Sarah Ajise & Marissa Yee

Hello blog! Today was our second day of class in Los Angeles. We began with a recap of the main ideas in the readings we discussed in class yesterday: What is globalization? What is the difference between subjective vs. objective globalization? And is a broad term like globalization worth defining?

We continued the morning by reviewing the basic geography of China, also known as “Professor Sheehan’s Quick and Dirty Guide to Geography.” The two major rivers, the Yangzi and the Yellow River, run east to west. China itself can be regionally divided in three ways. China proper contains the fertile land of the Southeast and excludes the plateaus and deserts. The North-South division lies between the Yangzi and Yellow Rivers with wheat and rice as respective characteristic crops. Land in the east is wetter and more densely populated while the land in the west is used for herding sheep and horses.

Next, Professor Sheehan gave a lecture on Global Connections before 1500. Examples included the spread of homo sapiens out of Africa over 40,000 years ago, the Silk Road between 200 BCE and 900 CE, trade diasporas, and Zheng He’s expeditions. It soon became clear to the class that globalization is not an entirely new phenomenon – aspects of global interaction have occurred since the very first humans.

GEA China 2019 Class

Today was particularly exciting because we formed groups for our field research projects to be conducted in China. We each discussed our personal interests for the project, then picked groups based on broad connections between those interests. Currently, potential subjects include coffee shops and tea shops, Chinese beer, face masks, store design, and sustainable packaging. With such a variety of subjects at this preliminary phase, our projects surely seem promising!

Global East Asia scholars discussing research topics.

At the end of class, we discussed two readings, Cochran – “Consumer Culture in Chinese History,” and Wang & Yeh – “Globalization and Hybridization in Cultural Products.” We discussed whether consumer culture was top down or bottom up, that is, whether consumer culture is primarily driven by imposing corporations or the selective support of consumer choice. We also discussed terms like deculturalization, acculturation, and reculturalization through the lens of two Chinese hybrid movies, Mulan and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This led to more discussion on cultural appropriation, cultural signifiers, and the search for the authentic.

The East Asian Studies Center staff also came by at the end of class to take a picture of the group. Here we are in silly mode!

GEA China 2019 Class and Grace Ryu in silly mode

By the end of today, everyone had become aware that within a week we’d be in China! As we were looking over the final logistics of our travel—flight seats, currency exchanges, VPN installations, WeChat, and packing lists—everyone expressed their excitement. We’ve got a great group of 15 students, and we are all psyched to travel and explore.

Noah Blackman

Hello & welcome to the introductory 2019 Global East Asia China blog post! My name is Noah Blackman, a rising junior studying International Relations and Economics.

This will be the first in a series of updates to both our travels in China and the progress of our research projects as they develop. These updates will be written by different groups of students as the program ensues. The first day of our Maymester began with a unique icebreaker. Professor Sheehan instructed us to write two “twitterographies” about a classmate that we hadn’t met before and then present them to the rest of the class. The result was a funny and memorable way of being introduced to each person. One thing I remember was being astounded by the variety of interests of my peers regarding China.

After that, we talked more on the necessities for traveling to China and the professor gave us a checklist to help us prepare. Besides preparing us for traveling, we began assembling our analytical toolkit, which we will use when inspecting marketing techniques in China. Understanding the concepts in the readings will help contribute to our toolkit as we navigate the effects of globalization on the consumer culture of China. That’s it for me tonight, soon you’ll hear from my group members Megan Bennett & Emma Cockerell, pictured with me below.

Global East Asia China scholars (left to right): Noah Blackman, Megan Bennett, and Emma Cockerell

Fight on!

By: Kenny and Ursula

May 17th

Our class began with a practice quiz of a Giant Bike ad, after which Professor Sheehan gave us feedback on things we analyzed well in addition to areas where we missed points. We then started learning an extremely brief history of both globalization and how it interacted with China. The lecture touched on such topics as the Columbian Exchange, trade routes and food drugs (including tea). We are looking at whether or not globalization is new a phenomenon. Different countries have been in contact for thousands of years, multinational corporations are newer and technology like the telegraph even more recent, yet still before the internet. When did globalization start is helping us on the way to understanding what globalization means. It has been interesting attempting to look at the rather vague term, globalization, through an historical lens.

Today, the major development in the course was starting the main course text, Consumption in China by Lianne Yu. This has led to interesting discussions on brand loyalty and identity, hybridity, internet use, status and cultural differences between the United States and China. The conversations are insightful and colorful as we often bring personal experiences and examples into the discussion. As a class, we are definitely starting to learn more about each other. At the end of class, we began to solidify the groups we are going to be working with over the next few weeks.

May 18th

We are almost done with a quarter of our summer course, various concepts in readings are starting to connect with one another, and advertisements seem to carry a lot more messages now than before the start of our Global East Asia course.

