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

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.