Education About Asia: Online Archives

Browse and download over 1,500 articles — feature articles, lesson plans, interviews, classroom resources, and book and film reviews — from Education About Asia (EAA)!

Help us do more

by supporting EAA through print subscriptions and donations.

How to use the EAA Online Search Engine

PLEASE NOTE: All article and essay illustrations, including many images and graphics necessary for understanding the content, may be viewed in the PDF.

  1. 1

    Enter keywords

    in search bar below

  2. 2

    Filter your search

    by selecting your search criteria in the dropdown boxes. Search filters range from geographic location to article topic

  3. 3

    View an article

    by clicking on its title. To view the entire article, select “PDF”

Search for Articles

(culture, history, art, marriage, etc...)

NOTE: Archive articles may be downloaded and reproduced for personal or classroom use only.

Feature Article

Studying Indian Secularism to Understand the US

by Daniel Jasper

Many, if not most, of the readers of this journal believe that the study of Asia helps US students develop their critical thinking and analytical skills. Far too often, however, the study of Asia is relegated to courses that focus solely on Asian studies. This approach em­phasizes the need to understand the specific historical, cultural, social, and political contexts that shape different Asian developments. In this essay, I present a model for a comparative approach that introduces selective c...

Book Review Essay, Resources

Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad

by Daniel A. Métraux

The meeting of two huge locomotives on May 10, 1869, of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railways at Promontory Point in Utah is one of the most notable events in American history. For the first time, the United States was connected by rail from coast to coast and the journey from New York to San Francico, which before would have taken many grueling months, could now be comfortably completed in less than a week. Fortunately, for all those involved in the construction of the transcontinental...

Online Supplement

Supplements for “Teaching Students about Mindfulness and Modern Life”

by Andrew O. Fort, Mark Dennis

What does it mean to live a mindful life today? What kind(s) of thinking and practice does such a life entail? How would it fit into a busy college student’s life? We will address these questions through both theory and practice in this course. We will range from traditional Buddhist ideas to modern science, from classic liberal arts reflection to contemporary mindfulness practices. We will consider how practice and reflection influence one another, and how we engage in personal relationsh...

Feature Article

Teaching Students about Mindfulness and Modern Life

by Andrew O. Fort, Mark Dennis

Are your students often distracted, seemingly addicted to their phones? Have you noticed, as suggested in the quotation above, that anxiety, depression, and other forms of mental and emotional suffering have been rising steadily among the young people you teach, especially in the time of the coronavirus pandemic, which began during final editing of this article? While perhaps a slight exaggeration, we remain convinced that some of our students would more likely give up food, sleep, and even actu...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Contextualizing Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko

by Todd Munson

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, nominee for the 2017 National Book Award for fiction, is a sweeping historical saga of one family’s experience living as “forever foreigners” in twentieth-century Japan. Despite its heft (496 pages in the hardcover edition), the novel is written in an accessible and engaging style appropriate for both undergraduates and high school students. Moreover, Pachinko is set in a particularly rich era of modern East Asian history, encompassing colonial Korea, World War II...

Book Review Essay, Feature Article

Planting the seeds of Wild Mustard: Reading Vietnamese Short Stories in the Study of Asian History and Religion

by William B. Noseworthy

Wild Mustard: New Voices from Vietnam is a collection of contemporary short stories, translated into English and edited by Charles Waugh, Nguyen Lien, and Van Gia (Curbstone Books/Northwestern, 2017). I have used the book in two college courses on the history of Asian religions. This essay primarily focuses on using “Sleeping in the Lotus Flowers,” a story included in the book, in the classroom. There is also contextual content on Vietnamese culture and religion that should be helpful for in...

Book Review Essay, Feature Article

The Sorrow of the Things They Carried: The American War in Việt Nam and Stories Told by Combat Soldiers from Both Sides

by Yasuko Sato

Bao Ninh’s (b. 1952) The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam (1990) and Tim O’Brien’s (b. 1946) The Things They Carried (1990) are Việt Nam classics that depict traumatic memories of war veterans. These two novels bring the reader into communion with the enormous weight of sorrow that resulted from fighting in a devastating war. The Things They Carried, a semi-autobiographical novel that reads like a collection of short stories, is one of the finest and most widely read books about t...

EAA Interview, Feature Article

Boom Country? An Interview with Alan Rosling

by Nimish Adhia

Alan Rosling is an entrepreneur and strategic adviser who has had a deep engagement with India over the past thirty-five years. He is co-founder of ECube, an investment manager dedicated to raising standards of environmental social and governance compliance. He cofounded Kiran Energy after leaving the Tata Group, where he was the first non-Indian Executive Director of Tata Sons (the holding company of the Tata Group), charged with internationalization of the company. His earlier career included ...

Book Review Essay, Resources

Peeling The Onion Stories: “China in Family Photographs: A People’s History of Revolution and Everyday Life”

by Arthur Barbeau

Asked to write a review of China in Family Photographs, I quickly got caught up in the task. Using stories from a series begun in 1996, Ed Krebs and Professor Hanchao Lu translate the tales based on the pictures that accompany the text. They also wrote an introduction to each piece, setting it in context. My reaction was positive, even enthusiastic. I’d call the approach of our two authors ”onion stories.” They are layered. One way is to take the subject of the story and peel back that per...

