Special Guest Chuck Roberts & The Year of China Festival!

Chuck Roberts is a former CNN Headline News anchor now teaching media training in China for Missouri School of Journalism. Roberts came to Reinhardt University on Thursday, October 25. Roberts shared his stories about his efforts since 2010 to establish independent news broadcasting across China. His visit was part of the Year of China program at Reinhardt for 2012-2013.

Roberts and his teammates lecture across 34 provinces and broadcast centers in China. The nationally-recognized news veterans spend twelve days, six times a year, training producers, writers, anchor and managers as they initiate for-profit news programming to compete with CCTV, the government’s principal television outlet.

The CCTV now has about 3,000 T.V stations and even has their own versions of popular American shows like MTV. 

Roberts is fighting against a government in China that is very strict about what can and can't be broadcasting in China. It is shocking that the government controls what people are able to see, hear and get on television as well as the internet. This is very different from American government, because we have unlimited access and the freedom to explore and create any type of media we want.




Roberts gave an example of trying to access Google while in China and only being able to access a minute amount of information about topics going on in the rest of the world. He also made a point that sometimes the government will completely block out Google and make it so that no one is allowed to access any Google information period.

Chinese government media will not criticize their own government for fear of getting shut down or worse severe punishment for everyone involved. However Roberts efforts goes towards making a private media that would allow for true opinionated media on the people's perspective of the government. 




The censorship on media that China is faced with has caused an uproar, because most people in China especially the younger generation would love to have access to Facebook. Roberts talks about a time while in a conference meeting were the students who attended starting beating on the desk to show that they were eager to get access to Facebook. They had to be calmed down and they were ask to be polite while the speakers continued to speak on the topic of Facebook. 





The students would spend 4 hours in the conference go on a break and then come back to spend another 4 hours attentively listening to the guest speakers from America. He stated that they were all very eager to learn about broadcasting. The attendees would go out and shoot their on broadcast productions and then return to compete for who presented the best show. The prize would be something simple like a CNN hat, but Roberts said they went crazy over anything that was from America, as well as the guest. Roberts implied that the students seemed to idolize himself and the other guest speakers as celebrities.Chuck Roberts efforts to bring broadcasting media and access to Facebook in China, is very notable and inspiring.

The Year of China Festival 


The Year of China festival was a great introduction to the Chinese culture. I was able to get a hands on experience of Chinese Culture by visiting the workshops outside of the Hasty Student Life center. The workshops were on Chinese Tea,sessions on calligraphy using rice paper, brushes and ink, traditional Chinese music was playing throughout the festival and cultural food was also provided.

There were about five different tent workshops placed around the Hasty lawn, and each tent was very colorful and displayed Chinese artwork. It was fun to be able to visit each booth and get information about the unfamiliar pieces that were placed on the tables. The Chinese lanterns that were hung around the tents were very cute and the music really embraced the Chinese culture. 

The workshops provided us with the opportunity to create our own art pieces, such as Rock balancing in which rocks are balanced on top of one another in various positions. Trying to stack the rocks required a lot of patience, because it is very had to get the perfect balance between each rock. There were also door hangers, that were available for us to create our own Chinese symbols or drawings on them.




One booth had a drawing and you could take a quiz and enter to win a prize. I was handed a quiz paper and you had to look over the Chinese information board that was posted on the table and figure out the answer to the quiz before your name could be placed in the drawing. I thought that was interesting because it challenged my friend and I to quickly find all the answers we needed. 








Inside the glasshouse there was also traditional Chinese dancers. The dancers moved very quickly around the room and unlike dancers in the U.S., the traditional dancers used bright colored ribbons to make beautiful swirls and movements in the air. 








The Gordy dining hall served Chinese cuisine and I was able to try eating with chopstick which was a big challenge. They served rice, sweet and sour chicken and even had little fortune cookies for us. When using the chopstick it was very difficult for me to pick up my rice, and most of my food ended up somewhere other than my mouth. However it was fun to try out the chop sticks and the cuisine was very good. I enjoyed attending the year of China festival and liked learning about their traditions.

