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A class I enjoyed
May. 6th, 2009 01:02 amTonight's class was great for the digressions about Eastern Society. Since I geek out over that...
A few I recall
+ Two men holding hands in public = perfectly acceptable in China. Sign of friendship. Same with touching a thigh of the same sex.
+ In Eastern culture, the reader has the burden of understanding something written. The writer does not need to cite things or explain their structure. To explain what is written to is treat the reader like a child. Almost all papers in a course my instructor taught in China all had this phrase about "After the Gang of Four was overthrown, China was then opened to the west"...no matter the context.
+ Reminders of the collective culture.
+ Attentiveness = Eyes averted from the teacher and reading or furiously writing. Outside of class there is a informality. The teacher is like a parent to the student and can go and tell the parents how best to raise their student.
+ A Chinese college student going into a dorm in China will assume all their dormmates will become their life-long friends. This then stays when they come have and they find Americans duplicitous because of kindness which isn't really intended to be instant friendship.
+ "I need private time" = You must be insane or in trouble. There's no real privacy. Barber shops have wide open windows people watch you through. And people will watch you for no reason. All part of natural society.
+ Rhetoric is structure around preserving harmony and history.
+ The highest ideal is to emulate a model or example perfectly. Recreation and hegemony. Assimilation and copying as perfectly as possible.
+ Women who can hold their liquor are highly regarded because this is rare and 1/3 of Asian people (on average) have a red-faced allergic reaction to alcohol.
Just a few of my favorite notes. ^_^ There'll be more when I have a copy of the slides. Probably the most fascinating class so far.
A few I recall
+ Two men holding hands in public = perfectly acceptable in China. Sign of friendship. Same with touching a thigh of the same sex.
+ In Eastern culture, the reader has the burden of understanding something written. The writer does not need to cite things or explain their structure. To explain what is written to is treat the reader like a child. Almost all papers in a course my instructor taught in China all had this phrase about "After the Gang of Four was overthrown, China was then opened to the west"...no matter the context.
+ Reminders of the collective culture.
+ Attentiveness = Eyes averted from the teacher and reading or furiously writing. Outside of class there is a informality. The teacher is like a parent to the student and can go and tell the parents how best to raise their student.
+ A Chinese college student going into a dorm in China will assume all their dormmates will become their life-long friends. This then stays when they come have and they find Americans duplicitous because of kindness which isn't really intended to be instant friendship.
+ "I need private time" = You must be insane or in trouble. There's no real privacy. Barber shops have wide open windows people watch you through. And people will watch you for no reason. All part of natural society.
+ Rhetoric is structure around preserving harmony and history.
+ The highest ideal is to emulate a model or example perfectly. Recreation and hegemony. Assimilation and copying as perfectly as possible.
+ Women who can hold their liquor are highly regarded because this is rare and 1/3 of Asian people (on average) have a red-faced allergic reaction to alcohol.
Just a few of my favorite notes. ^_^ There'll be more when I have a copy of the slides. Probably the most fascinating class so far.
