Jerry Slocum & Michelle Truong

Today was the last day of class in LA, and we leave to China tomorrow…it really went by fast! Almost every day we’ve gotten delicious snacks brought by latecomers. Today, Jerry brought vanilla wafer cookies, and Jeremy brought donut holes from Dunkin’ Donuts (Yum!). Professor started off the class with a #papasheehan lecture about not getting too involved with the expat bubble at bars and clubs. Basically, be aware of your surroundings and what comes out of your mouth (that’s what I got from that)! We also talked about our roommate situation, in which the boys are getting randomly assigned for all four hotels, and the girls (except for Mikaella and Michelle) are too, with Marissa, Wendy, Michele, and Emma switching off in the single room (thank you for taking one for the team, gals!).

Professor Sheehan and the GEA scholars in their last class before their travels!

After, we began our discussion of the readings for the day. We had two readings: one about hostessing as a type of consumption to make a public claim and the other about disco as a place of expression to “be consumed” as well as consume. It was a quick discussion about something different from what we’ve discussed before, but quite fitting to warn us about sketchy karaoke in China. Hostessing will most likely be present at karaoke centers offering services including singing and dancing. After discussion, we tried checking in, but some of us were notified that we would need to check in tomorrow with an agent so that they can double check that we have our visas and passports. This won’t be a problem since we will all be at the airport bright and early three hours before our flight.

Professor Sheehan in discussion with research group – Team Tampon

I’m sure I speak for all of us in saying that excitement is high as we approach our flight time. To conclude, the readings we have done have given us some basic tools to commence our research and some historical background to provide context to our experiences in China. We have all selected some very interesting research topics that will surely lead us into interesting discoveries in the next few days. Reminder to keep in mind “LONG AND CLUNKY, over short and vague” for our thesis! And remember, 119 (the opposite of America’s 911) in case of emergencies!!!

Matt Slade & Jasmine Sears

Hey all, Matt and Jasmine here. Matt is a rising sophomore studying International Relations and Jasmine is a sophomore studying Environmental Studies. Today was one of the last days before we leave for China. It’s hard to believe that we’ll be there so soon – the time has really flown by. 

We began with a short discussion regarding transportation to the airport and currency exchange. We’re in the final stretch in LA so we really need to get things squared away soon. We then gave short presentations about the advertisement we chose for our two-page paper. Since Professor Sheehan did not want us to worry about discussing our ideas in front of the class, he did not tell us this was going to happen. So after a little hesitation, we got into it. It was really interesting seeing all the different products and ads from the various members of the different groups. I could see that everyone was using the analytical tools we have been learning in class and applying them to the assignment. Below are pictures of our two slides and the ads we have chosen.

Matt discusses the thesis for his chosen advertisement.

Jasmine discusses the thesis for her pad ad.

After this activity, we moved onto our lecture about globalization and China from 1975 to the present. These decades are commonly referred to as the “golden age” of globalization, and for good reason! The rise of the internet and the end of the cold war really facilitated an expansion of international connections and movements. Professor Sheehan made sure to note the drawbacks to globalization and its features as well, such as economic recession and environmental degradation. We discussed the rise of China from the Maoist period and the transition to a more open country that engaged in the international community, as seen through participation in the Olympic games of 1984 (just blocks away at the Coliseum!) and inclusion in the United Nations Security Council. Even with these changes and reforms, it’s important to note important events like the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and ensuing massacre in 1989. With that, we finished lecture and moved on to a discussion of the readings.

Tiananmen Square, 1989

We discussed the final two chapters of LiAnne Yu’s book, Consumption in China: How New Consumer Ideology is Shaping the Nation (China Today). The sixth and penultimate chapter, “Awareness” focused on changing Chinese morality, patriotism, degrading environmental conditions, consumer rights, censorship, and theoretical considerations. In discussing this chapter in class, there emerged an extended debate regarding whether or not a public sphere has developed in China. “Team Emma” argued that an effective public sphere had not yet emerged, while “Team Noah” argued that there was a public sphere. Some students, like Megan, were somewhere in between each side, believing that a public sphere did exist, though not in a traditional form that we see in America. Furthermore, some students discussed their interpretations of and concern with other components of the chapter, such as the worrisome amount of unregulated food production, anthropogenic impacts on the environment, and apparent declining moral state of the country. Some were impressed by netizens’ utilization of the Internet to manifest public discussion despite censorship in some aspects by the state. Furthermore, we looked at Yu’s concluding chapter on “Consumption with Chinese Characteristics.” In doing so, some disagreement ensued over whether the conclusion was sufficiently effective in wrapping up the book.

LiAnne Yu, Author of Consumption in China

Finally, the class ended with an exam, where Professor Sheehan asked us to analyze an advertisement for a Taiwanese company’s product, Giant Bicycles.

Giant, King of Chuan Zang

Clarence Lai & Michele Torne

GEA China scholars focused on their research

After five days of in-class lectures and delicious snacks, we are anxiously awaiting our impending fieldwork in China. Today’s class focused on Lianne Yu’s theories and perspectives of “Lifestyles” and “Commodities” of the jiulinghou generation born in the 1990s. China, its people and culture are complex. After three generations under Mao Zedong’s regime, a new generation has emerged. Their grandparents and parents had lived through an era called the “iron rice bowl”, where self-sacrifice and saving money was most important. The jiulinghou generation is about consumption facilitating self-fulfillment, experimentation, and exploration. This is often seen as wasteful by the older generations. Our discussion honed in on a few aspects of Chinese life that were once shaped by political ideology and that have now come under the influence of the market such as housing, gender identities, child rearing and leisure time. With a better understanding of the social and political conditions in China from 1850 to 1975, we had the opportunity to conduct group work with our teams.

