asian-con-2017-blog

[asian-con-2017-blog]

Asian Con 210 - Masuda Comparison

        In light of the readings we have done so far in this course, I have found myself inclined to connect deeper to the people’s stories we read about. One story in particular is in the book, Autobiography of a Geisha, by Sayo Masuda. This story tells the tale of young Masuda who struggles in her early childhood with abuse, abandonment and later adjusting to her inevitable life as a geisha. The girl’s life is pitiful and empathetic, shaped by unforgiving pressures of those in control that lead Masuda to forgo many life changes she had not anticipated. She curses at her inability to control, the fate she was given and even those who she believed had too much control and hadn’t used it sincerely. She thoroughly acknowledges her losses, her misfortunes, and her unhappiness. As negative as her story seems, it resonates with me in ways I didn’t expect. There is a sort of stigma in sharing one’s pain openly and unashamedly, but I feel with Masuda, her choice in sharing her struggle is admirable. She does not leave out any detail, no matter how horrible it is, with no shame. And I realize some boggling questions as I read her story, such that how can Masuda even feel shame when the shameful events already happened? When the choices were not hers to begin with? Sometimes the past is traumatic and intimidating to talk about, but what we lacked in the past we can make up for in the future. We can build on our strengths and move on knowing we can be defined by more than just what we experienced and use it to create our own identities, to create our own stories. Stories like Masuda’s motivate me to hear other people’s narratives and listen to the stories they create. They give me a sense of understanding and I hope to get the chance of listening to more stories when we travel during interim!

[asian-con-2017-blog]

