Education About Asia: Online Archives

NEW FOR 2023: Beginning with Spring 2023, subscribers to the print edition of Education About Asia (EAA) will receive additional exclusive digital access to the current year’s three issues (spring, fall, and winter) as an online flipbook for the duration of their active subscription. Articles from the three print issues for 2023 will be uploaded to the EAA Digital archives in 2024. View the TOC and Editor’s Message for the Spring 2023 issue. Subscribe today to stay up to date with EAA!

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Book Review Essay, Resources

China and the World Economy

by Edward Friedman

The global impact of China’s rise, as presented by these informed and insightful authors, is counterintuitive. For educated people who lack expertise in international political economy, China’s rise is simply a great success. China will soon be the world’s largest economy. It is often described as the world’s factory. Its exports have allowed China to amass more than the equivalent of three trillion US dollars in foreign exchange, a feat that puts China in a class of its own. For these a...

EAA Interview, Feature Article

Social Media in the South Korean Presidential Election: An Interview with Hoon Lee

by Hoon Lee, Lucien Ellington

Hoon Lee (PhD, Communication, University of Michigan) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Nam Center for Korean Studies and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. Prior to the doctoral program at Michigan, he studied the political economy of East Asia at Stanford University. Lee’s current research agenda centers on emerging social media and how they intersect with interpersonal communication to shape the attitudes and behaviors of ci...

Resources, Web Gleanings

Web Gleanings: Tips for Searching Asia

by Judith S. Ames

We have all heard the expression “Google it.” Indeed, when most of us are looking for information on the Internet, that is precisely what we do: We enter search terms in Google and hope for the best. However, there are tips and tools that can help you become a more skilled Internet searcher, and this article includes examples that give you tools to understand options, focus your search, and improve your results. Google is the most popular search engine, and its features will be the focus her...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

My Favorite Asia-Related Digital Media: Japanese and Korean Pop Music

by Samantha Hughes

While watching Japanese anime and playing video games, I fell in love with Asian media, especially its music. Genres like Japanese Rock (JRock), Visual Kei, Korean Pop (KPop), and Korean Hip-hop (KHip-hop) became the major focus of my personal playlist. After discovering these styles of music, I became fond of two particular companies: Pony Canyon Studios in Japan and YG Entertainment in South Korea. These two important Asian media companies have been dishing out quality entertainment and music ...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

My Favorite Asia-Related Digital Media: Asia-Crossing Cultures Online in the K-12 Classroom

by Barbara Berry

Through the Internet, students in the United States and other countries have unprecedented opportunities to learn about Asia. Various factors influence a teacher’s ability to provide connections and relevant activities to engage students in topics relating to Asia. The age of modern media provides an accessible vehicle for all students to travel to the opposite side of the globe. Classroom instruction is readily supplemented with web resources that address current topics and explore historical...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

My Favorite Asia-Related Digital Media: Korean and Japanese Films

by Kathy Newman

“I believe . . . When you are not with me there are no stars in the sky. I believe . . . The way back to you will feel a little far. . . . I’ll be waiting. I do it for you.” These words, translated from the theme song “I Believe” from the Korean film My Sassy Girl, echo the sentiments of the film. I have enjoyed this lovely song many times since I took an East Asian studies course from Indiana University. I often use the Korean video My Sassy Girl and the Japanese video Ping Pong in my...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

The Asia Matters for America Initiative and US-Asia Relations

by Satu Limaye

America’s relations with Asia have never been all or only about issues of war, peace, and treaties; and participants in these relations have never been based only in national capitals. Former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific James Kelly has remarked that the “general public has a growing sense that something big is going on in Asia.” Public opinion polling bears this out. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs Survey for 2012 showed that, for the first time, Ame...

Online Supplement

Internet Links to accompany the Teaching Resources Essay “Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative: An Introduction”

by HB Paksoy

Editor’s Note: See the print article in EAA vol. 18: 2 for more information about the archive and the links below. 1. “Alpamysh: Central Asian Identity under Russian Rule” http://tiny.cc/q7pc1w In this extensive work written in 1989, HB Paksoy writes about Alpamysh, an ornate Turkish oral history (or dastan) set mostly in verse. Paksoy describes the importance of Alpamysh as a repository of Turkish history and culture and the struggle of Central Asians to preserve it in the wake of S...

Online Supplement

The Indian Ocean Tsunami: The Global Response to a Natural Disaster

by Greg Bankoff

Just as the twentieth century is mainly remembered as an age of “total war” and conflicts of truly global proportions, so the twenty-first seems set to become the century of mega-catastrophes: the million-death earthquake, the $500 billion hurricane, the transcontinental pandemic. So far, none of these scenarios have come to pass, but instead, the new century has been witness to three disasters of epic proportions, even if they fall somewhat short of the aforementioned cataclysms: the Indian...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Course Readers

by Peter K. Frost

The first four of fifteen scheduled readers published by Professor Laura Hein’s The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Course Readers project are certainly a technological triumph. Each online reader reprints Asia-Pacific Journal articles, endnotes, and suggestions for further readings. Links allow visitors to view individual articles; go directly to suggested further readings if these are online; and, in some cases, access relevant material in individual articles. The editor includes a number ...