Group work time

During the second half of class, we met with our group members to discuss and finalize our research design. This includes the specific procedures we will follow, the different techniques of advertising we will focus on, and the overarching themes we will study. Along with this, the five groups listed questions that they were interested in answering when they did their research in China. These two elements will serve as a guideline for when we all get to China to conduct our fieldwork. All in all, we’ve completed a week of class and are two more days away from our big voyage to China. So exciting!

Getting some words of wisdom before the weekend

Wendy Liu

Wendy and her research group – 05/16/2019

Today we began class with slightly lower energy than usual due to the rainy weather. Thus, Professor Sheehan decided to give us a pop quiz to get the class going. Hopefully we all did alright. Afterwards, we learned about China’s Global Connections from 1850-1925. We covered topics such as colonization and the Opium War. Did you know that Tsingtao beer was a result of German colonization of Qingdao? A lot of rebellions also occurred during the Qing dynasty. The one that almost overthrew the Qing Dynasty was lead by the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan. He was quite an interesting character to learn about. He originally dedicated his life to studying for the imperial examination, but unfortunately failed five times. After becoming delirious after one of his failed exams, he had an out-of-body experience dream that brought him to Heaven. Later on, he came to the interpretation that he was a son of God and the younger brother of Jesus Christ.

After ending the lecture on Global Connections, we segued into our daily discussion of the reading. We discussed the chapters on Spaces and Status from LiAnne Yu’s book Consumption in China. Finally, we wrapped up the day in our research groups and began solidifying our research design and finding ads to analyze for our research papers.

Mikaella Ahn

Mikaella Ahn and Michelle Truong + Professor Sheehan – 05/16/2019

When I came into class, my face was drenched in rain, but luckily my raincoat covered the rest of my clothes. Unfortunately, Professor Sheehan decided the first thing for us to do was take a pop exam for us to get our creative minds flowing for the day. We then went to learn about globalization and how it is affected during the 1850-1925 time period. Afterwards, we had our class discussion on the readings of LiAnne Yu’s 2014 book, Consumption in China. During the discussion on the definition of middle class, I brought up what it means to be middle class for cosmopolitan Chinese singletons. I discussed how middle class might mean the value of continuously working hard to be able to afford mansions and multiple high-end cars and luxury bags. Being middle class to others is able to afford a leisure lifestyle where money is not a means of survival but being able to enjoy experiences with others.

For the last segment of class, Professor Sheehan split us into our research groups. My research partner is Michelle Truong and our project is on cosmetic eye creams. We asked Jeremy and Professor Sheehan to translate some of the advertisements that we found online from Innisfree and Estee Lauder on eye cream. Fortunately, the rain never came back for the rest of the day, and in the evening, I was able to enjoy board games with the professor and the rest of the students.

Connor Chapkis & Eric Ye

One of the biggest concerns before any trip is preparation.

For some of us that meant getting the right vaccines because going to a drastically different place will expose us to new kinds of pathogens. Thankfully, we have the Engemann Student Health Center and its Travel Clinic. Aside from vaccines, we also needed to prepare other things. What did we need to prepare? Thankfully, Professor Sheehan gave us a handy dandy note sheet.

Today’s lecture was quite exciting. We went over a lot, squeezing several hundred years of world history into a couple hours. During that period, we learned about how early trade networks displayed some of the characteristics of globalization. We then covered some important geography to form a conceptual map of what’s evolving in the world.

We started around the middle of the Ming Dynasty. After a significant discussion of the life and political career of a palace servant, Zheng He, including how a eunuch acquires his title and why emperors preferred eunuchs to normal slaves, we discussed the other “great” explorer of this century: Christopher Columbus.

After a brief history about Columbus and why he was able to make it to the new world, Professor Sheehan taught about Columbus’s legacy… the Columbian Exchange. Most of us already knew that the exchange spread “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” to completely misquote Jared Diamond. However, what was extremely important about the Columbian exchange was its scale. There were small scale trade networks that were mostly regional (but when a product goes through multiple regional trade networks, it might go pretty far), but the Columbian exchange started globalization at an unprecedented scale.

At this point, Professor Sheehan led a discussion on whether we thought that the Columbian exchange resulted in globalism, and if it did facilitate globalism, what we thought the elements of globalism were.

After concluding his lecture, he diagnosed how much we understood the symptoms of globalism by presenting us an ad from the WeChat website’s splash screen. Then, our good professor had us form research groups. We began by narrowing down our broad ideas of what we might want to research in China. Each group began to write down research questions that will help us gather relevant evidence and form our eventual theses.

So far, the groups are focusing on feminine hygiene products, frozen treats, beer, eye cream, and storefront layouts. We’re all excited to get a better idea of what lies ahead once we land in Beijing! Here are some pictures of our research groups at work.

Professor Sheehan with GEA China Research Group: Make-up Moguls

GEA China Research Group: Team Tampon posing for the camera

GEA China Research Group: Pop & Sicle focused on their research

GEA China Research Group: China Beer Crew discussing their research