Untitled

[lovemellowvoidcollectorme-blog]

Constructive feedback

In Isaac Christopher Wang’s thoughtful analysis of the Chinese folk dance form Yangge, he talks about the impact Yangge has had on his mom and the implications of that impact. For Isaac’s mom, Yangge presents a channel through which she can relate back to her homeland of the People’s Republic of China, where she grew up in. However, Isaac makes compelling arguments about the oppressive undertones of Yangge as well. He compares the development of Yangge in a patriarchal culture during ancient Chinese dynasties to the development of slavery in a period of racism during the early parts of American history. Yangge projects an image of inferiority onto women and forces them into the role of entertainers for men. Though that’s not the case for Isaac’s mom, who is a happy and willful participant of Yangge, the patriarchal climate of the United States still allows for the continued anti-feminist message inevitably attached to Yangge.

“It is arguable that Yangge has only been able to thrive in the United States as a result of the similarly patriarchal system in this nation.” This quote is good since it relates Yangge to modern-day systems in the United States. Maybe talk about how Yangge lives in the wake of female domesticity in the United States today. Excellent quote though.

Isaac presents an anecdote of how his mom still frequently participates in Yangge after immigrating to the United States. Despite the message of female inferiority present in Yangge, Isaac’s mom still uses it as a way to connect back to her roots, illustrating how female subordination is ingrained with the culture. Very powerful.

Though Isaac was not so capable of uploading his image onto Tumblr, I have a hazy recollection of what it looks like. I distinctly remember the combination of the whip and ribbon alluding to the similar oppressiveness of both slavery and Yangge. Solid artwork.

In addition to well-constructed arguments about the oppressive nature of Yangge, Isaac Wang makes astute observations of the intersectionality present in Yangge. He talks about how Yangge is an intersection between gender and race, between being a female and being an Asian, and the resulting tension between women’s rights and Asian identity. A bold analysis. Also, a potential way to boost reader engagement on Tumblr would be to change the blog’s title to something other than “Untitled.”

[lovemellowvoidcollectorme-blog]

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Summary

ericzhang420’s zine is about the transnational migration of factory jobs from the United States to foreign countries. He analyzes the intersection of race and gender, noting that these jobs were once dominated by white-males and have since come into the power of minority men and women. I see signs of racial tension building between the groups and the possible animosities forming with respect to the context of ericzhang420’s work. I believe that his intended audience is people interested in the racial and gender makeup of the United States factory system, as well as people who are interested in analyzing the ties between race and labor and the effects when sources of labor and access to labor change hands.

Quotes

These are some really good quotes by ericzhang420 that I believe should be included in the final draft of his zine.

“The globalization and transfer of the industrial labor market to China has been, in the U.S., the center of both better and cheaper consumer goods, as well as economic hardships for many in the working-class.” - ericzhang420

“Through an intersectional lens, the ideas of gender is also related to racialization of factory labor.” - ericzhang420

In terms of presentation I would suggest laying out the quotes in a similar manner to what he has done in his current version (in the thick of analysis).

Facts

These are two anecdotes/examples/facts by ericzhang420 that I found particularly compelling.

“President Trump also constantly attacked trade deals like NAFTA and TPP, which contributed to the movement of jobs abroad, as un-American.” - ericzhang420

The factory, though unpleasant by western standards, was seen as a path to modern life in the city and offered a better alternative to agrarian life in the countryside – the same view that factory workers in the U.S. had when the Industrial Revolution happened. - ericzhang420

I would suggest backing up these facts with some more analysis in the final version. In some instances they stand a bit more isolated than I would recommend.

Images

I’m not quite tech savvy enough to get ericzhang420’s artworks into this document (Docs is misbehaving). But overall I think they could be laid out much better. They currently are displayed as two halves of a single page; In my opinion, using separate pieces of paper would improve the presentation. In addition, interlacing them in the middle of a block of text could perhaps make their meaning more apparent.

Reword

The recent wave of anti-immigration extends from the a long history of anti-immigration. The manufacturing exodus in combination with the 2008 housing market crash left many middle-class families struggling in today’s economy. Though many cities along the coast recovered (and in some cases are doing better than before) due to an abundance of high-tech and service industry jobs, the cities that were once the backbone of the United States’s industrial sector have never bounced back.

I’ve made small re-wordings in the analysis above. None of the changes I made strongly related to the intended audience, but just made the message clearer and the writing flow better. I think the clear cause-effects that you lay out in this piece of analysis are strong, however I think that your phrasing across your zines could be improved to better support your ideas.

[lovemellowvoidcollectorme-blog]

Notebook 3

Isaac Wang

ETHN 2

Notebook 3

Again, I have not significantly changed my object or the context I will be analyzing it in. I will continue to analyze the Chinese dance form Yangge and its migration from northern China to the Bay Area.

I will be analyzing Yangge’s journey with relation to the early United States’s system of slavery in the 19th century. My contention is that there are many similarities between the patriarchal ideals of Yangge in the realm of sex and the white supremacist ideals of slavery in the realm of race. Let’s look at Yangge first.

Yangge pushes the ideology of feminine inferiority by subjecting them to the role of entertainers. It does so by limiting its performers to women only and dressing them in brightly colored uniforms which enforces the idea that their worth is primarily aesthetic based. In this way Yangge marginalizes women and treats them as pieces of eye candy as opposed to human beings.

Now let’s look at slavery. In the slave trade that dominated the economics of the United States as the nation was forming, black men and women were essentially kidnapped and made to work without pay for their white owners. Slavery not-so-subtly supported white supremacist ideologies by suggesting that people of non-white skin color, most notably blacks, were not the same level of being as their white counterparts and thus did not have access to basic rights. It was this ideology that allowed the mistreatment and enslavement of blacks during this time.

