`` Nothing Happened `` By Chan Koon Chung

There was a Mid-Autumn parade in Chinatown on that day, accompanying the dragon and lion dancing, Marann started to give us illustration about Chinatown. Because It is hard to get a parking lot in Chinatown, and the people who live in Chinatown celebrated Mid-Autumn Day, so I decided to take BART to go there. Before I met our tour guide, I went across to Union Square and passed a tunnel. The one side of the tunnel is to connect the western world, like Union Square, and the another side of the tunnel is to connect to the orient world, Chinatown. Finally I walked to inside Portsmouth Square Park, park level, and then I saw our tour guide, Manuel Maranan who took us to Chinatown. That’s a very big park, and it’s close to Hilton hotel, there was a China’s nation flag, also there was a Taiwan’s flag. Many Chinese visitors

Even with her previous experiences at Beijing University and at Big Joy Farm, Wong still held some belief that the Chinese system wasn’t as bad as it was sometimes made out to be. This event proved to her that it was. “The enormity of the massacre hit home…Although it had been years since I was a Maoist, I still had harbored some small hope for China. Now even that was gone” (259). As a reporter Wong was able to view the progression of the protests in leading up to the massacre, and in viewing it understood that the Chinese people were much more independent than they had previously demonstrated over the past 50 years. She had continuously seen the Chinese people following what they were told between learning in school or with physical labor, yet this protest was one of the first large scale displays of the unacceptance of the regime by the people, and the government did not know what to do with it. But because of this, Wong was able to recognize that the people were not reliant on this way of life that they had previously been bound to, but truly could lead for themselves and take control. The massacre awakened Wong both to the reality that the government was not acting to benefit the people, and that the people were more than capable of acting for

In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, O’Brien drills the idea into Winston’s mind that reality is only truly present in the human mind. The Chinese government tries to establish this within the media, the internet, and the people of China. William Lutz’s essay, “No One Died in Tiananmen Square” reflects Orwell’s 1984 and the thoughts of the Party, such as re-education, and reality control.

Joshua Wong is one of the most well-known teen activists to date. He is doing a lot for his home city, Hong Kong, China, by revolting against China’s government. Joshua Wong is going above and beyond for not only Hong Kong, but the whole country of China. “ It’s time to renew the foreign policy of different countries toward Hong Kong ”, says Joshua himself. In 2014 Joshua Wong was all over the news about his student-led protest During this time Joshua Wong also had some struggles. Someone attempted to assault him at an airport, police set up roadblocks for his safety, hunger strikes were led by him. All of this for one teenage activist trying to support his rights for democracy.

(Larsson, 1997). Would Hong Kong’s role as a door to China strengthen with the liberation?

The plans and narratives of the Kowloon Walled City have drastically changed through the years, as it has been an unrolled and unregulated enclave between the British and Chinese governments. It began as an officially planed Chinese military fort and afterwards witnessed three distinct stages of lawlessness, demolition and rebirth as an urban garden. It all officially began in the 16th century, when the Chinese built a defensive garrison town filled with soldiers, civil officers and their families (Carney, 2013). However, when Hong Kong was leased to the British in 1898, the Kowloon Walled City became a enclave in the colonized territory, where no laws of the official state applied and everything began expanding spontaneously. The first stage of the city’s unintentional self-organization began in the 1950’s. It is widely known as the time of three vices – gambling, prostitution and drug dealing. The official regulations of the British did work on Hong Kong and were reversely reflected in the Chinese enclave. As soon as something was forbidden in the city-state, people massively poured into the un-ruled territory and let the sins to flourish. This way the Kowloon Walled City became synonymous with violence, crime and disturbance. During this period, the city and people became one, the buildings were connected by piping systems and wires, the water poured through the holes and sunlight could barely reach the lower levels. Yet, in the early 1970’s the situation started changing

Odd Arne Westad’s Restless Empire traces China’s participation with other countries over the past 250 years. Westad disputes that China has an ongoing association with the rest of the world through trading of silks and porcelains, allowing China to dominate the international trade market during the Ming and Qing empires. This significant piece of evidence reflects China’s connection with the outside world contrary to the thought that China has been an isolated society detached from most of the world as evidenced by China’s involuntary participation with the foreign countries which stems from colonialism. The author examines China’s foreign affairs over the past three centuries to provide chronological events that underline the advancement in economic growth of China, leading to the establishment of modern China.

