Education About Asia: Online Archives

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Feature Article

The People’s Republic of China and Christianity: A Brief Introduction

by Elena Vishnevskaya

The spellbinding surge of Christianity in China has baffled the Western scholarly community for several decades as Christianity has been growing by leaps and bounds despite the restrictive religious policy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): as of this article’s publication, Christian believers in China tally between 70 and 100 million.1 To appreciate the runaway expansion of Christianity in China is to recognize the contextual factors which have shaped this unique phenomenon—spiritual, ...

Feature Article

“Hong Kong is Our Home”: Hong Kongers Twenty-Five Years After the Handover

by Christopher K. Tong

  “Hong Kong Is Our Home” Hong Kongers Twenty-Five Years After the Handover [caption id="attachment_19701" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Flag of Hong Kong. Source: Wikimedia Commons at https://tinyurl.com/28a8kknu.[/caption] Hong Kong has always existed in between empires, on the margins of historical time. The fishing hamlet on the edge of the Chinese empire became a political entity of importance only in the nineteenth century, when the Qing court ceded the island to Grea...

Teaching Resources Essay

Teaching the Silk Road(s): The Past, the Present, and the Future?

by Andrew M. McGreevy

The concept Silk Road(s) is prominent in Asian studies for a variety of reasons. It first became influential in the second century BCE, has served multiple functions throughout world history, and remains important in the present and, most probably, well into the future. The essay that follows is intended for middle, high school, and undergraduate instructors, and includes a brief EAA article from over twenty years ago, a college teaching guide, and three different books. Instructors, and possibl...

Book Review

Chinese Literature: An Introduction

by Fred Lindstrom (Reviewer)

Ihor Pidhainy’s Chinese Literature: An Introduction, a slim volume of 110 pages, offers a clear and concise overview of Chinese literature from 1250 BCE to the end of the twentieth century. It is an ideal source for anyone who hopes to explore the literary traditions of China.

Book Review

Dragonfly Dreams

by Anne Prescott

Dragonfly Dreams chronicles the life of the Liu family in Tianjin, China, in the early 1940s, a time and place in history often overlooked by Americans. Appropriate for middle school grades and above, the captivating story is a vehicle for learning about China, and it can also be used to teach about the challenges and joys experienced by young people during times of conflict.

Fish Shoes: A Palace Drama Historical Background and Chapter 1: “The Princess and the Horse Race”

by Diane Wolff

In the thirteenth century, Europe knew nothing of the rise of a new imperial power in Asia. The Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Kings of Europe knew nothing about the Muslim political and commercial activities in Asia. The news of the Mongol conquests in Russia and the invasion of Hungary and Poland caused a reaction in Europe. They needed to know the intentions of the new invaders. By contrast, Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan) and General Subudei considered intelligence a priority. Before ...

Book Review

China and the Founding of the United States: The Influence of Traditional Chinese Civilization

by Peter K. Frost

China and the Founding of the United States The Influence of Traditional Chinese Civilization By Dave Xueliang Wang Lanham, Lexington Books, 2021 365 Pages, ISBN 978: 1793644350, Hardcover Reviewed by Peter K. Frost “The mere thought of Chinese cultural influence on the founding of the United States,” Dave Wang’s states in his very first sentence in this quite extraordinary book, “is unimaginable to some.” The rest of the book is dedicated to combat what he considers “misconcep...

Essay

Sisters and Enemies: A True Story of Two Sisters

by Zhuqing Li

They are two sisters born and raised in China’s southeastern coastal city of Fuzhou in Fujian Province. In a family that claims the last emperor’s tutor, Chen Baochen, as one of its ancestors, the girls had the privilege of traditional tutoring at home, in addition to their missionary school education—modern and bilingual—and had dreams as big as the world. The older sister, Jun, wanted to be a teacher, and the younger one, Hong, wanted to be a “big doctor”—in her own words—to ge...

Feature Article

Variolation to Vaccine: Smallpox Inoculation Travels East to West and Back Again

by Susan Spencer

The history of the inoculation process itself might help shed light on the roots of controversies we are facing today. In the spring of 1721, England struggled in the grip of a deadly smallpox epidemic. Mandated shutdowns affected businesses, schools, and social venues, health care services were overwhelmed, and the newspapers reported alarming death tolls. Doctors in London seized the opportunity to introduce the public to the concept of inoculation, which had long been practiced in Asia and th...

