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"A Touch of Green",,"While doing research in Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu province in China, I made a visit to a local neighborhood called Dafang Lane. There's no famous tourist spot here, but I was drawn to it by a Taiwanese TV series that I watched years ago -- A Touch of Green.
A Touch of Green is a 2015 TV series that is based on a novella of the same name by Pai Hsien-Yung, a phenomenal Chinese writer. The story unfolds the life of three Republic of China Air Force pilots and their wives from the Chinese Civil War period (1945-1949) to the White Terror period (1949 to 1987) in Taiwan. The story is not an ode to China's revolutionary past, but rather to the tumultuous and miserable lives of ordinary Chinese people who left their homeland and migrated to a new island after the KMT lost the Civil War in 1949. It is not centered on the bravery of the pilots or the strength of their wives. Instead, the drama portrays their anxiety and weariness over the war, their helplessness when confronting fate and history, and their grief over their loved ones' deaths. It touched me because it transcends macro-historical frameworks and narrates the bond, love, pain, and survival hardship of an ordinary group of people.
In the original novella, Dafang Lane is the military dependents’ village where the wives of the pilots resided. The old buildings still exist today, and there is a brief introduction on the wall explaining that they were constructed in the 1930s and are now protected historical sites in Nanjing. I walked around Dafang Lane, as if I was walking down the memory lane of modern Chinese history. The dripping sound of life echoed here, as I imagined how the wives of the pilots anxiously awaited their husbands' safe landing or their deaths. For me, the Dafang Lane is not just a place; it's also a humanities moment that intertwines the TV drama, the novella, and the untold history of a group of pilots and their families.",,"A Touch of Green (television series and novella by Pai Hsien-Yung)",,"May 2021","Jinghong Zhang, 26, history Ph.D. student",,,,,,touch-of-green,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"A Touch of Green,China,Families,Historic Sites,Historical Memory,History,Nanjing, China,Television Series,War",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/447/Dafang_Lane.png,Text,"Graduate Student Residents 2021",1,0
"There is No Singular Experience",,"The study of contested territory for me has alway been a story of land and/or ideological dispute between colonial powers, regional peoples, religious factions, or other distinctions that come into play as humans acquire land and promulgate cultural traits and ideologies.
Contested territory is more than a story of “us versus them” or “them vs. them.” In fact, “them” is not a singular entity.
During a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, we had the pleasure of hearing from UNC professor Gang Yue, Chair of the Department of Asian Studies. He opened a lecture on Communism Today by sharing the experience of his parents, both doctors, during mid-twentieth century China. In 1950, Chairman Mao announced that there would be a, “complete unification of Chinese medicine” (qtd. In Levinovitz’s article, Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine). Despite being educated in cutting edge medicine in one of China’s top hospitals, both Professor Yue’s parents were reeducated in traditional medicine which westerners have come to identify as synonymous with China. Yue’s mother and father were sent to rural, outlying provinces for several weeks to treat the countries remote population.
Through his story, it became clear that his parents had vastly different opinions of their experience both with their training in traditional Chinese medicines and practicing in the rural provinces of China. While his father looked down at his reeducation experience, Yue’s mother found many practical purposes of traditional practices which she incorporated in her field of gynecology. In addition, she remembered her practice in rural China as the most rewarding service in her career, providing medical care to those in need rather than with the elites in urban China.
Upon hearing this story, my romanticized view of a China, steeped in tradition, that continued to remain a practicing culture of traditional medicine, was shattered.. More disturbingly, I realized that I had bought into the cultural myth and view of the “mysterious Orient,” ignoring my own first lesson to students to not “mythisize” or “otherize” people. More importantly,Yue’s personal narrative opened my eyes to the complicated task of curating stories to try and define a singular experience of contested territory. People have differing memories despite being from the same side of the same coin, even those individuals who are a part of the same family. As with any narrative, there is no singular experience of a contested territory.
",,,,"July 23rd, 2018","Lesley Jane Mace, 40, Social Studies Teacher",,,,,,there-is-no-singular-experience,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Humanities Center","China,Communism,Medicine,Teachers & Teaching,World History,Zedong, Mao",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/220/Traditional_Chinese_Medicine.jpg,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0