Livelihood

Modes of Livelihood

In chapter three there are five major modes of livelihood. Livelihood is the dominant pattern, in a culture, of making a living. Foraging is a mode of livelihood that is based on natural resources in nature. When you fish, hunt or go scavenging you are acting in foraging. This mode is in danger of be coming extinct. The heavy demand for natural resources leads to a threat called the "resource curse". There is a division of labor among foraging people as well as property relations. Division of labor has to do with dividing up the work within that village so that everyone residing there is pulling there own weight. Property relations in a foraging society means that a person or group has recognized there priorities in access to particular resources.







Horticulture is based on cultivating domesticated plants in a garden with the use of hand tools and it is another mode of livelihood. There are also five phases in the horticultural and those are; clearing, planting, weeding, harvesting, and fallowing.








In places like the Middle East, Africa and were there is limited rainfall the livelihood mode number three is Pastoralism. Pastoralism is where the region herds animals that they eat meat and drink for 50 percent of more of their diet. The six major herds of animal species are sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, cattle, and camels. Pastoralists offer milk, animals, hides, and other animal products.

Agriculture and industrialism are the final two modes of livelihood. Agriculture is a very intensive strategy, because it uses techniques that need to same plot of land to be used repeatedly without losing its fertility. Agriculture relies on the use of domesticated animals to plow and transport fertilizer. Today there are over one billion people who make there living from family farming. The major activities that consist in farming are plowing, planting seeds and cuttings, weeding, and caring.




The mode of livelihood that has to do with goods and services is industrialism. Services are produced through mass employment in commercial operations and business as well as creation, manipulation and management. There is a distinction the exist between the formal sector of the economy and it has to do with wage-based work. Informal sector activities are illegal and are known as being part of the underground economy.





The Story of Stuff 



The Story of Stuff goes along with Chapters 3 and 8 because it is about all of the waste and population our country is creating. Thirty percent of our country is waste. We waste so much that 80 percent of our planet's natural forest is gone and about 2,000 trees a minute are being killed. We are allowing our government to use harmful toxins in mostly everything that we consume. We externalized cost and therefore toxins go in and toxic go out. We are so focused on buying more and more unneeded stuff. Stuff that people in other countries and even ours are losing there lives to make, so that Americans can use to a few times and then toss it in the trash.





Chapter eight's main focus is on how our political and legal systems are changing. Political anthropology covers the power, authority and influence that make up a person's leadership power.
Bands are the form of a political organization that is associated with foraging groups. These units come together at certain times of the year, depending on their ritual schedule and foraging patterns.
Symbols of state power is also covered in chapter 8, and touches on how religious beliefs and symbols are often closely tied to the power of state leadership. This means the highest priest may be consider the ruler of that society. 


There is also democratic where leaders are elected by popular vote and there are gender and leadership in states. Some states are less male dominated than others, but none is female dominated. This view suggest that women are not equal to men, because men have control over warfare technology.






Social control in states is densely populated societies that have more wealth and social stress due to the distribution of surplus, inheritance and rights to land. There are three important factors in state systems of social control. The first is specialization of roles involved in social control, second is formal trials and courts and lastly is power-enforced forms of punishment, such as prisons and the death penalty.







Legal systems are changing and anthropology is an approach within the cross-cultural study of legal systems that examines the role of law and judicial processes. Globalization and increased international migration has prompted anthropologist to rethink the concept of the state. Depending on resources and power, nations and other groups may constitute a political threat to state stability an control. 

The Big Questions

When I hear the word communication, I think in my mind about myself and a friend speaking to one another about a relate able topic of interest. This is because communication is the process of sending and receiving messages. However, not everyone communicates in the same way as I do, which means there are different ways in which we choose to communicate.

