Chinese History

I’ll be in my office in the morning from 10-12 on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and Friday afternoon until about 3. If you want to pick up graded tests and papers, that’s the time to do it. If you want to check your grade, you can come in, or send me an email.

If you want your graded final back, you can give me a self-addressed stamped envelope with your final, or come get it in the Fall — I don’t throw these things away for years.

Remember: your final essays are due in my office or at Yummy Buffet no later than 12:30 pm on Thursday the 14th.

Alan Baumler notes the history of the Princess of Pingyang. Unfortunately, what he writes is pretty much the entirety of what we know, but it’s still interesting.

There was nothing wrong with the ship, which got from Taiwan to the US and back. It just got run over by a freighter, a hazard which would not have existed in Zheng He’s day.

Of course, nobody’s ever really doubted that the Chinese ships of the time could make the voyage. Only that there’s no reason for them to have tried, no record of them doing so, and no time for them to do it in the few gaps that exist in the record. (note how long it took them to get to SF and back)

My blogging colleague Alan Baumler has a few notes on the Civil Service exams in Ming-Qing China, including a quote from a grader

The third set of short essay questions, Due May 7th, is here.

The final exam questions are here.

Also, by popular demand, the final exam will be collected at lunch at Yummy Buffet, May 14th at 12:30.

By popular demand, we will again be having class next Tuesday at Hunan Village on Broadway, at the usual time. We will discuss some of the poetry — which we’ve been letting slide a bit in class — as well as neo-Confucianism (see also Alan Baumler’s comment on Zhu Xi), and I will answer any questions you have about the essay assignments due next Thursday (4/9).

So you can start thinking about them a month in advance: here

Archaeologists have released pictures of a newly opened Han-era tomb with strikingly colored murals. The video has more pictures: worth looking at.

At the Crimson and Gold Ballroom in the Student Center this week:

From all the artistic traditions of Tantric Buddhism, that of painting with colored sand ranks as one of the most unique and exquisite. In Tibetan this art is called dul-tson-kyil-khor, which literally means “mandala of colored powders.” Millions of grains of sand are painstakingly laid into place on a flat platform over a period of days or weeks.

Formed of a traditional prescribed iconography that includes geometric shapes and a multitude of ancient spiritual symbols, the sand-painted mandala is used as a tool for re-consecrating the earth and its inhabitants.

On previous US tours the lamas have displayed this sacred arts in museums across the country, including the Arthur Sackler Gallery, Washington; Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem; the Indianapolis Art Museum, Indianapolis; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and The Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

The mandala viewing is free and open to the public.

The Mystical Arts of Tibet is part of the PSU Performing Arts & Lecture Series.  For more information visit www.mysticalartsoftibet.org or contact the PSU Campus Activities Center at 620-235-4795 or campusactivities.edu.

There will be an opening invocation at Noon on Monday, followed by a four day creation process. It will be open to viewing Monday 12-6, Tue and Wed 10-7,Thur 10-3, with a closing ceremony Thursday at 4 and a  lecture on the symbolism Thursday at 7pm (Governor’s Room).

Just a reminder that class on Thursday the 19th will be at the usual time — 12:30-1:45 — but will be held at the Hunan Village restaraunt in the 800 block of North Broadway.