Film Review Essay, Resources

Live Your Dream: The Taylor Anderson Story

by David Huebner

Nearly 20,000 lives were lost in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami on March 11, 2011. With such devastating losses, including over US $500 billion in property destruction, it is a challenge to sort out the many tributes to the many lives lost. However, Live Your Dream: The Taylor Anderson Story stands out as personal, reflective, honest, and richly filled with a sense of hope. While there are several YouTube, Facebook, and written remembrances of the lives lost in the quake (and subseq...

Feature Article

Cyberbullying in Asia

by Christine Suniti Bhat, Moira A. Ragan, Shih-Hua Chang

In Japan, a high school male attempted suicide twice and rarely left his room after receiving intimidating messages on his cellphone and having embarrassing photographs posted on the Internet. When a seventeen year-old female in India started to refuse to go to school, her mother discovered that material of a sexual nature was posted on her social networking site and that her peers were teasing her about it. A young male in India received death threats on his cellphone, warning him of dire conse...

Book Review, Resources

China’s Environmental Challenges

by Andrew M. McGreevy

By JUDITH SHAPIRO MALDEN: POLITY PRESS, 2012 205 PAGES, ISBN 978-0745660912, PAPERBACK Reviewed by Andrew M. McGreevy Judith Shapiro is imminently qualified to address China’s environmental problems because she has spent years in China, is well-known for previous publications, and is a specialist in global environmental politics. The most significant feature of China’s Environmental Challenges is her multidisciplinary approach. Most of the book encompasses the time period after 1900, and...

Feature Article

Wa Minority Youth and Mobile Phones in Urban China

by Tzu-kai Liu

This is a tale of labor migration and the social networking experiences of China’s Wa ethnic minority group. The PRC government classifies the Wa people as one of fifty-five ethnic minorities in the country. Facing poverty and dismal economic opportunities in their rural homelands, the Wa—along with innumerable minority youths in their teens and twenties, such as the Miao and Tibetans—have migrated to China’s coastal manufacturing centers in search of menial factory work. These “floati...

Feature Article

China’s Happy Farm and the Impact of Social Gaming

by Wang Huang

Social network games (SNG or social games), the online games played through social network sites (SNS) or mobile devices, began to grow in 2008, after SNS such as Facebook opened up for developers to make video games in 2007. SNG distinguish themselves from other types of online games in that they are embedded in SNS, where people usually connect to real-life friends and family members with real-life identities. SNG are often casual, easy-to-pick-up, multiplayer experiences that allow interactio...

Feature Article

China’s Weibo: Political and Social Implications?

by Xinyue Chang

Sina Weibo, China’s microblogging answer to Twitter, has become one of the most popular sites in China’s cyberspace since its debut in 2009. Today, the microblog has about 140 million active users. Compared to noninteractive communication channels, Weibo and similar social networking sites have the potential to challenge China’s authoritarian rule. What follows are depictions of how this microblogging technology is being used in China as a source of news, as a tool for combating corruptio...

Feature Article

New Media in Korea and Japan: Emergent Trends

by Damien Spry

Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea henceforth) have highly developed mobile and broadband Internet infrastructures and enthusiastic, innovative mobile media cultures. Japan pioneered new forms of communication and entertainment, and Japanese society still produces startling innovations in the use of technology, for example, using robots as surrogate pets and as nursing attendants. South Korea has more recently overtaken Japan and everyone else to enjoy the world’s best Internet servi...

Feature Article

The Mongolian World Empire: Does It Matter?

by Lisa Haag-Kang

I teach a variety of Asian civilization courses, and when we come to the Mongol world empire, students invariably question my credibility. “Pax Mongolica?” they say. “Mongolian Peace? Are you nuts?” “Well, yes,” I am forced to admit, “but not right now and not about this.” When I poll the students about their knowledge of Chinggis Khan (a.k.a Genghis Khan), without exception they report that he was the most irredeemably destructive conqueror of all time. “That’s because all t...

Book Review Essay, Resources

Bing: From Farmer’s Son to Magistrate in Han China

by Jeffrey L. Richey

In a recently published study, Paul R. Goldin takes stock of the advances and limitations of the study of early China in Canada and the United States. Acknowledging the seminal contributions of earlier scholars in the field, he also points out liabilities that arise from the way in which North American scholars have shaped our understanding of early Chinese culture. Especially misleading, according to Goldin, is the widespread notion that “there was no room in early China for named individual ...

Book Review, Resources

Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness

by Susan Walcott

This large, heavily illustrated book is suitable for a school library collection, supplementing others on Bhutan. Through his photographs and narrative, John Wehrheim presents his personal interpretation of the country based on numerous trips taken over several decades. His presentation pitches Bhutan as the “Exotic Other,” illustrated by photos taken on his trips that carry out the theme that this would be a cool place (in more ways than one) for a special holiday. The Association of Bhutan...

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.