Language in some form is always involved in communication. Language can be spoken, hand-signed, written, or shown through body movements; such as, body markings, hairstyle, dress and accessories.

Two features of Human Language 


Scholars have found two most prominent language characteristics to be one, Productivity and two, Displacement.

Productivity is a feature of human language whereby people are able to communicate a potentially infinite number of messages efficiently.

. nonhuman primates do not have the capability to for speech that humans do.

There is a world famous Ape in Iowa who can understand a large percentage of what humans say to him, and he can respond to them by combining symbols on a printed board.

Kanzi

Displacement the second feature of language, it is a human language whereby people are able to talk about events in the past and future.

The past and the future are considered displacement domains.

Piraha are a group of around 350 foragers whom live in the Amazonian rain forest.  Their grammar is simple and they use no numbers, no past-tense verbs or color terms. They have no myths or stories and no art other than a few necklace pieces.

Piraha 

Language is also non-verbal.

Sign language is a non-verbal form of communication. Sign language uses mainly hand movements to convey messages. This is a communication system that provides a fully competent communication system for its users, the same as spoken language does. Some cultures use sign language as a second language and can be recognized as a native language. Gestures are movements, usually of  the hands, that convey meanings.

Sign language alpha bet

Gestures can be universal, however some cultures have highly developed their gesture system more than others.

Silence Speaks

Silence is a form of non-verbal and can be related to a social status. In Siberia, when a women becomes a marrying in, daugher-in-law she has the lowest status in the household, and will rarely speak. Silence is related with power and is an important component of communication among many American Indian cultures.

Writing systems are also a big part of Communications.

The earliest written language comes from Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. Early systems of writing used logographs. These are signs that indicate a word, symbol, or sound.

Logographs

Khipu- Cords of knotted strings used during the Inca empire for keeping accounts and recording events.The knots conveyed substantial information to those who could interpret their meaning.

Khipu Cords

Religion in Comparative Perspective


What is religion? There are a variety of Religious beliefs but to sum up the term religion, it is beliefs and behavior related to supernatural beings and forces. Religion is linked to people's worldviews but it is not the same. Worldview is a wider concept and it does not include the criterion of concern with a supernatural realm. Comparatively speakings religion is placed in a category of terms such as; magic, myths and a doctrine.

Magic is people's attempt to compel supernatural forces and beings to act in certain ways.

Sir James Frazer contrasted magic with religion, he stated that" it is the attempt to please supernatural forces or beings."

Myth and Doctrine are two main forms of expressing beliefs.

Myth, stories about supernatural forces or begins. It is narrative and has a plot with a beginning, middle and end.

Myths tell of a message through a story rather than by using logic or formal argument.

The Sun and the Moon 

A side from Myths a Doctrine is direct and formalized statements about religious beliefs.

Within Religion there is rituals that groups regularly practice.

A ritual is a patterned, repetitive behavior focused on the supernatural realm. A Christian ritual of communion is performed the first Sunday of every month and is a symbol of God's body broken and his blood shed for his people. By remembering they drink a bit of red colored wine or juice and break off a piece of bread.

Communion

Life-cycle rituals are a different form of rituals. Life-cycle is a ritual that marks a change in status from one life stage to another; also called rite of passage.

.The beginning phase, is the initiate. It is separated by physically, socially, or symbolically normal life.
. The transition is when the person is no longer in the previous status but is not yet a member of the next stage.
. Reintegration, the last stage, happens when the initiate emerges and is welcomed by the community as an individual taking place in the new status.

Religious freedom is here in America, however in other places religious views are kept quit and anyone who disagrees may be thrown in jail or worse murdered. Sometimes people who are persecuted on religious grounds can seek and obtain sanctuary in other places or nations.

Religion can often be the cause of major conflicts. As an integral part of the heritage of humanity, religions are best understood within a cross-cultural and contextualized perspective.

