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.