Day 6 (Jeremy)

 

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 affected the way Americans view America. It was another fruitful discussion with a variety of views on the subject of American Exceptionalism. China singularity on the other hand is the idea that China is the center of the universe and that China does not really interact with other territories around them.

After lunch, we watched a movie based on a true story called Mao's Last Dancer. The film was about Li Cunxin, a Chinese ballet dancer born during communist China, and his experience in America and how his decision to stay in America instead of returning to China impacted his life. We ended the day with a short discussion on the movie and our thoughts on it along with the deeper meaning behind the story and what the movie has to do with our J-Term. Overall, it was another fun and informative day in the Asia and Asian Culture J-Term.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Start

     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 rich cultures in Asia
Read more

Day 7- Claire

Image
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
Read more

Juliet- day 9

 January 14, 2022 Today was the last day of our Asian Heritage, J-term, and it was definitely a good one.  Noor started our day with a presentation she made about Pakistan and its culture. She spent her winter break in Pakistan and decided to share with us her heritage. Her presentation covered daily life in Pakistan, the clothes, the food and her experience in Pakistan as a third culture child. Following Noor’s presentation we watched a short film about the Pakistani community in Houston. The video followed a woman as she went around Houston to see the Pakistani cultural influences and community in Houston. We saw things like the cricket games they hold, the district, where most of them live and how such a large Pakistani community came to be in Houston.  After we watched the movie we had a zoom meeting with Dr.Chao, the director of the Houston Asian Americans Archive. To prepare for this meeting she had us interview an Asian American or an immigrant and come back to share with the cl
Read more