Asian Con 220 - The Great Divide Is Not So Great

                                   The Great Divide Is Not So Great        In the reimagining of traditional Chinese medicine, Mei Zhan purports that it is not that Chinese Medicine seamlessly globalizes itself throughout the world in transcendence but that the ever-changing “entanglements of translocal systems” reinvents Chinese medicine through negotiations and difference (Zhan, 8). This reinvention specifically relies on imagination and transnationalism but is affected by the hierarchical ordinance of western medicine versus Chinese medicine. In this essay I will explain how it is through these uneven social structures of hierarchy Mei Zhan implies in her various encounters of her book “Other-Worldly” that the appeal of a “true authenticity” of traditional Chinese medicine fails to be realized across the world.        In the first chapter of “Other-Worldly”, Zhan backtracks throughout the history of traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM as it is abbreviated, and specifically references to the impact that policies which tried to combine elements of both TCM and biomedicine had on the attitudes about TCM. From urban Chinese who saw TCM as “backwards and inferior to biomedicine” to campaigns “poist[ing] it as a quintessentially ‘Chinese science’ that was distinctive from ‘western science’” and which held a “supplementary role in modern medicine”, the state made several attempts to separate TCM as a unique practice which “deserved” to be recognized by the world (Zhan, 37). By integrating TCM into western biomedicine, its uniqueness could be emphasized in a way that could appeal globally, even if its role in modern medicine was downplayed. It is ironically in attempting to share the “unique authenticity” of TCM that its position within the world of medicine is largely undermined by Chinese themselves and given an appeal outside of its original source, to the point where clients are confused that “foreigners” are sticking needles into their arms (Zhan, 5).       Zhan notes that the international appeal of TCM is also affected by racial politics outside of the binary of east and west, and it is in these kinds of imagined social hierarchies that makes TCM’s targeted appeal in the world more ambiguous. When an administrator at Shanghai University of Traditional Medicine made a remark about “finally becoming truly international” with students of white middle class backgrounds joining their programs after years of mostly African and Asian students, Zhan considers the implications of her exclamations as bringing light to a refiguration of an inferior past into a present which is “reracialized” by whiteness and therefore, used to give China an upper hand to catch up with the modern world (Zhan, 42). The experiences of Asian American students also reflected this “reracialization” as they felt their treatment from teachers paled in comparison to that of their white colleagues. It was decided then that only with the inclusion of whiteness into the context does foreignness equate internationalism, even though the desire to transcend such barriers was expressed. In centering the focus on a white western context, it becomes decided that TCM must subject to the whim of “true internationalism” or the farthest thing from anything “authentically” Chinese in order to fit in the context it attempts to distinguish itself from. At the same time, fear of TCM’s “authenticity” being lost with Americans, including Asian Americans, delving into the field by people like Dr. Xu exists, and so the position of TCM in a world context is contradictory and unclear (Zhan, 183).        In the beginning of the second chapter, Zhan leans to focus on how it is exactly in the changing dynamics of authorities in TCM that the practice has to negotiate itself around the dominance of biomedicine in order to be seen as legitimate (Zhan, 64-65). Contrasting directly to the commodification of TCM by the western mainstream as “an alternative” to biomedicine which is “softer” and “all about being kind”, changing markets in Shanghai have pushed people to biomedicine and away from TCM. In this crossing of two sides of medicine which are seen as “distinctive” from one another, practitioners of TCM have to increasingly reaccommodate and redefine concepts like the zangfu system to fit into the context of biomedical terminology (Zhan, 77). It is proven difficult as there is no exact translation and it is in the attempted translations that creates a wall of confusion and doubts amongst students about TCM rather than biomedicine. In contrast, biomedicine practitioners managed to find success in integrating TCM practices like acupuncture in their hospitals, causing a stir amongst TCM practitioners who worry about appropriation and commercialization (Zhan, 82). As TCM practitioners must continuously make negotiations to ease their anxiety about commodification and legitimize their practice, the question about whether TCM can coexist with biomedicine as an authentic practice in the mainstream becomes more unlikely.        TCM is also negotiated in the very explanations for its success, as many people rationalize it in relation to the failures of biomedicine and “miracle-working”. Accepted widely not only as a second alternative to biomedicine but also a form of medicine which has the power to produce “overnight cures” as if a miracle occurred, TCM is ironically marginalized to achieve its own efficacy, in a way that necessitates pressure on practitioners to produce miracle cures within the sphere of biomedical communities (Zhan, 110). However, Zhan explains that the marginalization of TCM is being challenged with people like Li Fengyi who attempt to produce alternate definitions of science with the success of their own work, placing TCM “within the scope of scientific knowledge and practice” instead of giving it the association with pseudoscience or Chinese science (Zhan, 116). The “miracles” Li creates gives him respect within the general sphere of science as he provides a “rational” explanation for TCM while also giving authority to “alternative” forms of science by “playing the biomedicine game” (Zhan, 114). Doctor Huang Jixian insists on repositioning TCM within the sphere of biomedicine by criticizing and questioning the “monopolistic” authority of biomedicine and making distinctions of TCM and biomedicine at the appropriate times in a way in which its differences do not overrule its familiarity to biomedicine (Zhan, 141). Both of these people recognize the hierarchies between medicines refuse to acknowledge their inherent connections, and by writing off TCM as “miracle working” and biomedicine as scientific, the imagined authenticity of TCM within the biomedical sphere hides the fact that TCM is not as most make it out to be.         Zhan makes clear throughout her book that authenticity of TCM can never be achieved because of how it intertwines with hierarchies of western whiteness and the biomedical sphere, which position it in a place constantly under influence of “non authentic, non Chinese” ideals. Its distinctiveness relies on these hierarchies which translates authority along translocal lines and within certain contexts, TCM can reveal a different distinctiveness depending on the perspective of different people. What I learned from the comparisons revealed through her ethnographic analyses is that it is not about whether TCM transcends into the biomedical sphere and therefore the world but about TCM creating its own space and how that space becomes entangled with other spaces, negotiating itself in some ways but also displacing itself across the boundaries that make it what it is. I do question whether TCM must always be in a flux of negotiation or whether it may someday have deeper relevance to modern medicine and healthcare without being negotiated.

[asian-con-2017-blog]

Asian Con 220 - Integrative Essay

                           Imaginations, Constructions, and Identity

         Throughout the Asian Conversations sequence, I held insincere certainty about my knowledge related to the concepts of “Asia” and even how my personal identity fit into those concepts, as an Asian American female with a passion for delving into anthropological ideas like gender, race, and community. What I realized is that experience and interest do not necessarily preclude the understandings of these concepts but instead they are integrated into them, negotiating and reflecting in order to fit a deeper critical understanding. Fitting my own racial and gender identity into their broader constructions proves to be a complicated feat and has revealed a sort of vulnerability of my inner self that I fought to ignore as an Asian in a white space. Perhaps the most importantly relevant ideas to this integration discussed in the block of the three course program that I will explore include Asia’s imagined communities, the constructs of whiteness and gender, and the east versus west foreigner dichotomy.