In the same way that Yangge marginalized women, slavery commodified blacks. While Yangge saw women as pieces of eye-candy, slavery saw blacks as producers of labor. In this way Yangge relates to slavery.

An important difference is that slavery was forcefully brought over while Yangge travelled organically via willful immigrants. However, it is arguable that Yangge has only been able to thrive in the United States as a result of the similarly patriarchal system in this nation.

Now I will relate the Yangge dance form to the concept of citizenship. Yangge is closely tied to the idea of citizenship in that, in many ways, it is art forms like Yangge that tie immigrants like my mother to their home after achieving citizenship. In this way Yangge itself acts as a form of unique citizenship, applying specifically to a small intersection of Asian American women. In the same way that citizenship grants an identity, so does Yangge. I realize that this connection is not quite as solid as the connection between Yangge’s feminist undertones and slavery’s white supremacist roots, but believe it is worth noting, if for nothing but to open the door to more interesting conversations.

[lovemellowvoidcollectorme-blog]

Notebook 2

My object from Notebook One is Yangge, an ancient form of Chinese folk dance. I do not plan at the moment to make any significant changes to the scope of my object. I do not expect the transnational context in which I am analyzing Yangge, namely the dance form’s migration from northern China to the Bay Area, to change a great deal either. I am not making any major changes at the moment because I believe my object and my context have deep connections to the course’s themes and sufficient room for exploration.

http://www.chinaculturetour.com/images/tours/shanxi/yangge.jpg

The photo above exhibits a Yangge performance. We can see that the dancers in the image are wearing the traditional bright, colorful uniforms that I mentioned briefly in Notebook One.

A national bind that Yangge connects to is communism. The presence of communism in Yangge is evident in the dance forms history as a propaganda tool. It was used by the Chinese Communist Party as a “political tool to influence people’s thinking and to disseminate socialist images” (Hung, 82). The dance was used to rally village support for political reasons. This push by the Chinese Communist Party occurred in the 1940’s but changed the art form of Yangge forever. This national bind signifies a tie between the Yangge dance and an ideology that cannot be ignored.

Let’s talk about intersectionality. Yangge is full of it. It’s no coincidence that all the dancers in the image above are female. We can see the intersection of race and sexuality manifest as the gender-roles rooted so deeply in Chinese culture. Chinese women are made to dance in Yangge as a result of this intersection. When analyzed from an intersectional standpoint it becomes clear that Yangge is deeply sexist and racist at its core, and needs to be stopped.

Yangge promotes a subservient image of Chinese women, implicitly suggesting that their primary purpose is to entertain men. This observation becomes all the more damning when one realizes that the Chinese Communist Party (the leadership of which was surely primarily male) took the art and made it their propaganda tool. This proves that Yangge is in the intersection of race and gender in that it is both racist and sexist and pushes the ideal that Chinese women are lesser than Chinese men.

This connects to the theme of Immigration and Citizenship because when my mother immigrated to the Bay Area from China and brought Yangge with her, she was also bringing its racist and sexist ideologies along with it. Even though she has since become a citizen in the US this form of discrimination has followed her. The gendering of the art form can be seen today in her dance group, which is entirely female. This shows how the theme of Immigration and Citizenship ties into the intersectional analysis of a form of Chinese folk dance with respect to race and gender.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20192445?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[lovemellowvoidcollectorme-blog]

Notebook 1

The ancient art of Yangge, a form of Chinese folk dance, was developed during the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279) in the northern China. Since then it has been passed down from generation to generation, and is still practiced today.

Yangge is characterized by colorful costumes, silk ribbons, joyous themes, and traditional chinese folk music. Where it is practiced, crowds of people will join in the streets for evening dancing. Though different variations exist, the dances always express happiness and contentment.

The Yangge art form has traveled to the United States via the large influx of Chinese immigrants in the past few decades. To this day, my mother runs and participates in a group dedicated to the practice and performance of Yangge. Comprised primarily of first generation middle-aged Chinese women, her group meets twice a week and puts on a show every few months. Most of the show’s attendees are family and friends of the performers who come to support the dancers and celebrate their culture.

Yangge relates to the theme of Immigration and Citizenship. For my mother, who moved from northern China to Santa Clara at the age of 25 to become a US citizen and attend university, Yangge is a vestige of her old life and home. Though she has since adapted to and embraced the culture in the United States, her continued pursuit of dance connects her to the past and to her hometown in northern China.

The first of two contexts this “object” has circulated between was that of northern China in the 90’s, when my mother was a schoolgirl who looked up to the dancers in pretty colors. This was decades after the Chinese Communist Party had used the art form as a political tool to spread their preferred version of Chinese history and small traces of those influences remained. However, its appeal to my mother was entirely aesthetic.

The second context I will discuss Yangge in is that of the Bay Area in the twenty-first century, where my mother continues to practice the dance style. Here, she has found a community of Chinese immigrants to share her passion with. Her dance group represents one of many bubbles of asian-american transnational culture existing in the Bay Area that collectively form a uniquely mixed society.

In the first context, Yangge had political influences and connotations. In the second, however, it is purely a means of remembering another life, in a different time and a different place.

Sources cited:

Chang-tai, Hung (2005). "The Dance of Revolution: Yangge in Beijing in the Early 1950s". The China Quarterly. 181: 82–99. doi:10.1017/S0305741005000056.

Richard Gunde (2001). Culture and Customs of China. Greenwood. p. 107. ISBN 978-0313361180.