, screened a 39-episode adaptation of Teahouse with the requisite ‘official’ ending of a joyous ‘liberation’ in 1949 added; in recent theatrical adaptations of Lao She’s final work Beneath the Red Banner, a semi-autobiographical novel of the dying days of the Manchu Dynasty, mention is never officially made of the fact that the book remains unfinished, as the author was instructed by the Red Guards that all art and literature had to describe life since 1949. Still control is denied him, futility forced upon him. At his former home in Beijing his writing desk has been preserved as it was on his final day. The calendar turned to August 24, 1966. Keen, seemingly enthusiastic young student volunteers offer to answer any questions foreign visitors may have about Lao She. So let’s begin at the end and ask them what happened on that day? They turn away, embarrassed, giggle nervously, see the person asking the question as a problem, not even attempting a shilly-shally answer.”

Performance and analysis

• We will divide the class into three groups covering pages 1-6 (A), 7-11 (B), and 12-18 (C), respectively.
• Choose one short passage within the pages assigned to your group.
  • Prepare a short script for a narrator to describe the scene. If the audience could transport themselves into the scene, what would they see, hear, and smell? Are there any other important contextual details of note? (Feel free to sketch an image if you would like).
  • Perform your short selection (as written) for the class.
  • Prepare a short post-reading analysis. Among your observations, be sure to include:
    • How does this passage reflect the political, social, and economic conditions of Beijing—and China, more broadly—in 1922?  
    • What are some of the different philosophies and strategies employed by the characters to navigate the social changes of this period?

Discussion

• What are some of the major concerns raised by the characters?
• How might the characters in the play compare to the other figures we have encountered this unit: Liang Qichao, Sun Zhongshan, Chen Duxiu, Lu Xun (and his “madman”), He Zhen, Hu Shi, Li Dazhao, Mao Zedong, Deng Yingchao, and even Edward Hume. What similarities do you note? Differences?
• This play unfolds during several the overlapping periods and movements: the nationalism of the May Fourth Movement, the intellectual foment and literary experimentation of the New Culture Movement, the instability of Warlordism, not to mention the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, in July 1921) and the increasing intensity of Christian missionary efforts. How do you see this play intersecting with these movements? And, how do the movements connect with and inform one another?

Photographs of the Yale-in-China teachers and students. Both include Warren Seabury ('96) and are from The Vision of a Short Life: A Memorial of Warren Bartlett Seabury, One of the Founders of the Yale Mission College in China (Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, 1909).

Introduction:
Today we will be looking at archival material from the period that coincides with Unit II (“ ‘Slaves of a Lost Country’ or Masters of a New Culture?”), the period roughly from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1920s. More specifically, we will be interested in the connection between Hotchkiss and the Yale-in-China program. This lesson fits both within the narrative of China’s “fall and rise” as well as serving as an important stepping stone for our class project about Hotchkiss and China. We will follow up this exercise with a reading on Yale-in-China (due Thursday) and you will utilize the skills from this exercise in your course project.

Learning goals:
By engaging in this activity, students will be able to:

• Learn about the range of resources available for original research at Hotchkiss and the procedures for accessing and carefully handling materials from the Archives and Special Collections.
  
• Practice engaging the resources to pull out useful information and identify significant themes.
  
• Gain insight into Hotchkiss’s relationship with the Yale-in-China program.
  
• Build a working relationship with Ms. Davis (Archives) and Ms. Baldwin (Special Collections).
  

Archives tour

We will meet in Library Media Center (our usual classroom). We will drop off backpacks/belongings and head down to the Archives for a tour with Ms. Davis. Here is some of the information (Google Doc) she will be sharing with us.

Background on Hotchkiss and China project

Ms. Baldwin will share some background on her experience working with Archival material in her Hotchkiss and China project. An editable version of this document (Google Doc) has been created for our class. Today we will be examining material aligned with the first section, “Missionaries and Headmasters.”

Warm up activity: Early clips from The Record

We will take a look at these early Record articles (PDF). I recommend starting individually by reading the highlighted selections. Keeping in mind that these are only a few sentences each, discuss with a partner:

• What are some of the themes you see?
  
• What are some questions that these news snippets might generate to guide an investigation into this period?
  

Working in the Archives activity: Yale-in-China

Using the “Working in the Archives” guide (PDF), you will have the flexibility to move through the materials on your own pace—or, if you prefer, with a partner to accomplish the following tasks:

• Conduct a survey of the materials you have available to you.
  
• Dig more deeply into one document that interests you and complete the document analysis exercise.
  
• As you reach the end of the activity, consider skipping ahead to connecting with the Hotchkiss and China document (see instructions below).
  

Debrief

• Discuss:
  
  • What are some of the themes you see from the documents as a whole?
    
  • What are some questions that these news snippets might generate to guide an investigation into this period?
    
• Connect with the Hotchkiss and China document (Google Doc):
  
  • Informal notes can be added as comments.
    
  • ​Alternatively, you can add directly into the text. Please include footnote citations for new information added!