          It is one thing to learn about the history of a whole continent in summaries of conquests and colonial accounts and it is another thing to critically analyze the various ways in which those accounts are bound to fail in their conclusions and observational data, details too broad and self-fulfilling to actually accurately encompass such a large area. These “imaginations” of such a diverse range of communities serve to underlie the most popular conceptions of “Asia”, in which the “east” is thoroughly generalized in maps, the census, and the very fabric of history. In disregarding the heterogeneity and diversity of China, Dutch colonizers were able to imagine the seemingly “endless series of hidalgos” as all one large mass of “Chinezens” (Anderson, 168). This “inventive status” became a way to keep control and as the power of the colonial state grew, so did the power of the social constructions of census. The use of mapping also not only initiated the geographical shaping of borders but also changed the way that historical policy held by the colonial powers would revolutionize the future of further colonial ventures. They would use “totalizing classification” to draw out maps which showed the unexplored areas by Europeans in which were to be “filled in” by the military forces and explorers (Anderson, 173). In attempting to “construct the property-history of their new possessions” or their claim of “geographic space” which they already believed was to be inherited, “historical maps were designed to demonstrate, in the new cartographic discourse, the antiquity of specific, tightly bounded territorial units. Through chronologically arranged sequences of such maps, a sort of political-biographical narrative of the realm came into being, sometimes with vast historical depth” (Anderson, 174-175). The census was used in addition to mapping in order to impress on the world a certain image of the physical boundaries between nations and therefore between east and west. They would broaden the boundaries within and attempt a unification, despite the fact that the map separated them, such as with the Dutch and Indonesian tribes. In the Dutch West Indies, the idea was that the natives weren’t responsible for building up the monuments in an area of poverty and weren’t the same race as their builders, therefore making them seem incapable of self-rule. We talked in class about how boundaries are constructed and imagined, the differences between Asian countries determined by colonialism, reinforcing nationalistic ideals and self-fulling prophecies about the hierarchies between “races” and “nations”. “Concepts of Asia” perhaps cannot be explained by their histories alone. However, by analyzing the imagined communities that have been shaped by colonial intentions, conceptualizing aspects of difference within Asia becomes clearer and understanding the ways those differences are negotiated makes Asia less of a single concept and more of a complicated plethora of diversity with separate histories. This is a recurring theme throughout other course material that we read and is one thing that even the Asian Con program itself plays into. We learn Japanese or Chinese in order to help us when we go abroad in the January trip abroad and we label the department “Asian Studies” even though we do not and cannot focus on every single aspect of Asia that there is. We use maps and census labels to explore specific areas of Asia and their specific histories. Whether it is the cosmopolitan lifestyle of the dancing Shanghai era or the globalization of photography in Java, despite the many conflicts and isolation that a lot of these groups experience between each other, we still place it all under the umbrella category “Asian”. I definitely value what this course has taught me in understanding this idea better.           In terms of my personal experiences, I believe that the range and depth of experiences allowed me to take away a lot from the Asian Conversations sequence. From first semester discussions about geisha, samurai, and Shanghainese history to interim where the images and concepts we talked about could be tangible for the first time, it was all about taking what we learned through mapping and popular historical images and applying it to a physical space. And then to second semester where we analyzed and reflected on theories related to the broader concepts of Asia such as indexical signs, the geo-body, and performance of identity, it became a challenge to conceptualize Asia in its diverse forms while applying anthropological ideas to our understanding. I personally enjoyed being able to apply these concepts to real life during the interim trip, where the physicality of linguistic and built spaces could be visualized as the concepts described them. One such example is when I was looking for examples of linguistic landscape in Tokyo and it was obvious that despite most people around me being Japanese, many signs displayed multiple languages, with English being surprisingly common. Being able to realize that this phenomenon had to do with the desire of “concession” of