Feature Article

China’s “National Champions”: Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei

by Jeffrey Melnik

Before reading this article, maybe you checked your Apple iPhone or Google Android phone for today’s weather or the news or caught up on some email. Maybe you logged onto Facebook and caught up with your friends or shopped for things on Amazon. Maybe after some intense study reading the pages of EAA, you plan to unwind by watching some movies on Netflix or playing some Fortnite on your gaming console. The work of American tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook is an essential ...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

EngageAsia: An Entrepreneurial Approach to Creating Transnational Communities

by David P. Janes

EngageAsia (www.engageasia.org), a New York-based 501(c)(3) non- profit with the mission of building community in the Asia–Pacific through education, was born out of a need for a new organization with Asia-focused teacher professional development at its core, through intensive discussions between its cofounders and inaugural board, and on culling best practices from years of working with US–Japan teacher professional development programs. Most importantly, the creation of this new organizati...

Columns, Resources

Facts About Asia: Taiwan and Hong Kong: Economic and Political Freedom

by EAA Editorial Office

Despite their modest sizes, Taiwan and Hong Kong both possess very strong economies, ranking 20th  and 30th in GDP (the market value of all goods and services) in a ranking of the top fifty world leaders. Taiwan has massive information and communication technology industries, as well as acting as a major international supplier of goods, while Hong Kong’s four key industries are in financial services, tourism, trading and logistics, and professional and producer services. Since 1996, the Frase...

Feature Article

Inspiration in India for a New Generation of Entrepreneurs

by Ken Schoolland

Business schools everywhere are looking to inspire budding new entrepreneurs. Always in question: Can entrepreneurship be taught, or must it spring from practical experience? Alan Rosling is convinced that practical experience of successful entrepreneurs can inform the education of others through his book, Boom Country? The New Wave of Indian Enterprise. Rosling’s book is also potentially useful for instructors and students who are interested in understanding important factors influencing entr...

EAA Interview

EAA Interview with Graeme Freeman: Interviewed by Lynn Parisi

by Lynn Parisi

In 1978, Mansfield Freeman, an American who spent much of his life in China and who helped found the company that later became American International Group, Inc. (AIG), established a trust whose primary mission would be to create a foundation that would facilitate the development of mutual understanding among Americans and East Asians. Since then, the Freeman Foundation has touched the lives of millions of educators, students, and citizens in both Asia and the United States. Graeme Freeman, his ...

Digital Asia

The SAMR Model and Project-Based Learning in a Chinese History Classroom

by Jared Hall

It is hard to imagine a secondary- or college-level course today that is absent of technology. At the Hotchkiss School, the independent secondary school where I teach, all instructors use Canvas to post assignments and make use of one or more Google apps. Some make digital tools still more central to student learning, incorporating Kahoot! quizzes (https://kahoot. com), website creation, and even 3-D printing into their classes. All of this leaves me wondering how to make sense of these digital ...

Book Review Essay, Resources

Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World

by David L. Kenley

By Graham Allison, Robert D. Blackwill, and Ali Wyne Foreword by Henry A. Kissinger Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0262019125, Hardcover Reviewed by David Kenley Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World, by Graham Allison, Robert D. Blackwill, and Ali Wyne, provides a fascinating introduction to the thoughts and attitudes of one of the twentieth century’s most complex political leaders. Lee was the first prime minister of inde...

Book Review Essay, Resources

Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

by Chandar Sundaram, John F. Copper

By Graham Allison Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017 384 pages, ISBN: 978-0544935273, Hardcover Reviewed by John F. Copper Most readers will likely find Graham Allison’s newest book, Destined for War, interesting and fresh. Many will agree with this reviewer that it is a work that may entitle Allison to join the ranks of Francis Fukuyama (The End of History) and Samuel Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations), who offer powerful templates, if not plausible theories, to help explain c...

Feature Article

Another World Lies Beyond: Three Chinese Gardens in the US

by Han Li

After more than a decade in the making, a groundbreaking ceremony took place for a grand classical Chinese garden in Washington, DC, in October 2016. The US $100 million project, expected to be completed by the end of this decade, will transform a twelve-acre site at the National Arboretum into the biggest overseas Chinese garden to date. Interestingly, the report allures that the garden project is meant to implant “a bold presence” of China near the US Capitol and “achieve for Sino-US rel...

Film Review Essay, Resources

Proof of Loyalty: Kazuo Yamane and the Nisei Soldiers of Hawai`i

by David Huebner

The story of the internment of Japanese-Americans on mainland USA during World War II is well-known. Lesser-known is the story of 150,000 Japanese-Americans living in Hawai`i, fewer than 2,000 were interned. Why the difference? Perhaps because in Hawai`i: Japanese-Americans had long been accepted as loyal Americans.

Feature Article

Singapore Immigration and Changing Public Policies

by Chris Hudson

The demographic composition of the contemporary population of Singapore reflects a complex and vibrant history of a melting pot nation that has grown out of successive waves of immigration stretching back nearly 200 years. As an immigrant society, Singapore is a product of the forces of globalization that have been a constitutive feature of the historical development of many nations. When Britain’s Sir Stamford Raffles signed a treaty in 1819 with local rulers, a swampy little island was trans...

New to EAA?

Before viewing the full archives, view Editor’s Choice Articles, handpicked by EAA Editor, Lucien Ellington, which provide a good overview of EAA and introduction for new readers.