We began our class with Katie treating us to some awesome pretzel snacks (thank you Papa Sheehan for having the late-snack policy)! Right after, however, Professor Sheehan gave us our first pop quiz on advertisement/source analysis to even out the good start to our class. All jokes aside, our quiz required us to analyze a Huawei (Chinese cell phone brand) advertisement using the new concepts and frameworks related to globalization and consumerism we learned the past few days. Professor Sheehan very generously prepared us for the quiz the previous day when he gave us a practice quiz and guided us towards the types of analyses we should include in our quizzes and eventually in our final projects. Moreover, the important pedagogical motive behind having quizzes is to train and teach us how to later analyze the advertisements we see during our fieldwork in China.

In terms of our group projects, we got together with our research groups and decided on group names because that is what group projects are all about! We also spent time narrowing down our research topics which entailed picking an industry of interest and finding a potential question we would like to explore. Lastly, we briefly searched for advertisements from our selected industries which are going to serve as the primary sources in our 2 page analytical papers due next Monday.

Update on group projects:

By: Edith and Katie

The first two days consisted mainly of introductions, orientation, and discussion of some basic tools we will use throughout the rest of the program. Day one began with a fun little project: “twitterographies.” This is a made up word by Professor Sheehan; it’s basically your whole life story in 140 characters or less.

We partnered up with people we didn’t know and got to know them before writing two distinct twitterographies which, if read separately, you wouldn’t be able to tell they described the same person. Here’s an example of one of the students: “Freshman studying economies, member of TAO and BSA, tutors crazy stats, looking to work in the food industry #food.” Now here’s another example of the same student: “Soccer watcher and player, The Intern #bestmovieever, loves to travel with fam, can’t wait to go back to China #THIRDtime and try Peking Duck #food #fighton.” The second one goes over the character count a bit, but Professor Sheehan thankfully wasn’t too strict. 

Once we finished introductions we quickly got into orientation which took up a good chunk of time, but was incredibly necessary! Traveling to another country for two weeks isn’t easy! We finally got into the readings towards the last hour of class, and established some tools we would be using from then on. Here’s the list we have from day one:
Eriksen (author): Features of globalization
• Disembedding
• Acceleration
• Standardization
• Interconnectedness
• Movement
• Mixing
• Vulnerability
• Re-embedding
What we do with these tools is analyze pictures that emphasize certain aspects of globalization. We figure out, for example, who the ad is marketed to, the main message its trying to convey, and how/if it shows globality. We also learned another tool from our second reading for that day: Invention of Tradition by Hobsbawm. We all agreed that Hobsbawm wasn’t totally spot on with his argument of “invented traditions” versus “real traditions,” as all traditions were invented at one point. But it is an important tool to use when observing traditions in China and in product advertisements.

The second day featured more logistics as we tried to figure out airplane seats and our final paper! But everything will definitely be settled before we leave. Professor Sheehan did a lot more lecturing today before jumping into discussion on the readings. He did some history and geography of China, especially of the areas we will be staying at when we go. Professor Sheehan is a great lecturer, but he should definitely think about a career in game show hosting (I mean look at those awesome pants)!

We also talked about the (vague) concept of globalization and Professor Sheehan gave us a Quick and Dirty Guide to Globalization, which include the following list:

• • Capital flows
  • Global shifts in division of labor
  • Multinational organizations and corporations
  • Increases in wealth combined (usually) with increases in inequality
  • Globalized culture seen in brands, Hollywood, kung fu, fast food, hip hop, anime…
  • International competitions and sports
  • Local resistance and adaptation: “glocalization”
  • Development of an “international language”
  • Media and communication
  • Copying of personal habits (hygienic discipline)
  • Global definition of regulated time
  • Population movements
  • Long-distance trade
  • The movement of germs and viruses
  • The movement of ideas:
    • Religion, nationalism, progress…
  • The movement of technological innovations:
    • New transportation and communications technologies lead to a shrinking of time and space 
  • Adaptation of political structures to international influence:
• • Invasion and conquest
  • International relations
  • Colonialism / imperialism

Lastly, we finally took our group photo! Not one. But THREE.

By: Anbar Aizenman, Rowan McEvoy and Cindy Wang

Prof. Sheehan discussing Tourism in Beijing

We are coming to the end of our time here at USC and class is starting to wrap up. Professor Sheehan finished lecturing on Chinese history, so we have moved on to analyzing our the sites we will be visiting (Beijing, Zhengzhou, Hebi and Shanghai). The readings have also tapered off a little as we move away from analyzing scholarly articles towards less dense materials.