Feature Article

Knocking on China’s Door: The First Protestant Mission

by Elena Vishnevskaya

China’s “closed-door” policy, upended by the Opium Wars of 1839–1842 and 1856–1860, safeguarded the Middle Kingdom from unwanted advances by the West. A deep-seated suspicion of foreign infiltration—cultural, political, and economic—was augmented by the arrogance of China’s ruling class, who insisted on China’s superiority in the world arena. Western aggression of the 1800s forced China to open up trade with other nations and led to the eventual demise of the Qing dynasty. When...

Feature Article

How the Chinese Communist Party Manages the Bureaucracy: The Case for Rethinking the Role of Information Technology and Good Governance

by Zhen Wang

In November 2021, during a routine inspection of drunk driving in Nanchang, the capital city of Jiangxi province, a woman driving a Maserati was stopped on suspicion of drunk driving. She refused to cooperate with an alcohol test and after sixty-six invalid tests she repeatedly told a traffic police officer to “ask Yu Wei to come over” and tried to make a phone call. The officer stopped her from calling and said to her: “It’s useless to call anyone. Do not call for anyone. This is being ...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Back to School Special: “The Top Ten Most Viewed” and More

by EAA Editorial Office

As a teenager, I was interested in lists of the top ten most popular songs and for most of my life, various top ten lists of books have always garnered my attention. Having a top ten “most viewed” EAA archived articles list is a never-ending source of personal interest. Digest readers are cordially invited to check out our "most viewed" EAA archives list (see the right side of the main EAA archives page) and speculate on what trends our list might indicate. Your feedback is of great inter...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

International Politics and Archeology: Disparate Critical Teaching Topics

by EAA Editorial Office

Although these two topics will probably attract different readers, they both are important components of a liberal arts education. Virtually all high schools and colleges in North America and elsewhere offer modern world history; in the US, AP Comparative Government and Politics; and in Europe, the US and elsewhere, International Baccalaureate Programs courses in the “individual and societies” curriculum focus upon international politics and issues. Increasingly, college and universities of...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Xi Jinping, China, and the World (Part 1)

by EAA Editorial Office

During the last 4-5 years, President Xi Jinping’s government has engaged in aggressive domestic and global policies that raise profound concerns for human rights and freedom. This exclusive focuses upon China’s actions in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Xinjiang.

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Intercultural Contacts 2: Visual Learning, Belief Systems, and the Silk Roads

by EAA Editorial Office

The term Asia is both, at one level, geographically accurate, and conceptually useful in understanding specific cultures but at another level, the concept of “Asia” is limiting because of regional and global connections that have existed since antiquity. The focus of the January 2021 EAA Digest Exclusive was intercultural contacts, as is the case with this month’s column. Given the subjects most EAA readers teach, understanding the humanities and social sciences means realizing the power o...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Asia: Dictators, Authoritarian Governments, and Human Rights

by EAA Editorial Office

When confronted by dictators and authoritarian governments, fighting for human rights such as democracy and freedom of thought anywhere is risky at best. Hopefully, these selections from the EAA archives will serve to educate students about individual action in response to authoritarian governments, as well as the human tragedies faced by common people who experience oppressive governments.

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Asia and the World: East Asia-related Literature

by EAA Editorial Office

Proponents of the “bookless curriculum” pedagogy, ideologues from across the political spectrum, and desperate American teachers confronting alarming percentages of students with low reading levels, are perhaps some of the reasons for the diminishment of literature in education. Hopefully, the following selections will inspire those readers who love literature to assign even more literary works on East Asia and the World in their courses. A number of Digest readers have read some of the...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Asia and the World: “Travelers’ Tales”

by EAA Editorial Office

International travel is still a dicey prospect for most of us because of the pandemic, but almost all Digest readers probably love travel at some level. The following entries could be vicarious travel for imaginative readers, but each recommended EAA article or essay, in my opinion, helps students and instructors better understand the often profound effects of literal and figurative travelers and ideas impacting different parts of Asia and the world in a variety of ways.

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Historical Thinking: China

by EAA Editorial Office

A perennial problem is how to make survey history courses, often most likely the only history many high school and college students will ever take, meaningfully encourage students to think deeply about what they learn to better understand not only history, but contemporary cultures as well. How useful is Periodization? How can timelines be vehicles for historical thinking? How can students more deeply understand historical change? In the three articles that follow, students both learn history an...

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.