Hygienic Modernity And China 's Semicolonialism

China has changed in certain ways and remained the same in others from the early Golden Ages to the late 1900s. China has experienced a series of cultural and political transformations, shaping the lives of many Chinese citizens. Culturally, the country’s art and literature hardly changed for almost eight hundred years. Along with their culture, China remained politically the same from the beginning of the Golden Ages all the way until the 1800s. On the other hand, China’s government and society were restructured after new leaders took over. From a monarch to total communism, China’s society had a multitude of new ideas and policies they had to adapt to.

The Chinese culture is built around thousands of years of tradition. Understanding these Chinese beliefs and social influences may benefit you when attending to someone of this culture.

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, as the country grew and trade flourished, periodic epidemics struck regions of the nation as population density increased. Outbreaks of influenza, cholera took over the nation, and in the south, one of the most prevalent was yellow fever. Due to these diseases, a lot of public health policies were either created or changed to better suit the new issues arising. In this essay, I will argue that the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 brought upon many changes in the health realm in terms of public sanitation. In order to prove the epidemic s place in the history of health policies, I will be discussing the creation of the new sewer system, waste disposal techniques, and other projects created.

After China had been conquered by the Mongols and their population was diminished by the plague, they began to look to into their past in order to shape their future. The Chinese society allowed “two empresses [write] instructions for female behavior” (423). These behaviors included those that were held previously to the Chinese women and were seen as “traditional expectations” (423). Much of the Chinese culture was changed due to the rule of the Mongol Empire. Because of this, China attempted to put an end to any evidence of foreign rule from the Mongol Empire. This included the “[discouragement] [of] the use of Mongol names and dress” (423). This discouragement of the Mongol traditions provided China the opportunity to reintroduce the concept of Confucian learning. This is another

These two tragic deaths, both filled with dramatic irony, reveal Zhang Yimou’s critique of communist collectivist culture and the class structure and power in revolutionary China. Communist collectivist culture may produce benefits such as communal kitchens and giving poor townspeople a sense of hope. However, the class antagonisms between revolutionaries and counterrevolutions produces an environment where no one challenges authority and where blind patriotism sometimes morphs into hysteria like

Fears of polluted air and water, and the extinction of wildlife species due to contamination have overtaken the western world. In an excerpt, titled “The Filth They Breathe in China,” taken from American historian, Michael Auslin’s book, the author focuses on the nation where, due to its rapid industrial growth, these effects of pollution are most prominent, China. In his article, Auslin, uses anecdotes, uses strong diction, and uses appeals to logic and credibility in order to capture the enormity of China’s pollution problem.

In Lu Hsun’s short story “Medicine” brings an autobiographical and mystery element that highlights certain faults of Chinese socialism. According to the mandate of heaven an individual with given power, typically the emperor, has the right to rule the divine power. However, “Medicine” dichotomizes traditional Chinese culture by ridiculing that their really isn’t an essential culture. Lu Hsun critiques Confusion principle by comparing it through “cannibalistic” attributes. “Medicine” warns readers that the Confucian tradition will consume the future and does this through three important key factors: bringing opposite concepts to reveal the author 's

Imperialism is a important period for China because it protected natural resources, and gave the economy a boost it needed. The European countries were looking to exploit the vast natural resources China had and without a strong government and no political power they could have gotten walked all over. From there this boosted the economy to the point where they could produce materials the European countries were looking for. They also had the ability to sell the natural resources straight up which brought more money into the nation. With the boost in the economy education and culture were able to flourish throughout which led to a positive influence for the future. Imperialism created many great things in China and resulted in them flourishing into a powerhouse.

Reading T. R. Reid's new book brought me back to that conversation. ''Confucius Lives Next Door'' is aptly named. Reid, a longtime reporter and Asia correspondent for The Washington Post, has nailed his copy of the Analects to the mast. Drawing on the experience of his own and his family's life in Tokyo and other east Asian points, he has written a paean to what he terms ''east Asia's social miracle -- how the Asians have built modern industrial societies characterized by the safest streets, the best schools and the most stable families in the world.'' Asians, he holds, have ''a sense of civility and harmony that you can feel,'' and they ''achieved their social miracle primarily by holding to a

Timothy Brook’s book, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China is a detailed account of the three centuries of the Ming Dynasty in China. The book allows an opportunity to view this prominent time period of Chinese history. Confusions of Pleasure not only chronicles the economic development during the Ming dynasty, but also the resulting cultural and social changes that transform the gentry and merchant class. Brook’s insights highlight the divide between the Ming dynasty’s idealized beliefs, and the realities of its economic expansion and its effects. Brook describes this gap through the use of several first hand accounts of individuals with various social statuses.

When Western nations began making regular diplomatic and economic contact with China, their envoys brought back stories of a “backwards” people who technologically inferior, clung to imperial military rule, and allowed what the Western world would have considered violations of human rights. For years, China attempted to remain resolute against Western influence, fearing it would corrupt their society and lead people to abandon the tenants of Confucianism and other ideals that had been held for generations. Most significantly, they restricted trade with all Western nations to Guangzhou, severely limiting the amount of ships that could come and go from the country, and forbade the British from establishing an embassy, as that

The term “Confucianism” is often regarded as a complex mechanism of social, political, moral as well as religious beliefs that have considerable influence especially upon the civilizations belonging to the East Asian countries such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, North Korea, South Korea along with Singapore and Vietnam. With reference to the observation made by Reid (1999), it can be viewed that a clear depiction about different principles and beliefs exists within the sphere of “Confucianism”. Therefore, the major purpose of this report is to briefly review of T. R. Reid’s book “Confucius Lives Next Door: What Leaving In The East Teaches Us About Living In the West” through concisely unfolding the experience of

Ho-fung Hung’s work attempts to reconcile the widespread expectation that China’s rise would lead to a fundamental change in the global status quo with the observed fact that China has become increasingly connected to and one with the global status quo. To do this, he must first examine China’s rise and prove that it upholds the global status quo, and further must look into the origins of China’s rise, going back to the 13th century, to understand why this rise seemingly changed so little about the global world order.

In 1997, Dorothy Ko published an article in the Journal of Women’s History called “The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeen-Century China”. The article is organized with a brief introduction as to what footbinding is, the negative outlook on this practice due to problematic archives, and then she discusses the examples she gives to support her thesis. Ko’s thesis was “Chinese elite males in the seventeenth century regarded footbinding in three ways: as an expression of Chinese wen civility, as a marker of ethnic boundaries separating Han from Manchu, and as an ornament or embellishment of the body.” Since Ko is a celebrated and established author on women in early East Asia, the article “The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeen Century China” is an accurate and useful source if one is trying to study that area.

The eight photos I chose were arranged in a particular order. The first four were selected from the Globetrotter’s Japan while the other four photographs were chosen from John Thomson’s Illustrations of China and Its People: A Series of Two Hundred Photographs. Moreover, the photos on the left side depicted the traditional Asian people and places, in contrast with those on the right side, which seemed to be more “modern” due to some western elements presented in the pictures. These eight photos well represented the themes that are recurring in the three albums: Asians in traditional dress doing menial labor without the presence of technology,