Misconceptions Of Culture In Postcards From Tomorrow Square By James Fallows

China In a Different Light In the book Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler proves that China is more diversified than it is perceived by most scholars and researchers. In his first book, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze 2001, Hessler analyzes the social structure of China where he was a volunteer as a peace corp member. In his work, he created a mentality of a well-structured society where the majority of people struggled to support their culture. The second book, Oracle Bones, gets more exquisite details of the changing China and the rapid changes in the country to meet the demands of globalization, internationalization, and integration.

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.

     Mark Salzman’s purpose was to take you to China and introduce you to the people he had met on his journey. He had published this book only two years after he had gone to China. He desperately wanted to share an outsiders look into China and what influences were in his life. Mark wrote so fluidly that it was person to person.

Today, throughout most of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is realized as one of the most chaotic and deadly times in chinese history; often referred to as the “ten lost years.” However, during the revolution, many hopeful individuals sought after change and looked toward Mao as

China is the fastest emerging political power in the world, a power that in a short amount of time turned from a third-rate industrial nation with lots of raw potential, to the second largest economy and one of the largest militaries in the world. But is China’s political and social structures unique? Certainly, the Chinese system possesses certain aspects similar to what already exists in other modern nation-states and their governments, however, it is how these pieces coelute together into a coherent political and economic machine that makes the model unique.

Throughout history, China has been the center of many developments allowing for it to establish itself as an advanced society, one that has lasted through a number of dynastic cycles, an attempt towards the creation of a Republic, and still existing, People’s Republic of China, under the rule of China’s Communist party. Throughout this turbulent history China has made much advancement in site of its setbacks and has allowed itself to grow immensely and increase its stature, making it one of the world’s great powers.

The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World, by Ho-fung Hung. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

In a nation’s history there are times of downfall: poverty, war, and inhumanity, and times of prosperity: a period of peace and harmony and cultural development. Modern China, 1900-1970, was a point of isolation, poverty, and lack of freedom. In “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China”, the author Jung Chang tells the first hand experience of her grandmother, mother, and herself living in China during the Japanese invasion, the Kuomintang rule, and Mao Zedong rule. Changes in gender treatment, education, freedom, and government occurred from the beginning of the period to the end, whereas the downfalls in the economy, familial customs, hierarchy, and the harsh consequences of disobeying government and culture were continuities of Modern China.

Gambling has made immense impacts on the everyday lives of a countless amount of people. Somehow this western pastime has integrated and almost taken control of the Asian and American Asian communities. The gambling issue within the Asian culture has affected families, and individuals in such drastic ways. Within the last few years we have seen an immense outburst of gambling in Macau, which is now the gambling capital of the world. Along with the recent outburst of gambling in Macau we find the dark side of gambling. The illegal activities that follow gambling have taken a toll on society as well as the people involved. Also we quickly see the economic impact made by all the money flowing through Macau. Gambling

Being born and raised in India, married in the US to my beloved who is orignially from China, and currently living and raising our two kids in China for the last several years, I have had the opportunity to observe a lot of what this book talks about in an up-close and personal way. While I am impressed by the amount of research and effort that has obviously gone into this book, I am ultimately disappointed by the author's inability to transcend his own biases and the tendency to measure everything from what may be best called a "Western" viewpoint. The author's understanding of India is clearly much superior than his familiarity with China. China is a notoriously difficult onion to peel and I'm afraid the author does not get beyond a couple

One experience so far in China that left a strong impression on my mind was a visit to the Shaanxi museum of history. Our tour guide was a locally educated young woman in her twenties. As she took us through the different periods of Chinese history, at every exhibit showing some sort of tool or mechanistic contraption she would turn and say “as you can see, the Chinese people are very smart!” She also recounted a story in which she was very offended that an American made a comment that Chinese people are short, to which she replied “yes, we are, but we have five thousand years of history and culture!” Both the richness and vastness of Chinese history was a huge source of pride for her, as her slightly illogical response to the American’s comment shows. In retrospect, her age denotes that she grew up on the government’s campaign in the 1990s to educated students about China’s greatness, to foster pride.

Being a part of Portuguese colony for so long and out of every Chinese jurisdiction Macau was developed as an independent state with legal gambling. The main developers just follow the foot steps which were taken during the development of Las Vegas. (www.atimes.com). As their were less facilities for patrons, so the frequency of guest were also less, but with the time and the involvement of local Chinese people and no restriction on gambling made the Macau more favorable.

For section two of the book, the author purposely dedicated chapter 5 to “U.S-China Misunderstandings”. The author breaks the chapters up into different questions from the general view point Americans get wrong about China to more in-depth issues such as ethnicity, religion, and governing system. It is clear that the focus of the chapter is about the misunderstandings that some Americans may have of China, thus it could be difficult for some non-American readers to relate to this specific chapter.

In the twenty-first century, China accomplishes great achievements in its economy, technology and diplomacy. As it becomes a country that has the fastest increasing rate in economy, masters spacecraft-building technics, and actively participates in International meetings and competitions, it draws the foreign media’s attention on exploring the country itself and presenting how its society and people are to their people who may not know much about those. However, although foreign media reports more frequently about China, many information they give out are one-sided and biased; their inabilities to portray a fair image of this country’s society and its people often lead to stereotyping by foreigners and tensions between them and Chinese people living across the world. These bias should be corrected and eliminated from media’s report.

New casino projects are already popping up in the nearby region and looking to attract high-rollers away from Macau. This particular market segment has been an integral part of Macau's growth and currently accounts for 60-65% of the revenues of its largest casinos (The Economist, 2013). As Chinese leaders attempt to zero in on leadership corruption, high-rollers seek alternatives to the restricted Macau.