foreign language speaking residents and a more “overseas atmosphere” helped put the experience in a critical perspective, whereas before I might have assumed Japanese people could actually understand the multilingual signs (Backhaus, 64). Even when we went up to Nikko in the mountains, where I expected there to be very little foreign influence, there were quite a few foreign signs and images of white foreigners. Later during second semester, we talked a bit about the dominance of whiteness, as it “embodies racial power…whether ‘actors’ deemed white are cognizant of it”, and the hierarchy between whiteness within Asia (Bonilla-Silva, 346). TCM as a field showed the favoring of white students in its “worlding” and the modernization of it as a respectable field internationally (Zhan, 42). My experience as an East Asian American particularly in China was a pressing matter for many of the locals who, when forced to talk to them, I felt an embarrassing vulnerability around and fear would constantly creep on my conscience. Inside a bank in Shanghai, I was trying to withdraw money and the man turned frustrated when I didn’t understand him and didn’t say anything back. However, once a white classmate came to help, he immediately showed a bit more understanding. It was an experience that was very shocking until we had discussions about white privilege and I remembered back to it, being able to put it into better perspective than before. Along with race, gender was also very important in my personal experience abroad. A noteworthy string of experiences in Akihabara led me to be wary of the city as a whole, the sex ratio being observably overwhelmingly male in every shop I walked in. As a female “presupposed of [my] sexual difference”, there was an uneasiness that I felt in Akihabara that I hadn’t felt anywhere else which was strong enough to leave an impression on me of Japan as a whole (Butler, 530). Looking at gender as a performance instead, and the social and historical constructions of it, forced me to reevaluate this constitution of presupposing sexual difference and remake some sense in myself and my gender identity.             As an Asian Studies student, I perform an identity of someone against the mainstream of St. Olaf as an institution with a Eurocentric curriculum, as well as a student with an international interest in the conceptions of east vs. west and the diversity of the east. I wonder whether it is possible to have Asian Studies coexist with the rest of the Eurocentric curriculum just as Zhan advocates the negotiations and “worlding” of TCM within the scope of a biomedicine dominant medical world. Even just simply existing in the curriculum, Asian Studies is marginalized as “other”, alternate to all the other courses and relegated to those who must have some kind of connection to Asia unless they are that weird white person that has an unusual obsession with Asian culture. This entanglement of west and east proved to open conflict between TCM and biomedicine practitioners with fear of TCM being appropriated and commercialized as it became popular within western medical spheres (Zhan, 82). As an Asian American Asian Studies student, I do not come across the stigma associated to questioning my position in Asian Studies like white students might have had. However, my place within the sphere certainly is confusing, as someone stuck in the middle and “not really Asian” nor “fully American”. Within the broader spectrum of studies, Asian Studies proves to be a field that is still very international, but placed on a binary divide of west and east. The question is, would the “authenticity” be lost if Asian Studies was taken over by non-Asian faculty? Zhan argued that TCM negotiates itself around western biomedicine in order to be seen as legitimate, there not being an actual “authenticity of TCM” because of these entanglements of both fields in their worlding (Zhan, 64). It seems to me that despite the marginalized position of Asian Studies within the curriculum, an authenticity could not be lost in part because similar types of negotiations take place with Asian Studies being run by quite a few non-Asian professors and overlapping into other largely Eurocentric fields like political science. The dichotomy does not exist as one field integrates into another but with one negotiating and repositioning itself to retain its distinction and familiarity at the same time.            Understanding how I fit into the Asian Conversations sequence has proven to be challenging, however, I appreciate these challenges and how they’ve changed me. From how the conceptual frameworks put into broader perspective ideas of Asia to how the understanding of my personal experiences was shaped by delving into this theoretical framework, the things I’ve learned have proven to be valuable to the shaping of myself as an Asian Studies student. I realize the negotiations and steps forward I have to take in order to take critical accounts of what I experience in the context of Asia, something I look forward to continue doing as I keep pursuing Asian Studies until I graduate.

