East+Asia+Culture+&+History

Unit Two: East Asia Culture & History



__Unit Two Overview__

As we learned in unit one, the region of East Asia is made up of China, Japan and the Korean Peninsula. We will spend most of our time learning about China. China is home to one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations. It can argued, that one to two thousand years ago, China was one of the most developed civilizations on Earth. Many of the advances achieved by China, such as paper, printing, gunpowder and the magnetic compass, did not occur in Europe until hundreds of years later.

Eventually technological advancement stagnated in China, and with the coming of the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 18th century, China and East Asia fell “behind” Europe. The decline of East Asia was so dramatic that throughout the 19th and into the 20th century many areas came under colonial control by Europe. One exception was Japan, which generally resisted foreign control and followed an industrial course modeled after Europe and America. Japan has been the economic powerhouse of East Asia from the mid 1800’s to the present day. However, over the last twenty years, they have rapidly been losing this distinction to China. Communist leaders in China have followed an aggressive path of modernization and industrial development that for now, appears to have no end in sight.

The major theme in our study of East Asia is the tension between the modern and traditional in China.

=__By the end of the unit you should be able to do the following:__=

> >
 * 1) Describe the discoveries, inventions and accomplishments of ancient East Asia. Describe what happened to East Asia during the 19th century.
 * 1) Describe how China is a mix of ancient and traditional customs and values and the modern age. Be able to identify specific examples of how China is a mix of the traditional and the modern.
 * 1) Describe what Japan was like at the end of World War II. Describe how Japan become a developed nation again. Be able to identify the important aspects of Japanese culture

**__Helpful Videos:__** I have removed the embedded YouTube videos - they cause the page to load extremely slow and Youtube is blocked at TMS anyhow. There are two Youtube videos that I recommend that you view on Youtube:

** This is China - 8 minutes ** Beijing Blends Historic with Modern (4 minutes)


 * __Resources on China and East Asia__ ||
 * Japan World History for Kids ||
 * Ancient China - History for Kids ||
 * China – Tons of links on China ||
 * Modern China - from Washington State University ||  ||
 * Korea World History for Kids ||  ||


 * **Presentations For some reason, the images are blocked at TMS - they should come through elsewhere just fine. ** ||
 * China PowerPoint:media type="custom" key="5349579" ||
 * Japan PowerPoint: media type="custom" key="5354317" ||
 * Key Terms & Concepts ||
 * Key Terms & Concepts ||