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Day 6 Blog

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 Today was a day filled with learning and adventure! We started off our day by reading a few chapters of the book we are studying, The Chinese in America by Iris Chang. We had a fruitful seminar discussing the themes we covered in our assigned chapters. After wrapping up our conversation, we moved on to watch the documentary show that we have been watching called Asian Americans . Today, we watched episode three, which was a continuation of our viewing yesterday. Here is a screenshot of one of the speakers from Episode 3 Following our lunch break was the more thrilling half of our day, in which we ventured to Integrity Kung Fu to practice our Wushu! We met our very skilled instructor, who introduced us to the art of Wushu and taught us some of their most important values, like focus and balance. We stretched and warmed up, and even got to play some games, like dodgeball (or a version of dodgeball, at least). We learned how to kick and punch, which was fun, as well as how to do differe
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Day 7 Blog

  January 13, 2021 Day 7 blog - Emilio San Vicente On Wednesday, we started the J-term around 12:30 because Mr. Zhou wasn’t available to be with us for continuing with the next topic of today. When it was time to enter the J-term, we worked for about an hour in our presentations for Friday which was a time of research and finding sources for the presentations. Mr. Zhou tried to share with us a documentary but there were some technical issues and instead of watching the documentary, we just kept working on our presentations. After one hour or less, it was time to go home and grab our stuff. 
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Day 5 Blog

January 11, 2021 Day 5 blog - Emilio San Vicente On Monday, we started to read and discuss the book called “Iris Chang The Chinese in America”. The main topic that we dived into was about the labor and the transcontinental railroad Chinese workers. The main point of this interesting topic is about how The Chinese which arrived in California during the “Golden Rush”, was deemed too weak for the dangerous, strenuous job of building the railroad east of California. We also saw how tough and difficult situations that Chinese workers faced during their jobs, for example, racism and safety issues. It was pretty interesting to see this amazing topic and also how my classmates and Mr. Zhou were sharing and giving opinions for complementing the facts of the book which is a rich way of learning for connecting with the work and with people.  The next thing that we did after discussing this book and also about our ideas, it was time to take a rest and take lunch for moving then to the next activit
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Day 4 Blog

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Over the course of day four of the china culture J-Term, our group participated in a number of activities ranging from discussions and readings to an excursion to a Buddhist temple. We kicked the day off with a reading about early Chinese and other Asian immigrants and the hardships that they faced while attempting to immigrate to the United States. This reading also included detailed accounts of life in pre-industrial china and the impenetrable social hierarchy that existed at the time and made immigration to the US such an attractive prospect. This discussion was followed by a short break and then we watched a documentary about Japanese immigrants and their experiences with World War Two racism in America and how they were treated in their internment camps. It was a very interesting and powerful documentary and really highlighted the racism that Asian Americans have had to endure.  After our lunch break, we watched a quick video introducing us to Buddhism and then visited a Vietnames
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Day 3 Blog - Charlie Brisch

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  Charlie Brisch Mr. Zhou January 7th, 2020 Chinese Culture Day 3 Today we read the introduction to the book we are reading during class, The Chinese In America by Iris Chang. This book talks about the hardships chinese people had to go through when coming to America, how they came to America, and their stories. After our reading and discussion, we listened to a short 10 minute podcast about the Houston Chinatown and how it has moved locations, unlike other Chinatowns. When we finished listening to the podcast we got started on our way to Chinatown. Once we arrived in Chinatown, we had to do a scavenger hunt. In this scavenger hunt we had to find different things and take pictures of them. The first item was an instant noodles brand with the logo being a chef with a chefs hat. There were many different brands and nobody really knew which one to take a picture of because there wasn’t an exact one we could decide on. The second task was to find two different regional cuisine restaur
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Day 1 & 2 Blog - Leon Hoang

  Day 1 & 2 Blog - Leon Hoang On Tuesday, we started the J-Term with an identity wheel to get a better understanding of ourselves. This included questions regarding our gender, socio-economic class, and more. The point of this was to dive into the idea of  “Who exactly we are.” After this, we did a short seminar on an article about “American exceptionalism.” Exceptionalism is the perception or belief that a species, country, society, institution, movement, individual, or period is "exceptional" (i.e., unusual or extraordinary). We discussed how some political parties in the United States, such as the republican party, think of America as the best country in the world or as “exceptional,” as the article suggests. We then tried to form connections between China and the U.S.A in this way.  In the afternoon, we watched a documentary called “American Factory.” It is a real-life story of how a Chinese billionaire purchased a factory in Ohio. However, tension started when Chines
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