[asian-con-2017-blog]

Asian Con 215-216 - Linguistic Landscape Analysis

      For my two neighborhoods, I really desired to choose two places that had a decent sized tourist population and were popular spots for shopping specifically. In order to get a good amount of variance in language, these places were likely to be highly influenced by globalization due to their reputations in the west which include unique fashion styles in Harajuku and the famous Shibuya crossing in Shibuya. The impressions I have for these neighborhoods are that many signs and names will be in foreign languages to cater towards the frequenting tourists but also many things will be in Japanese for the locals and domestic tourists. Japan has a reasonable reputation in the west for interesting shopping areas so I made sure to include views around Daisos and streetwear shops. I believe that the most frequent shoppers will be young people, especially in Harajuku and perhaps more older people in Shibuya. Because they are shopping areas, I don’t think many lower class people will be frequenting either of these areas.

         In my initial observations, I realized just how much globalization has infiltrated both Shibuya and Harajuku in similar ways. Just as I thought, many shopping advertisement signs had different languages written on them. For example, the sign I found advertising for tax free clothing in Harajuku contained the same message of “Duty Free” in several different languages, with English being the biggest in font size. English’s dominant role in globalization played a key part in many of these signs, however, I also found quite a bit of French as well, such as in the Le Talon street shop on the side of the street in Harajuku. Still, English would be the main foreign language that I would see in Harajuku, and the fonts were often stylistic with messages written that usually sounded poetic with no impressionable purpose. Many times English was used to decorate an area or space, or have relevance to the space but still serve no actual purpose to the shop or store like the message in front of the Sabon Gourmet. Sometimes it did serve a purpose however, like the Harajuku Bestrate sign which was likely an attempt to tell people their store is best in rating. There was one sign indicating a rule, asking people not to sit in that space, which had many languages translated. Sometimes, even with names that sound Japanese, like Hiro, they were still written in the Roman alphabet with no Japanese around which was surprising. There was actually one area in Shibuya where I saw a karaoke sign in English which I also was not expecting. Sometimes, signs weren’t written in English alone and accompanied smaller Japanese text on the side. The English may not have been accurate or grammatically correct either, such as the t-shirt sign in Harajuku. My general impression about signs was that it didn’t really matter what it said unless it was in English (or French) and it had a bit of relevance to whatever was being sold. It only mattered when there was some kind of important message or very relevant information that had to be displayed. I hope that in the spring, I am able to dig deeper into the relevance of globalization in these cities historically and how social interactions between shoppers and shopkeepers influence the type of language being displayed.

[asian-con-2017-blog]

