Doris Wong

May 30, 2002

EDUC 377 - Culture and Content Instruction

Exploring Culture : The Chinese Culture

1. What is culture?

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, culture is defined in simple term as the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought characteristic of a community or population. As we know, culture can mean different things to different people. According to the Brooklyn College Core 9 course, they define culture as "high culture", by which they mean the artistic tastes of a society's educated elite. In China, this meaning of the word is very important because in China there has been a long tradition of high regard for education. The culture of group of people can be understood as the system of shared ideas and meanings that can be explicit and implicit which they use to interpret the world and which serve to pattern their behavior. Not only does this concept of culture include an understanding of the arts, literature and history of a society, but also less tangible aspects such as attit!

udes, prejudices, folklore and so forth.

For more information, go to:

http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/culture.html

2. Critical Demographic, Social, and Historical information about the group

Chinese Demographic

As of March, 2001, China's population is now more than 1.2 billion people. Urban couples and many rural families have been restricted to just one child since the late 1970s to ease the strain on food supplies and resources.

For more information on China's population, go to http://archive.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500468205-500716106-503973632-0,00.html

For more information on China's One-Child Policy, go to http://axe.acadiau.ca/~043638z/one-child/links.html

To learn about China's Social System visit the following webpages:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+cn0064)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+cn0067)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+cn0070)

Historial Setting

China's history goes way back and is rich with tradition and culture. To get a better understanding of its history go to:

http://www.chaos.umd.edu/history/toc.html

At the bottom of that page, click on Timeline to see a History Timeline of dynasties.

3. Expectations that students and parents have about schooling and their community

The Chinese value education. They see it as a stepping stone to success. Therefore, children are under a lot of pressure to excel in school. Parents also enroll their children in after-school activities to enhance their overall development.

For more information on education, go to:

http://www.pbs.org/kcts/preciouschildren/china/cultural.html

http://www.cscse.edu.cn/laihua/e_zgjy.html

4. Factors about the group that have influenced its immigration to the U.S.

The Chinese immigrated to the U.S. for many reasons. The webpage has two activities for students to do. First, they will read about Chinese Emigration and answer questions about it. Second, they will conduct an interview someone who has immigrated to the U.S.

http://www.newton.mec.edu/Angier/DimSum/Emigration-%20Reading%20Lesson.html

5. Variability within the group

During the long course of historical development, China different peoples have developed individual customs regarding food, clothing and housing, in response to their own particular environments, social conditions and level of economic development. Within each area of China, there are similiarities and differences within the group. For more information go to:

http://www.china.org.cn/e-china/religions/customs.htm

http://www.central.k12.ca.us/akers/dailylife.html

6. Characterization of their language structure and discourse rules.

In China, there are many different languages of Chinese. The official language in China is Mandarin. Within these languages, there are different dialects. The Chinese uses characters to express their writings whereas, in America, we use letters. The text runs vertically from right to left. Chinese is the most spoken language in the world; English is the second most spoken language and Spanish is third.

For a list of different languages of China go to: http://www.travlang.com/Ergane/asia.htm

For more information on their language structure go to: http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinlng2.html

http://zhongwen.com/

http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profc01.htm