Today, we will continue with the same discussion roles as we introduced last class, but will focus our discussion on the following two sets of questions:
How did filial piety (xiao 孝) inform the life of Sima Qian (司馬遷)?
How does reading about Sima Qian help us reflect on the appropriate role of the historian?
Introduction and background:
Homework: Assignment #206
Student presentation (Justin Ghaeli)
Activity 1: Archaeological evidence from the late 20th century:
Activity 2: Archaeological evidence from the 3rd century BCE:
Homework: Assignment #205
Summarizing in Digital Notebook
Reading and notetaking strategies
In the following examples, I have followed the advice above to read, annotate, and take notes on Sam Crane, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao: Ancient Chinese Thought in Modern American Life (Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 149:
Notes (limited self to 1 minute):
Background: Qin Shihuangdi (秦始皇帝)
Map of Qin conquest
Debate: “Looking back from the twenty-first century, did Qin Shihuangdi help make China great again?”
Homework: Assignment #204
Application: The Hotchkiss Law Code
Examples from Qin law code:
Homework: Assignment #203
Fu Baoshi (傅抱石) admired Qu Yuan's passionate loyalty to his country, his noble nature, and has literary achievements. Fu Baoshi and his friend Guo Moruo (郭沫若) drew on the memory of Qu Yuan to inspire their countrymen to fight against Japan's occupation of China during World War II. "Qu Yuan" by Fu Baoshi. From the Palace Museum, Beijing.
Zhang Huan, "Q Confucius no. 2" (left) and "Q Confucius no. 6," part of an exhibit at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, 2012. Description by Professor Sam Crane, Williams College: "The big animatronic Confucius bust ("Q Confucius no. 2") is speechless: the Sage is not offering us his wise words. Rather, he just looms there, quietly inhaling and exhaling, in a shallow pool of water, a hulking presence. . . . Equally unusual is "Q Confucius no. 6," a robotic Confucius that lurches about within a steel cage. . . . [He] is not settled and comfortable. He thrashes about, armless (unable to hold on to anything), wordless, uncertain. To me, this does not suggest Confucianism as solution but, rather, Confucianism as another site of struggle and confusion and unrest. A supposed cultural golden age of the past cannot be reclaimed in the modern/postmodern present.
As we finish out unit I, this is a good time to reflect on the components we are hoping to tackle over the course of the semester:
Yu Dan on Confucius and the Confucius Temple Performances
Tips for the first assessment:
Follow up from last class:
Once, when Zhuangzi was fishing in the Pu River, the king of Chu sent two officials to go and announce to him: “I would like to trouble you with the administration of my realm.”
Zhuangzi held on to the fishing pole and, without turning his head, said, “I have heard that there is a sacred tortoise in Chu that has been dead for three thousand years. The king keeps it wrapped in cloth and boxed, and stores it in the ancestral temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead and have its bone left behind and honored? Or would it rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud?”
“It would rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud,” said the two officials.
Zhuangzi said, “Go away! I’ll drag my tail in the mud!”
—John Minford and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds., Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations (Columbia University Press, 2000), 215.
Homework: Assignment #104 (prepare for the Unit I assessment on Tuesday).
"Mozi Saves the Song"《墨子救宋》, a graphic novel (lianhuanhua 連環畫) originally published in 1951 by the Chaohua Fine Arts Publishing House and reissued in 2005 by the People's Fine Arts Publishing House.
Life of Mozi:
Times of Mozi:
Consider in triads:
Exploration of key themes:
Homework: Assignment #103
Statue of Confucius at the entrance of the Confucius Temple in Beijing. Photo by Mr. Hall.
China before Confucius
Thinking about technology and states are good, loose ways of showing the bigger context of our first two units:
Late Neolithic Cultures and Bronze Age China. Source: Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 28.
The Axial Age in Chinese History. Source: Mr. Hall. (Download as PDF)
North China Plain during the late Spring and Autumn period (5th century BCE). Source: Wikimedia.
Confucius: Life and Times
For our next part, we will rely on very brief interviews with noted historians. This will be a three-step process:
Confucius: What did he think?
The second part of class will be dedicated to more open roundtable discussion dedicated to the thought of Confucius.
Homework: Assignment #102