Asian Con 215/216 - Concept Module

        When choosing my topic for this project, I wanted to discuss a topic that could give a broad picture of not only the differing styles of a personalized, constructed environment but also of the types of people more likely to frequent in certain places. In keeping with the theme of people and their built environment, I chose to document on fashion/clothing stores with the idea in mind that people place value on material items and I wanted to specifically understand this in an urban metropolitan context. Since clothing is considered a luxury item in some aspects of society and can give other people an impression of a person’s wealth and status, I hoped to find out how a constructed environment may influence this social attitude.The type of clothing a person wears may tell a lot about them, including their personal tastes and unique style, but it may also give clues about modern trends in a time period. There are historical differences in these trends and the same piece of clothing from the past may not hold the same meaning now as it did back then. What most people would call “traditional style clothing” usually gives people a specific image in their head, especially when associated with a particular country or culture. That being said, there were fewer traditional clothing stores in downtown metro areas than in either more rural, quieter areas or tourist spots. Yuyuan Gardens, for example, contained a lot of foreign tourists when I frequented and is known for the festival it holds during the time of the new year. In that area during this holiday, I managed to pick out a few strip malls which sold the traditional Chinese dress called qipao. Despite the qipao stores being frequent on the side streets, I saw few people wearing them. It was interesting that despite the area being a tourist spot, many of these strip malls had their store names written only in Chinese. The more modern style clothing stores in contrast, were located in tourist areas which were much more high end and in big scale malls. In Shanghai, Global Harbor and the upscale district on East Nanjing Street tended to be popular tourist areas which held many foreign brand names like Forever 21 and H&M. In Tokyo, a similar trend was replicated in Shibuya and Harajuku with American Eagle and Gap. It seems that while both the areas containing the qipao and modern style clothing were seemingly both equally popular, the built environments around them gave off a certain impression: traditional clothing areas are localized and scaled down for celebrating and preserving cultural identity while modern clothing areas tend to be upscale, larger spaces which globalize themselves by catering their consumers to more foreign brands. This idea perhaps reflects well of the preconceived Orientalist notions of traditional “culture” being separate and vastly different from the more “modern, upscale, westernized” culture. The fact that these brands were both foreign and in upscale districts creates an assumed association between the types of items you wear, where those items come from, and an impression of luxury, confirming my previous expectations. Also, the value that people put on their clothing is seen through the way that the clothes were presented. For example, most of the modern clothing stores I visited had mannequins in the windows wearing suggested outfits using clothes from their stores. The outfits were put together in a way that reflected how the company is trying to sell their clothing and how they want their customers to go about them. The value of their product is shown on display and the customers are expected to take in the image and either want to come in and buy something similar or be interested in what they are displaying. The lights on the outside of the buildings at night also may impact how a potential customer may view the store and what is in it. For example, if the lights are shining onto a particular item especially, and that item is the most expensive in the store, customers may not recognize that fact and be interested in the item anyway. The high end brands like H&M and Forever21 did this well. And then there are the smaller shops tucked away in the streets on their own like Richards in Harajuku which display quite openly their unique and edgy styles right where people are frequently coming and going. The sports brands tended to be either smaller shops in the mall or large upscale stores on their own, making it obvious that they are sports related shops. Perhaps this fact is also relevant to the idea that clothing shows who you are and what you like to do, as well as personal interests. In general, clothing can tell a lot about a person and that fact draws into the built environment and how the way a place is presented and the types of items in it can be key to understanding the area. In my final assessment, I compare the large, upscale malls with smaller, local traditional shops and realize the distinction is apparent and most likely intentional. While foreign, high end brands tend to stick themselves out more, traditional elements of culture are still there, just much more localized.

[asian-con-2017-blog]

Linguistic Landscape in Harajuku and Shibuya (Continued)

[asian-con-2017-blog]

Linguistic Landscape in Harajuku and Shibuya

[asian-con-2017-blog]

Clothing Stores in Tokyo

(click on picture to see its caption)

[asian-con-2017-blog]

Clothing stores in Shanghai

(click on the picture to see its caption)

[asian-con-2017-blog]

Asian Con 215/216 - Museum Assignment

       The Shanghai museum, located in People’s Square, was generally extensive, holding different exhibits on each floor, each one corresponding to a theme. The themes that I explored include Chinese calligraphy, Chinese paintings, Chinese seals, and ethnic minorities in China. These exhibits were all on either the third or fourth floor of the museum. When walking into an exhibit, the rooms were barely lit and it was difficult to see in the dark. However, in the painting and calligraphy galleries, each wall had a clear, see-through case which stuck out containing the artifacts, and motion detectable lights would light up anytime a person walked near or close enough to an artifact. This made it convenient for pictures as the light would concentrate directly on the artifact and create little to no shadows or glares. There were also plaques hanging on the walls or in the middle of the exhibit which contained historical information that provided context for the exhibit’s theme and its time period, translated into both Chinese and English. Some plaques had no translations, however. A plaque near the entrance indicated the purpose of the museum as a preservation of cultural relics and heritage, many of the paintings and calligraphy scrolls donated by Sun Yufeng, a famous entrepreneur, and his family. The time periods ranged from the Qin and Han dynasties to the later Yuan period, and the importance of these time periods as well as artistic technique and purpose were also discussed on each exhibit’s plaque. Painting and calligraphy for example were done using distinctive techniques to portray emotional/creative expression and imitate the past. In the painting exhibit specifically, everything besides that was translated into English, including the title of the artifact, the author, the years the author was alive, the date of the artifact, and what the artifact was physically, which included something like the example, “hanging scroll, ink and color on paper” of the Dark Green Pine Tree painting. These plaques were quite difficult to read and were very small in comparison to the actual artifacts themselves, which I assumed to be to bring the focus onto the aesthetic and beauty of the artifacts. Also an interesting observation in the paint gallery was that the paintings were not just of images but also many words were written in ink next to the images and many of the images were in black and white. The paintings that did have color tended to be painted on dark paper or had dark backgrounds and the lighter colors would stick out because of it. Most of the images depicted of views in nature such as trees but also people in their homes or famous people. Also, most of the paintings were stamped in red ink in the same unique pattern, perhaps to indicate something about the authenticity. In the Chinese calligraphy gallery, most everything was the same as the paint gallery on the plaques except they did translate the historical and author information on individual plaques. However, from what I assume from a perspective of someone who cannot read Chinese, the Chinese texts looked shorter and less complete than the English texts which was odd as I expected it to be the other way around. The seal exhibit was different than these exhibits in that instead of motion detectable lights, the seals were secured in small glass windows inside the wall which were lit up by spotlights. The seals all sat on top of glass shelves inside the wall with little markings next to them, likely to mark their place on the shelves. Inside the walls would also be pictures of seals as well as a red stamp similar to the one in the painting and calligraphy galleries. The seals were important at the time as they were used to merge literary calligraphy and painting techniques. The labeling of the seals were all in Chinese except the historical information located on plaques scattered throughout the exhibit. In the ethnic minority exhibit, it was mostly clothes, handmade tools, armor, sculptures, and articles of fabric that were on display. For these artifacts, both individual plaques and historical information plaques were translated. Some of the minority groups represented included the Miao, Tibetan, Uygur, and Dai peoples. The types of people that I saw varied. There were a lot of young couples, local elderly, and families. However, a large chunk of people I saw were elementary or middle school students, either local Chinese or Korean. There were some foreigners as well.

