Week 3: Spring and Autumn; Confucius and friends

• □ Look ahead at the readings and tasks for this week, and plan in when you will do them.
• – This prevents last minute panic, and means you can make the most of our time together in class.

• □ Feedback on your fellow students’ posts:
• – Read through and use Hypothes.is (Group HST269)  to comment on your fellow students’ First Post and Week 1 post: everybody likes some encouragement! Here is a random selection of three posts. If two or more posts are the same, or one is your own, just refresh the page for a different set. It’s all random, it’s all good! 
• * Post 1:
• * Post 2:
• * Post 3:

• □ Prepare before class: Readings
• – Textbook: Schneewind, Sarah. An Outline History of East Asia to 1200. Third edition. Open Textbook Library. Oakland, California: eScholarship, 2021. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9d699767
  • – Chapter 2, pp. 20-36 (incl. “Ritual Changes in the Spring and Autumn Period”)
• – Primary source, with commentary: Selection of stories from the Zuozhuan (Commentary of Mr. Zuo). In Owen, Stephen. An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. (PDF)
  • – Compare this source with the previous types of information we have encountered in this course. What function may this text have served? Think about the motivations of the writer to put pen to paper; who were his intended readers? How can this type of source be useful for us, and which caveats should we observe when using this text? 
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• TIP: if you have the recommended optional textbook for the course (Hansen, Valerie. The Open Empire: A History of China to 1800): check out chapter 2 “The Age of the Warrior and the Thinker: Double Ears and Confucius (770-221 B.C.E.)”, 56-68.
• □ Meeting Ettinger 213 9.30AM 
• Slides
•  

• □ “Help a friend Thursday”: Catch up if you’re behind, ask for assistance from a friend in Discord.
• □ Prepare for Friday’s class.

• □ Prepare before class:
• – Textbook: Schneewind, Sarah. An Outline History of East Asia to 1200. Third edition. Open Textbook Library. Oakland, California: eScholarship, 2021. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9d699767
  • – Chapter 2, pp. 36-41 (from “Confucius” to end)
• – One PDF with excerpts from the following:

• Excerpts from Analects. In Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1: From Earliest Times to 1600. Edited by Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1999.
• Excerpts from Mencius. Translated by D.C. Lau. Penguin Classics, 1970.
• Excerpts from Xunzi, Vol. 1, books 1-6. Translated by John. Knoblockx. Stanford Univ. Press, 1988.
• Excerpts from Mozi: The Complete Translation. Translated by Ian Johnston. Hong Kong: Chinese Univ. Press, 2010. “Universal Love 1” (or “Impartial Care”)
• Excerpts from Laozi.Translated by D.C. Lau. Penguin Classics, 1963.
• Excerpts from Zhuangzi: The Inner Chapters. Translated by Robert Eno, version 1.1, 2019.
• Reading questions: what makes each of these thinkers different from (or linked to) the others? What makes one “a good human” or “a good ruler”? Do they offer realistic solutions to the political instability of the time?

Useful extra if you have the Textbook: Hansen, Valerie. The Open Empire: A History of China to 1800. Chapter 2: “The Age of the Warrior and the Thinker: Double Ears and Confucius (770-221 B.C.E.)” (pp. 68-89)

□ Meeting in Ettinger 213 (Slides)

• □ Rest day

• □ Weekly report due as a blog post, in category HST269