J-Term: Asian Culture group blogs

January 14, 2022     As the final day of the Asia and Asian culture J-Term rolled around, everyone was excited to see what it had in store. We started our day off with a couple of presentations, the first of which came from one of our classmates, Noor. Noor was in Pakistan for the winter break and decided to make a presentation about Pakistan to share with the rest of the group. She went over things like daily life and what it is like as someone coming from the US, a first world country, all of which were interesting topics. After Noor's presentation we also watched a short video about the Pakistani community in Houston and it really gives you a sense that Houston is so much more that what it looks like.     The next presentation we had was from a special guest, her name is Dr. Chao and she is the director of the Houston Asian Americans Archive. The visit started out with the class sharing the interviews they had done for prep work for the visit and then sh...

On day 7 of the Asia and Asian culture J-Term, we began the day with some videos. We watched a total of three videos, all about Chinese food. The first video was about all the different types of food that are made within China, and how the location affects the food. The videos were very interesting and helped us to understand how much location affects culture. The second video was about yin and yang and how you need to have an equal amount of both kinds of food to feel balanced. We discussed the different types of yin and yang foods, an example of a yin food would be apples or honey, and yang foods would be beef or alcohol. The third video was about the stereotype that the Chinese eat dogs. In the video, a few people of different ages were interviewed about their views of Chinese people and dog meat. There were questions about what they thought of people eating dog meat, and what they thought about how westerners react to the stereotype. After we reflected as a class about what we thou...

Thursday was packed with fun! We learned about Indian architecture from Mrs. Agrawal, marveled at a gorgeous Hindu temple, enjoyed a delicious Indian meal, and watched the final episode of Asian Americans.       In the morning Ms. Agrawal gave a short presentation on Indian architecture. She walked us through the beautiful buildings and places of worship that can be found in India. Many of these were Hindu Temples, but as India's official religion is not Hinduism, there were also some Churches, Mosques, and Buddhist Temples that held just as much meaning.       After that introduction to traditional Asian architecture, we visited the BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu Temple. The first thing everyone noticed was how pretty the exterior of the building was. The Temple was quite large and all white, as it was made from limestone and marble. Our tour guide told us that it took about 3 years for builders to carve everything out (and there were some really...

  We started off day 5 with a presentation from Ms. Agarwal, where she talked about weddings in India. She showed pictures from her wedding and shared with us how different the traditions are in an Indian wedding compared to an American wedding.  After the presentation we had an interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, who is an award-winning Indian-American author. Before and during some of J-term we all read her book “Sister of My Heart”. The bestselling novel about the extraordinary bond between two women, and the family secrets and romantic jealousies that threaten to tear them apart. During the interview, Chitra answered a lot of our questions and talked about her experience as an author. She shared a lot about how she came up with ideas for her books, what influences her to write her books, and how her books reflect real life. It was interesting learning things about her and the sense of “Sister of My Heart”. The last thing we did in the morning was watch the 3rd e...

  On Day 6 of the Asia and Asian Culture J-Term, we started off the day with some small preparations for Myokei Shonin's visit. Myokei Caine Barrett Shonin is the first and current resident priest of Myoken-Ji Temple in Houston. After that, Myokei Shonin arrived at our classroom, and she talked with us about her life story, her experience with racism, and various teachings within Buddhism. She also answered some of the questions we had which included how the recent surge of anti-Asian violence has affected her. Overall, Myokei Shonin's talk was a very interesting and enlightening experience for all of us. After a short break, we had a seminar on two readings about China singularity and American Exceptionalism. A large majority of our discussion revolved around American Exceptionalism, some of the discussion topics were about America's savior complex and the cultural ideologies that led to that belief along with how America's long history of defiance and independence has...

Myokei Shonin and the students  Today, our group began the day making final preparations for our meeting with Myokei Caine-Barret Shonin, who is the current bishop of the Nichiren Shu Order of North America, as well as the first woman and person of mixed heritage to hold this position. Our time with Myokei Shonin was a delight, and she enlightened us on many things, from her life story to Buddhism. We discussed her incredible role in the Buddhist religion and how her African American and Japanese heritage affected her journey. Myokei left the class with a better understanding of the Buddhist religion and how important perseverance and independence are.  Next up was our seminar on American exceptionalism and Chinese singularity. In my opinion, this was one of the most fascinating discussions we've had since it covered such niche concepts. American exceptionalism is the idea that America is different and inherently better than other countries. We discussed how American exception...

We started the day with a presentation about India from Ms. Agarwal. Her presentation covered the general history and facts about India, like how many languages are spoken within, the geography as well as their national holidays. I found the presentation quite insightful fore I didn't know much about India to begin with.  After the presentation we continued with the Indian theme and we watched a movie: “The mistress of spices.” This movie is actually based on a book that was written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, who will be visiting us next monday. The film was about a mistress of a spice shop who could utilize the mystical properties of Indian spices to aid her customers' problems. The fantastical oriental mystery element, often associated with Indian culture, paired with classic cheesy romantic bollywood vibes in a clearly Americanized vision set this film apart for me. To say the least, it was an interesting experience.  With the conclusion of the movie our band of 14 set ...

 January 6, 2022 Today was an eventful day, to say the least. To jump into the day, we started out with two readings covering American Exceptionalism and China Singularity. After discussing the two readings and sharing ideas and opinions, we moved on to brainstorming questions for the upcoming visit with Mr. Han, who is a half-Asian midwestern-raised that works at Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston and works closely with diverse faith communities. Soon after, we watched a short documentary/episode of the extremely successful business story of Vietnamese Nail Salons. The movie was very interesting and it is easy to say the whole class learned something new.  After finishing the documentary, we indulged in a delicious lunch at a Pho restaurant in Chinatown. Everyone enjoyed the food very much and some of my favorite things I tried personally were the Vietnamese iced coffee (which was made with a very strong type of coffee and condensed milk) and the Thai tea. After our fam...

January 6, 2022  During the third day of this course, we started the morning by doing research prep for a guest speaker who was coming in the afternoon. We looked at a few articles that the speaker suggested, detailing Asian American statistics and the struggle of biracial people in the United States to fit in culturally. The readings raised the question of whether White Asians tend to swing towards American or Asian cultures. After a brief discussion of the articles, we moved on to watch a documentary titled Nailed It. The documentary outlined the struggles that Vietnamese refugees fleeing from the aftermath of the Vietnam War had, both from the dangerous journey overseas to reach the States, as well as the complications of adapting to a new country. The film explained how these Vietnamese immigrants had to fight adversity and stereotypes to fit in, eventually finding success in the nail salon business. It was very fascinating to watch how these refugees managed to overtake a bill...

     Kicking off our journey through Asian cultures, we started the week by first taking a look at ourselves. Using a personal social identity wheel as a guideline, we were given time to self reflect and figure out which parts of our identities we thought about the most and least every day. Another activity we did was to share our own backstory, including ancestry. Through these two activities we gained a better understanding of how different we all are despite the fact that we share a lot of our time together every day.      With this in mind, we began looking at the cultures of some of the different countries around Asia, as well as their immigration history and influence on the United States. After some research and presentations, we learned a lot about the history of many countries. From the history of "Chinatown," to the inhabitants of the Philippines, we had many interesting and informative conversations that helped to broaden our views of the many ri...