Session 8

This session was titled,” China’s Long 19th Century”, it was about how the Arts were brought into China and how the people enjoyed these arts. For instance Kabuki is much like a play/opera here in the States but in Japan these plays/opera in which has acting, music and dancing and which the costumes are elaborate, and colorful. However the actors are men, disguised as women. They do this because they think women would be distracting for the viewers, which were usually samurai’s and the men would fight over the women. As all if not most men are attracted to women, and lust after them, So in order to avoid all the drama that comes along with a male and female attractions to one another , or just plain lust, they just let the men play the female roles this being a very smart thing to do. In my experience upon watching Japanese films in which Kabuki was shown, I never would of thought that all performers were males, as they look like females, with the way the look, dance a, n=move, and their clothing. So ha O not taken this class I would never had known this. So I did learn from this seminar, looking up the color meaning on the internet I found that the color purple represented nobility, dark red represents passion or fear, dark blue representing sadness or depression and black fear. However the color whites in different shades it represented age, class and even gender.
This session also mentions that cotton was a primary source for people in China to be able to survive. They had to spin and weave it to thread then fabric. This session also mentions the fact that the population growth was matched by its economic growth.