Over the past couple of days, we have been extensively reviewing our toolkit of useful concepts related to globalization as introduced through our various readings. The ideas should be a good way to analyze sources we find through our fieldwork in China. Here are some of the ones we have come across:

• Spaces as places to be consumed
• Having a flexible identity relating to consumption
• The relative nature of tradition, as all traditions were invented at some time
• More specific ways of defining hybridization

For our group’s project, we plan on looking at the cell phone industry in China. We want to figure out the differences between domestic companies and foreign ones in advertising strategies and marketing. Furthermore, we want to analyze middle-end and high-end phones in the same fashion. In terms of phones, the market is large enough that we implemented some limitations in order to give our project a better sense of scope. We decided to only focus on smartphones, and within the smartphone industry, specifically we want to look at those from Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi. Given the prevalence of these four brands, we should have plenty of data to work with.

In terms of locations for researching, we plan on visiting electronics malls, middle and high-end more general malls, individual retailers, and possibly even flagship stores. In addition to browsing the areas and looking at advertisements, we also intend on speaking with sales staff. Although Anbar knows very little Chinese and Rowan has taken merely a semester of it, Cindy is fluent in the language as she grew up in Hangzhou, China. We are therefore counting on her to get us through some interactions and make sure Anbar and Rowan do not make fools of themselves.

We leave for China on Sunday and look forward to keeping you posted on our exploits.

By: Brandon Cheung, Jonathan Kim and Jasper McEvoy

The whole group! Except Brandon…From left: Anna, Cindy, Professor Sheehan, Jacob, Anbar, Zach, Jasper, Jonathan, and Rowan.

More than a week into the East Asian Studies Center’s Global East Asia program, we’ve already learned so much about Chinese consumer culture, and are excited to experience it firsthand when we fly to Beijing on Sunday. Unfortunately, that means jet lag and a lot of it! Just as soon as we’ve settled into our daily routine of preparing for class at 9:00 AM, we’ll be adjusting to the fifteen hour time difference between Los Angeles and Beijing. Nevertheless, the time we’ve spent in class so far has been a truly stimulating and enjoyable educational experience. During this time, we have immersed ourselves in the study of Chinese consumer culture. We read Lianne Yu’s book on the consumption patterns of China’s emerging upper-middle class, Consumption in China. We also read an article written by Eric Hobsbawm on the nature of tradition and customs, as well as a number of other thought-provoking readings relevant to our study of consumer culture in modern China. Our enthusiastic, board-game loving Papa Sheehan (as we affectionately call him) has provided us with captivating lectures on the history of globalization and China since the 1850’s–specifically, how we’ve come to identify how the nation has developed alongside as well as through consumerism. Some of the more relevant history we’ve studied includes: the power struggle between The Nationalist and Communist Parties, the rise of Mao Zedong and Communist China, and the emergence of capitalism after Mao. We have also discussed earlier Chinese history such as the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, and the effects of Japanese imperialism. In addition, we’ve learned how to identify key features of Chinese geography (for example, what distinguishes North from South and East from West, as well as the Chinese border). We have also learned about international trade networks, such as the Silk Road and the Triangle Trade. However, most importantly, we were taught Sheehan’s Eight Rules for Historical Analysis:

1.         It’s all about the sources;

2.         Sources lie;

3.         Bad sources are better than no sources;

4.         Evaluate sources carefully;

5.         Explain, don’t describe;

6.         Don’t read the present into the past of the past into the present;

7.         Don’t romanticize the past;

8.         Think spatially as well as temporally — know your geography.

Professor Sheehan lecturing and flashing a smile.

Using our daily reading assignments, Papa Sheehan has encouraged us to stock our metaphorical “analytical toolboxes” with terminology relevant to the course. For example, in Lianne Yu’s book, Consumption in China, as well as other sources, we’ve drawn important words and phrases like “neo-tribe,” “imagined community,” “glocalization,” and “deconstructed/reconstructed culture.” With these terms, we have discovered ways to precisely analyze consumer culture that we never thought possible, and some group members have even invented new terminology that has been useful in class discussions. The discussions themselves have been invaluable as well. It’s been great to hear everyone’s unique takes on the readings, and how we can find so many ways to relate a new concept to ones from previous days, to anecdotes from our lives that compare and contrast China and America.

Team C.A.R. (in the foreground) and Team Bingbing work on their research proposals.

As we learn more about China, we have begun to prepare for our upcoming research. We have split into three research groups: one focusing on cell phones, one focusing on entertainment, and the last (our group) on snack food. In order to prepare for the field, we have taken time this week to meet with our groups and, using what we learned from lecture and discussion, discuss potential findings and other expectations. For our research, we plan to look at snack foods in the shopping malls and convenience stores of cities throughout China, specifically analyzing foreign influence on sweet snack foods.

Lastly, since meeting for the first time, our class has come to know each other and develop a close-knit sense of companionship inside and outside of the course. As a class, we’re on the smaller side (only nine students!), but what we lack in size we make up for in energy and enthusiasm… and Cindy — our only Mandarin speaking classmate. We’ve had an incredibly rich and memorable experience and look forward to many future Korean Barbeques! We are leaving for China in four days and absolutely cannot wait.

Brandon gets a Papa Sheehan fist bump.