Protest against God

Art and Culture

Expressive culture and art can be easily compared because they are similar to one another. Expressive culture is behaviors and beliefs related to art. Art, is the application of imagination, skill, and style to matter, movement, and sound that goes beyond what is purely practical. 

Art is consider to be universal to all humans. Every culture possesses the ability to create beautiful artwork. For example when looking a piece of work that has a women holding a baby in her arms, this would be understood in every culture as a mother and her child. It is because all humans can see and interpret what the artist is saying by relating it to what they see in their own lives..

Motherhood is universal 

There are different forms of art!

One form is performance art. This includes music, dance, theater, rhetoric speech making and a narrative story. 

.Music is artist and is favor in nearly every country if not all. Some are better than others in certain areas of art depending on the brain creativity and time set aside to practice their skills. 

Then there is painting and drawing art. Art that is the artist perspective and a piece that relates to them and possibly other in different ways.

Art just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder!!

Interpret 

Leisure Time

Every culture has their own way of relaxing and have some fun together. 

Sports are the most popular form of leisure time. 

Leisure can be, Sports, traveling, resting, spending time outdoors or just simply talking with friends inside a home. 

In the U.S games are played safely as possible with many rules to follow, however in other cultures some sports can be very blood and dangerous. For them the game would be less for leisure and more as a ritual. 

Blood sport- is a competition that explicitly seeks to bring about a flow of blood from, or even death!

Culture is no secret, it makes up our world. It's who we are and apart of where we are from.

Art, sports,theater, Communication skills, etc. are all apart of culture. 

Expressing our own individual rituals and cultural differences is important, this is so we have a nice variety of beauty in the world and comparative relations as well as difference in between the cultures.

Leaving Mother Lake

Leaving Mother Lake is a book that will leave you speechless. It is a true, yet unbelievable story about a young girl who is born into a cultural of women. They are known as the country of daughters. They are the Moso women and they are strong, independent and unique. 

Erche's Mother wanted her to be a boy, but what she got was a little girl who continuely cried for three months straight. Ama is what Erche calls her mother. Girls are of more value for the Moso women, but they want to have boys because they herd the yaks and do all the farming. 

Moso women live in the home their mother was raised in. They raise their children and get help from uncle instead of the child's father.

 Erche's Ama leaves her mother's home and meets Zhemi who is Erche's Father. When Erche's Grandmother dies her Ama is very sad because she chose to leave and was distance from her mother and she regrets that decision once her mother has passed on. When someone passes away in their culture no one is allowed to bath for 49 days. No one under 13 or pregnant is allowed to attend the (burning) funeral. 

Erche speaks about the Han people who come into her village and try to pressure communism onto her people. The Red Guards as they are called, are a group who carry red banners and sing songs through out the village and are pro communism. There is also mention of the Yi tribe. This tribe raided her village and would kidnap little Moso children and make them slaves.

Erche was so poor that she had never worn shoes. She tells a story of her Father Zhemi bringing her a gift of red shoes and how meaningful that was for her and she treasured those shoes until she burnt the bottoms of  them and had to go back to be shoe less once again. When Echre was about eight years old her mother sent her to leave in the mountains with her uncle who needed her to help him farm, because after the death of his wife he refused to ever find love with anyone else. It was rough on the farm and Erche was so desperate for warmth that she would sit underneath the yaks and let them urinate on her, because their stream was very hot and would actually leave blisters on her legs. The 10th year of the revolution brought on a lot of change for the small Moso village. The Lamas books had been burned and there were no longer anymore festivals and even the traditional clothing style had changed.  Moso women did not believe in marriage, because love to them is like the seasons it comes and goes. With the revolution however people were actually getting married and Erche's bother went to live with his wives family.

When women in the village turn 13 they have a skit ceremony which symbolizes them becoming a woman.  They are showered with clothing and jewelry. It is tradition to burn the old clothes as a symbol of becoming a new woman. When Erche becomes a woman she was able to leave her uncle on the mountain and return home to her Ama to begin her new fate.

