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.