History - China

HISTORY - CHINA

This aims to tackle not only the story of Ling-Ling on her journey on Yuan Tsung-Chen 's The Dragon 's Village , but it also aims to discuss Maoism , Communism as well as the traditional Chinese society

China had been greatly influenced by the conservative traits of Confucianism . Although I greatly admire Confucius and his way of thinking I somehow couldn 't help but resent the way his teaching put women under the rule of men . Mencius even claimed that women should be subordinated by men all her life (by her

father , husband , and son . It is true that we shouldn 't judge a culture in terms of our own because one 's culture is very diverse to that of another and thus it is not really fair to judge a culture completely different from yours . However I simply cannot help but detest the way women had been treated from the past centuries . Anyhow , in traditional Chinese , there is a belief that the men should govern the world outside their home while the female should run their house . Thus , the men should provide the bread for the family while the women should make sure that the house is acceptable for her husband and her family . During the Tang and Song dynasty , women are expected to do foot binding because fashion required that women should have very small feet . The entrance of Ming dynasty , on the other hand banned widows from remarrying wherein such is not the case for the widowers . During the time of Mao however , he promoted gender equality because he believed that women should have equal rights with their male counterparts

Yuan Tsung Chen had been famous for her work The Dragon 's Village because the work embodies some of the experiences she experienced during her lifetime particularly when she left her husband and son in to share the experiences of the people from a distant province in the north . The greatest ordeal Yuan Tsung Chen has had to face is the hard works on the field as well as the pang of hunger she have had to endure This particular experience is embodied on her work The Dragon 's Village . The main character , from The Dragon 's village , is a teen from a middle class family . She had been very jubilant when she got herself a job as a librarian on Peking . Ling-Ling supported the Communist government because she herself believes on the benefits land reform would have on the people

Although the The Dragon 's Village ' had been a fictional book it did not fail to amaze me by the author 's brilliance in putting some historical facts within it . Maoism and the Cultural Revolution played a huge part on this particular work especially in embodying the kind of lives peasants have had during that time . As I have mentioned earlier the author made use of her own experiences in to better her book and thus , just like Yuan Tsung-Chen , Ling-Ling did...