It is very important to the Moso women to have many children and they begin starting their families at a very young age. The tradition of the Moso culture would be to stay in the village in the mother's home and raise a large family that is made of both men and women so that everyone can work and produce what is needed to survive.







Around 13 years old Erche is asked to join a Moso singing group that is consist of her and two other Moso girls. The girls travel to Yanyuan to be in a singing contest. The city is completely different and strange for Erche. She lives with Mr. Li and his family and becomes a successful singer who travels all over china and even goes to places like Beijing. She begins to earn a good amount of money from singing and is recognized as a star in her homeland.

Erche did not want to be a star in her small village, she wanted fame all around the world. She continues to visit her family but she always travels back to the city to continue perusing her singing career.  She had many love interest but she did not let love or any man come in between her and her dream of forever being a successful Moso singer.

Around the age of sixteen she leaves her homeland again and hurts her Ama's feelings. 
Ama thought that Erche was going to leave and never return again. However after going back to Mr. Luo's home were she attended a conservatory school for five years she does return to her Ama's home.

Erche's fame never got the best of her. She remained loyal to her culture and her family. 

The stardome Erche gained did not cause her to forget who she was or where she came from. Erche is a role model and her story is a wonderful inspiration to other young women and even men who are born into unique cultures.









No matter where your born or how poor you are, anything is possible and can be achieved if your set your mind on achieving it. 

S

En

En

Viaggio verso i Moso - 1: Yang Erche Namu (Lijiang, Yunnan - giugno 2012)

                Culture shapes who we are and how the world perceives us. By researching and finding out the culture of our early ancestors, we can learn how we came about and why we reside in the areas we were born into.

 My great great grandfather, Walter Griffin married Edna Masters in the small town of Tunnel Hill, Georgia. The two together had two sons and a daughter. The oldest son, Ernest is my great grandfather. Walter was a saw mill worker and a farmer.  His wife Edna was a homemaker and stayed at home with the children. Walter passed away in his late 30’s leaving his wife to take care of two sons and a daughter. Ernest decided to get a job at a textile mill in Dalton. His wife Clara was the owner of Griffin Sundries, in Whitfield County.

Ernest and Clara Griffin 

 Ernest spent the last years of his life working as supervisor for a route man at a chicken company. Ernest and Clara are the parents of two boys, Macoy and Hiram. Macoy Griffin is the oldest son and is my grandfather. Clara his mother and my great grandmother is 94 years of age and currently resides in the home that was built by her late husband’s father, Walter. 

My grandfather Macoy is on the right side and his brother Hiram is on the left.

 Macoy graduated from high school and went to a business college. He and my grandmother Norma Henderson met in Dalton and married in 1955. They moved to Alabama for an accounting job my grandfather had available and continued living there for five years.

While residing in Alabama Macoy and Norma Griffin had three sons, Keith, Blake and Scott. The third son Scott Griffin is my father. 

 In 1960 Macoy Griffin’s Mother, Clara and her husband Ernest spoke to Macoy and told him he had a job offer back in Whitfield County. The Griffin family is tightly knit and strongly values the importance of family. Macoy and Norma knew moving back to Whitfield County would be the best decision for them. Seven years after moving back to Whitfield County my father’s youngest brother Chris Griffin was born, and Macoy and Norma now have four Griffin boys.

Most of the Griffin family has resided in Whitfield County for many decades. The Griffin family is known to be a middle class, and very hard working family. My great grandmother at the age of 94 is still a very hard working woman and still sings in the Tunnel Hill United Methodist choir. Her love for music has influenced my musical ability and because a large number of the Griffin’s are musically talented I believe for that reason it has given me the ability to sing in the Reinhardt University choir. The culture of being a hard working class of people who have a strong love for music will mostly likely continue to pass down to generation after generation of the Griffin family members.