    For the Tokyo museum, I visited the Museum of Imperial Collections in downtown Tokyo. My initial thoughts when I walked into the gate was that the museum itself would be fairly big but when I actually got there, the reality was quite anti-climactic. The artifacts themselves were very few compared to the Shanghai museum and there was only one exhibit room. The pamphlet that was offered at the front contained introduction information to the exhibit, claiming that the themes of the artifacts were supposed to be auspicious, the main traditional theme being called horai which came from Chinese Taoism, giving a sense of before, after, and during the new era. And indeed, the exhibits depicted a lot of animals such as doves and crows which had symbolic meanings including longevity, health, and luck. Landscapes were also used auspiciously on vases and embroidery. Much of the art depicted was historical and natural rather than contemporary just like the Shanghai Museum. Paintings were colorful yet used specific coloring often in one place, such as gray skies or green landscape. An interesting observation is the fact that the sun was usually painted red or orange, sticking out in the landscape which reminds me of the Japanese flag and the red rising sun in the middle. There were also sculptures of people and animals as well. The exhibit was not specifically labeled like the Shanghai Museum so what I found was a range of different artifacts, but the same similar auspicious themes were found throughout. In terms of translations, it did include most of the same kinds of English translations found in the Shanghai museum, including the author, title of work, date, and what the physical depiction was. They also translated the historical information plaques into English. The lighting was typical for a small exhibit, dim yet light enough to see the artifacts. The people who seemed to be visiting included a lot of foreigners but also many locals, both old and young.

    Overall, both of the museums were very focused on traditional art and not so much contemporary/modern art, unlike the MIA which included several exhibits which featured tons of different contemporary styles and even merged traditional and modern. The MIA had art from all over the world but focused a lot on East Asia and Europe rather than specifically centering around ancient Chinese or Japanese art pieces which held specific meaning. Everything was only in English but included most of the same contextual background and information as the Shanghai and Imperial Collections museums such as the title, artist, etc.

[asian-con-2017-blog]

The exhibit at the MIA that I chose to reflect on was the life size teahouse located in the Japan side of the museum. It automatically appealed to me for its serene atmosphere and delicate stone figures in the "outside" area. When I came across this exhibit, I immediately pictured myself actually being at a real teahouse and imagining it being like I was thrown into a historical Japanese drama. Both the room and the outside scenery are so realistic, as if an actual person lived there and left their stuff to be untouched until they came back. The peaceful atmosphere of the teahouse lets one enjoy pondering about the simple things in life without needing any answers. It makes me think about how much things have changed in modern Japanese cities and how the merge of old and new tradition allows us to grasp a sense of familiarity in what is new and unfamilar.