Hessler committed a great deal of mental energy in developing the initial structure of the book and collecting the qualitative research data which shows the lives of individuals in Hong Kong. In many instances, he compares Hong Kong to the diversified New York City. Through a personalized interview, observation, and

In recent years, China has become a worldwide superpower-seemingly out of nowhere. War-torn and sick of being trampled on by western powers, the Communist Party of China has given the almost 4,000 year old country a new lease on life. But all this newfound power and “prosperity” came at a price paid in sweat and blood. In the memoir Red Scarf Girl, Jiang Ji-Li recalls her experiences growing up during Chairman Mao’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, during a time where hundreds of thousands were unfairly persecuted and even tortured by their brainwashed friends and family. Although it is clear that my experiences and Jiang Ji-Li’s are very different, there are also some similarities.

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

In her paper, “The ‘revenge of history’: China’s collective memories and labor protests in north eastern China,” Ching Kwan Lee describes how China’s market reform has led to mass unemployment and poverty among state workers in the rustbelt of China. This declining standard of living has resulted a nostalgia for Maoist socialism, in what she calls “the revenge of history,” or the idea that those who have benefited the most from socialistic policies lost the most after the market reforms. The plight of these workers is dramatized in the movie “Blind Shaft,” where Li Yang tells the story of two con artists who trick migrant workers into joining them in the coal mines, only to kill them in the mines and reap profits in the form of “hush money” from the corrupt owners of the mines. Lee’s idea of the “revenge of history” is useful for interpreting this movie, because it provides context for the events depicted, allowing the audience to gain a better understanding of the motivations of the con artists. At first glance, the con artists are just greedy men, looking to make a quick profit. Looking from the Lee’s perspective, however, shows that these men are forced into this situation because of the poverty pushed onto them by capitalistic market reforms. Lee’s metaphor of “the revenge of history” allows the audience to gain a more complex and nuanced view of the characters Song Jinming and

Imperialism’s effects on China has always been controversial and debatable. Andrew Nathan’s article on Imperialism’s Effects on China explains imperialism’s positive contributions to modern day China and defends the theory that China’s difficulties are caused by internal factors rather than external. On the other hand, Joseph Esherick’s Harvard on China: The Apologetics of Imperialism argues that China’s economic and social disruptions are caused by imperialism. However, when one examines the evidence chosen and rhetoric of both sides, one may realize the faults in Nathan’s essay which are not shown in Esherick’s. Esherick, as opposed to Nathan, delivers his arguments and defends his stance in a well-rounded manner along with wise usage of

In the late 1900s, there was a New Authoritarianism in China, and it was a political trend of thought during the Cultural Revolution. China started to become an emerging nation and industrialized nation after the Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile, the social culture and the power of government were also changing. In this art installation, Wisdom of the Poor: Communal Courtyard, 2011-2013, a Chinese artist Song Dong shows us how China was threatened by the rapid economic development. Also, it is a mixed materials, and located in the Art Gallery of Ontario. Communal Courtyard makes the audiences to reflect on how the social authority changes the people’s daily life, and the impact on their ways of thinking. In this essay I will examine the relationship of this installation art between authority and the society, how Song Dong creates charismatic authority to make people to accept his artwork,

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 a paper published on boundary 2 in 1998, Ien Ang examines how diasporic paradigm reshapes our former essentialist and monolithic understanding of Chineseness. From a diasporic perspective, both the geographical and cultural borders of the current regime of China would lose the authority to define and delineate the significance of “Chinese” (Ang 225. Moreover, she tries to develop this paradigm by revealing insufficient points in current discussion and proposing a more overdetermined understanding of diasporic identity based on “different historical, geographical, political, and cultural contexts” (Ang 227).