Analysis of Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman
This book was given to me by a good friend who knew that I had an interest in Asia. I chose to read it because it was a true story and was told that it was a good read.
The author travels to China as an English teacher for the Hunan Medical School. There he stayed for two years picking up many anecdotes along the way. The author already had spent a large amount of his life studying Chinese language and the martial arts. However, when he arrives in China he meets teachers who have dedicated their entire lives to perfecting a particular art or skill, whether it be martial arts or calligraphy.
Mark Salzman was perfecting his calligraphy skills and as weeks had passed he began to make progress. He was getting tired of the models and wanted to try something new. When he told Hai Bin,(his teacher), he frowned and said,”Some people spend their entire lives researching a single model. You should be willing to spend a year on this one.” This is an example of the dedication and perseverance these men have towards their chosen artform or skill. Another example of this theme, was Mark’s Wushu teacher, Pan, who punched a fifty pound plate of steel up to ten thousand times a day. Mark’s relentless practicing of the many forms of Wushu was influenced by Pan.
Salzman also showed that there was great oppression. The people of China were under constant surveillance and control. Rarely were they able to make important decisions f...
I found this book to be a rather interesting read. I enjoyed how Levathes researched this book and wrote it to try to explain about this specific period of time and how it is very non-fiction.
...had gotten a document about China from the Europeans, and that wasn't just about their type of government, but what the government did, and what their economy and social life was like.
The Cultural Revolution in China was led by Mao Zedong, due to this Liang and many others faced overwhelming obstacles in many aspects of their life such as work, family and everyday encounters, if affected everyone’s families life and education, Liang lets us experience his everyday struggles during this era, where the government determined almost every aspect of life.
Jonathan Spence tells his readers of how Mao Zedong was a remarkable man to say the very least. He grew up a poor farm boy from a small rural town in Shaoshan, China. Mao was originally fated to be a farmer just as his father was. It was by chance that his young wife passed away and he was permitted to continue his education which he valued so greatly. Mao matured in a China that was undergoing a threat from foreign businesses and an unruly class of young people who wanted modernization. Throughout his school years and beyond Mao watched as the nation he lived in continued to change with the immense number of youth who began to westernize. Yet in classes he learned classical Chinese literature, poems, and history. Mao also attained a thorough knowledge of the modern and Western world. This great struggle between modern and classical Chinese is what can be attributed to most of the unrest in China during this time period. His education, determination and infectious personalit...
Overall I enjoyed reading this book, I read it a few years ago in high school, but I took more from it this time and was able to apply it more to my experiences and events I have witnessed. I’m glad the novel was assigned for me to read because it really made me think about the world today and how we interact in the world. It actually brought up questions and connections that I didn’t see when I read the book years ago. This novel will always be relevant and I’m sure will be read years from now.
have chosen it for my report. Finally, I will give my reactions to the novel
This is my personal reflection about this book. First and foremost, I would like to say that this book is very thick and long to read. There are about nineteen chapters and 278 pages altogether. As a slow reader, it is a quite hard for me to finish reading it within time. It took me weeks to finish reading it as a whole. Furthermore, it is written in English version. My English is just in average so sometimes I need to refer to dictionary for certain words. Sometimes I use google translate and ask my friends to explain the meaning of certain terms.
This is an odd little book, but a very important one nonetheless. The story it tells is something like an extended parablethe style is plain, the characters are nearly stick figures, the story itself is contrived. And yet ... and yet, the story is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking because the historical trend it describes is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking.
My overall opinion of this book is good I really liked it and recommend it to anyone. It is a good book to read and it keep you interested throughout the whole book.
There is no better way to learn about China's communist revolution than to live it through the eyes of an innocent child whose experiences were based on the author's first-hand experience. Readers learn how every aspect of an individual's life was changed, mostly for the worst during this time. You will also learn why and how Chairman Mao launched the revolution initially, to maintain the communist system he worked hard to create in the 1950's. As the story of Ling unfolded, I realized how it boiled down to people's struggle for existence and survival during Mao's reign, and how lucky we are to have freedom and justice in the United States; values no one should ever take for
Fashion in the 21th century is a big business, as its production employs millions of people and generates billions of dollars in revenue. Fashion has for the past century been, and is still today, used as an indicator of social change and progress, as it changes with the social norms of the society and the political changes of the world (Finkelstein 3).
Many people would not believe that there are so many similarities between modern day fashion and the fashion of the renaissance time period. Many differences may be seen between the two, but the similarities are remarkable. Throughout all of time, clothing has been the major representation of social classes. What people wear has always been the distinguishing factor between the wealthy and the poor classes of both the renaissance and current time period. The evolution from time period to time period has been vast, but the fact that what people wear represents what class they reside in is still very prevalent. From the fabrics, jewels, and accessories, you can still see many similarities from the renaissance time period to the current time period. “…much of what we know about historical dress comes from the apparel of the elite.” (Sauro) Although much time has progressed, fashion from the renaissance period has held a strong influence on the fashion in today’s society.
In the early 1800s, France was the sole fashion capital of the world; everyone who was anyone looked towards Paris for inspiration (DeJean, 35). French fashion authority was not disputed until the late twentieth century when Italy emerged as a major fashion hub (DeJean, 80). During the nineteenth century, mass produced clothing was beginning to be marketed and the appearance of department stores was on the rise (Stearns, 211). High fashion looks were being adapted and sold into “midlevel stores” so that the greater public could have what was once only available to the social elite (DeJean, 38). People were obsessed with expensive fashions; wealthy parents were advised not the let their children run around in expensive clothing. People would wait for children dressed in expensive clothing to walk by and then they would kidnap them and steal their clothes to sell for money (DeJean, 39). Accessories were another obsession of France‘s fashion; they felt no outfit was complete without something like jewelry or a shrug to finish off the look and make it all around polished (DeJean, 61). As designers put lines together, marketing began to become important to fashion in the nineteenth century; fashion plates came into use as a way to show off fashion l...
Pictures, I have heard they say a thousand words, but I did not know that this
The Cultural Revolution destroyed countless lives; while some died during reeducation, the Revolution drove others to suicide, madness, or depression by the shame, humiliation, and isolation they faced. The government of China, however, often denies that such suffering occurred. Instead, it promotes a positive, romanticized image of the Cultural Revolution in sanctioned fiction and in official history. Therefore, one of the few ways we can see the true effects of the Communist regime is through the fiction that the disillusioned Chinese citizens wrote about the actual experience and impact of the era. Through these writings, we can see clearly who were the victims and who were the oppressors