Examine the role of tea in shaping cultural exchanges and trade networks across East Asia(Both China, Japan, and Korea), focusing on the significance of three tea-related objects in facilitating connections between different regions. The structure of the article is similar to: “I found some relevant cultural relics in the museum. I discovered something from the cultural relics of these three countries, and then based on these discoveries, I began to analyze how the trade behind them made these three countries form their own characteristics. “. So you need to go to some museum websites to search for related cultural relics or ancient paintings from China, Japan and Korea (one item from each country is enough). Please note that this article is not an article analyzing tea sets, but an article analyzing the history of the cultural exchange process among the three countries in East Asia through tea, so please introduce the tea sets themselves as briefly as possible.
Here is the original requirement from the school:
Please do NOT make large spaces between paragraphs to make your paper seem longer.
The following assignment is designed to develop your skills in writing an essay focused on key material sources. It is not, however, a source analysis per se (although you should keep the methods of document analysis in mind as you write the paper), but an essay. You will need to do sufficient research. Be sure to combine close reading with research. When you look at an artwork, you will need to do research to identify the features of the artwork, and the networks that made it possible.
With all the topics, you need to bring your research together into a clearly argued, critical paper.
Citations should be n Chicago Manual of Style, Note-Bibliography style.
A very valuable place to go for information about early modern East Asia are the Cambridge Histories of China and Japan, especially those for the Edo period and Medieval period in Japan, and for the Ming and Qing periods in the case of China. Be sure to consult them.
Cultural Connections in Early Modern East Asia through Three Objects
In this essay you will create your own vision of the cultural, intellectual and economic networks that characterized early modern East Asia by focusing on three objects. These objects may be paintings, archaeological remains, goods used in everyday life. They should be available via a museum website or other scholarly location (I recommend strongly the Rijksmuseum website, the Metropolitan Museum website, and the British Museum website, the Palace Museum in Taiwan, Royal Ontario Museum, and the Aga Khan museum, as excellent places to go). Find three objects that you can somehow link together into a coherent narrative.
You will need to engage in some research. The Journal of Early Modern History and the Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient often have useful articles. I will likely update this with some suggested books and sources.
When you think about these objects, think about what they are made of, how they are transported, who makes them, who uses them, and why were they shaped the way they were shaped? For a modern example, when a young woman in a nightclub wears a necklace with a beautiful silver cross around her neck, what possible meanings could this cross have for her? It could be for religious reasons, it could also be because some popular singer has made wearing crosses fashionable, or it could be a prized possession of a much-loved grandmother, who had been very religious (in contrast to the granddaughter). And how was this silver necklace made? Was it made through mass-manufacture recently? Was it deliberately made through “artisanal” methods recently? Was it made before the industrial revolution through what was then cutting-edge technology? Your answers to these questions will tell you a great deal about the early modern world.
How should you go about preparing your paper?
- Assemble your objects together. Find objects or images that you enjoy, that you are able to analyze, and that have some connection with each other. For instance, you might write about trade between early modern Vietnam and southern China (and assemble objects from that trade), or you might write about tobacco smoking, and assemble related objects.
- With your objects gathered together, ask questions of them, and try to answer them with reference to work by scholars (secondary sources). Try to find out about how they were produced, how they were used, where they were bought and sold. Each object, you should remember, has a history and a social location.
- After this preliminary analysis, write up a paper that assimilates the information together. If, in the process of writing, you find that some of your discoveries no longer fit into the total essay – then, sadly, you should drop them from the essay. You can save them for some later date.
- Be sure, however, to keep your objects close at hand. Don’t treat them simply as mines of information, from which facts may be extracted, or as decoration, but as texts with which you are actively engaged. Put them centre stage. Your focus is not a list of facts, but a deep understanding of the objects themselves. Alternately, imagine that you are a parasitic worm, burying deep into the sources to extract sustenance from them.
- Then, bring your paper into a nicely organized final copy. Make sure that you have a good introduction, conclusion, and that your body paragraphs follow well one after the other.
Finally, be sure to inform yourself thoroughly on the subject of plagiarism, outlined below