My mother Nancy Hair

My father Timothy Griffin

In 1976 Timothy Scott Griffin who is known as Scott, meets Nancy Lee Hair. The two met in a Whitfield County High school referred to as North West Whitfield High.

The family of Georgia Washington Haire (Named after President George Washington).

My Mother Nancy Hair’s great great great grandfather George Washington Haire(before the E was dropped). George Washington Haire was named after President George Washington by his father Issac Newton Haire Senior. Issac Newton Haire Senior married Lavonia Susong. Lavonia’s father was in the military and was close friends with President Washington. Issac Senior and his wife Lavonia raised their son Issac Newton Haire Jr. in and out of the Washington’s home during various parties and functions. The President must have made quiet the impression on young Issac Jr. because he married Anne Elizabeth Milburn in 1843 and they named their first born son George Washington Haire in honor of the President.  

              Family friend President George Washington

                George Washington Haire served in the civil war on the confederate side from Georgia. After returning from the war the formerly known George Haire had now dropped the e off his name and Haire with an e became Hair with no e. 

George and Emma bought 180 acres of farm land in 1868. This land at that time cost $150 dollars and a mule. The property was located in the small community of Dawnville, which is inside of Whitfield County. George Washington Hair passed away in 1914 and in his obituary he was said to be one of the communities most loved and valued citizens. He was well known and highly as steamed farmer and confederate veteran as well as a loyal Methodist church member. The Hair’s had eleven children, and the seventh child was Clarence Bivings Hair.

My great grandfather Clarence Hair 

 Clarence was born and raised on his father’s land in Dawnville. Clarence at the age of twenty years old decided to go out to California and work to make enough money to buy eighty acres of land. His heart was set on it and he spent six years working out west. When he returned home to Dalton he had made $1500 dollars in gold. He was hard working and a driven man just like all the former and still previous members of the Hair family are.

Great grandparents Clarence and Myrtle

                Clarence marries Myrtle Hawkins in December of 1908. They had ten children

My Papaw George Hair is on the first row in the middle

 the seventh child is my grandfather George Moses Hair. He was named after his mother’s grandfather

Moses and Nancy Hair 

 Moses and his father’s grandfather George Washington Hair. George Moses Hair was raised on the same farm and produced cotton, sugar cane and corn.

Some of the Moses Hair family

 At the age of seventeen George was drafted into World War II. After returning home from the war he meets Mary Lucille Whaley of Whitfield County.

My Mamaw Lucille at 16 years old

 After 3 months of dating the get married on March 8^th 1947. My grandfather stayed on the Dawnville property and my home is directly behind his home on the same piece of farmland.  George and Mary have four children, two boys and two girls. The third child is my mother Nancy who was born in 1958. My grandfather was once named in 1969 Georgia’s top corn producer for the entire state of Georgia. 

Top Corn Producer in Georgia! 

His whole life has been dedicated to farming and his oldest son my uncle Clarence Hair still continues to farm on a piece of land my grandfather owns in Polk County Tennessee. The Hair’s came from the northern part of the U.S and lived in Tennessee for a good amount of time. When my grandfather purchased the land in Tennessee he said the Hair’s came from Tennessee and now a few of them are going back.

                The Hair side similar to The Griffin side is all hard working goal oriented people. I believe the Hair side can set out and achieve anything they desirer without the help of anyone else. The Hairs’ are of the land they use what crops they have to make sure money is being made and family is being taking care of. I know that for me having both sides of my family that are hardworking and truly good people has shaped me into a very well round and goal driven person. After researching for my cultural roots I have begun to realize the ancestors we have make up a large part of who we are. I can see many traits and characteristics that I have inherited from both sides of my family.

                I can say that I feel very blessed to have family surrounding me and a family that on both sides have remained in the Whitfield County area.  Being raised in a close knit family is special because everyone has a different ancestry and many families are very spread out all around the world and are never able to continue that close bond that my family members and I have. I have learned that family is the most important thing above all the rest.