Author: Karlye Sopczak

Ha Jin’s “Flame” story was one that when I first read, I thought could have been told in about a fourth of the amount words that it was. However, after careful thoughts about the writing, I realized that the length of the story actually contributed to the message I got out of it. The length of the story highlights the lengths that Nimei went to in order to impress her lover, Hsu Peng, from sixteen years prior. 

“Flame” highlights how shame and honor can play a role in the certain Chinese cultures. Nimei went to great lengths by sacrificing money, time with other patients at the hospital, and her positive self-image in order to avoid shame from her first love who was possibly coming to visit her. She was so fearful of embarrassment that she made her husband make fresh fish stew everyday for one of her patients, so she would be able to get a political favor out of him later on in order to bring more honor to her family for when Hsu Peng arrived. It was interesting that the smallest indication that Hsu Peng may come visit Nimei made her change the entire course of her daily actions. She began working out more and spending time with patients for the sake of her husband maybe getting a better job. I think this shows that Nimei really was in love with him when they were young adults, but also that shame is something that should be avoided at all costs.

The ending of this story made me think that shame and honor are not always things that we need to be fearful of or attempt to gain and that often it is better to come as you are. The people that truly love you will want you to be your authentic self, and not care about your social status, material items, or the hardships you have been through.

This Tuesday I had the amazing opportunity to volunteer at my ICR site for the first time. I am volunteering on Tuesday mornings this semester at the IPS Newcomer school. This school is for students in the Indianapolis community who are experiencing their first year in the United States. Almost all of children are refugees or immigrants. I am helping out is Mrs. Latta’s art room for the semester.

I helped the kids with their art projects on pointillism for this unit. I spoke to kids from many different countries with many different cultural backgrounds. Many of the students speak little to no English so being in an art room with them is great because art is a language in itself. I was speaking Spanish with a few of the students, and mind you I am not very good at Spanish, when I must have messed up a phrase and a group of them laughed at me. Initially I was embarrassed, but then I realized that they must feel like I did every single day while trying to learn English. In that moment I could sense the children getting more comfortable with me and that mutual failures can bring people closer together.

In Tao Te Ching, I interpreted text 33 as you need to understand yourself before you can begin to understand and help others. I think this text is directly related to the somewhat embarrassing experience I had with the language barrier. Before I could even begin to understand what some of these kids have been through, I need to understand myself first and be able to make some connections to them.

This experience helped me gain an understanding of probably the most diverse community that I have ever worked with a little bit better. This community is diverse in terms of culture, childhood trauma, and places of origin. Even on the first day of class I improved upon my listening skills as a girl told me all about her picture she drew that represented strength for her using as many words as should could in English. We were able to use art through images to combat our cross cultural differences. I am looking forward to seeing the kids smiling faces next Tuesday morning.

As I was reading the second half of Tao Te Ching, I noticed that so many of the teachings within it are timeless and can be applied to today’s world. I think these are important characteristics to have for a philosophy, which is the reason that Taoism has endured for thousands of years.

Text 53 and 67 are especially relevant to modern day American culture. Text 53 talks about everything that is wrong with society such as, “The government is divided, Fields are overgrown….But the nobles’ clothes are gorgeous.” This is directly comparable to the political and social climate in the United States. The partisan politics have deepened tensions on many issues and distanced groups of people from each other just because of their policy beliefs. The environment is almost beyond repair just as the overgrown fields in Tao, but no worries because the rich wear designer clothes and eat at the finest restaurants as the poor struggle to make ends meet.

Text 67 addresses the thought processes’ of many classes of people today, “Nowadays, People reject compassion But want to be brave, Reject frugality But want to be generous”. I can see this reflected even in own my family and myself. My mom and I may own name-brand purses when off-brand purses would do the same job (rejecting frugality) , yet at the same time we religiously donate to Riley Children’s Hospital (want to be generous). I think that people sometimes need to remember that making small changes to their own lives can result in better lives for others. If this were to be done on a larger scale, than the return would be much more noticeable.

Just simply reading this text has inspired me to start making changes in my own life.

The lecture last night in Shelton Auditorium was nothing short of fascinating, but also depressing. The keynote speaker, Fleet Maull, had an absolutely amazing story to tell full of tragedy and hope. It was interesting that he started off by saying that he spends one third of the year in retreat, yet does not feel very religious. He founded the Prison Dharma Network, which is a Buddhist program the offers hope to inmates and is in almost all fifty states. He started a small meditation group in the prison chapel while he was incarcerated for drugg-smuggling. The popularity grew so much and he completely changed his life around after serving over ten years in prison. He is even featured in the film Path to Freedom. 

Something that Maull brought up struck me as true failure on behalf of the United States was that one in one-hundred Americans is in prison. The United States also has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world and the is going through the worst opioid epidemic in history. These are facts that are not acceptable that we need and can do better as a society to change. We should start by looking to Scandinavian countries for advice on prison systems that are based on transformative healing vs shame-based prisons, which are what the United States currently have. The prison systems’ philosophy hurts everyone involved from the inmates to the clerks to the parole officers.

One way this lecture related to class content was that one of the speakers talked about how we assign meaning to crime and that crime exists because we have created it. We give meaning to what “deviant behavior” means, and that often just unconventional behavior of marginalized populations can be see as “deviant”. This reminded me of our class discussion on Taoism and how a twenty dollar bill only has value because we assign it value.

The introduction to the Tao Te Ching was very informative background information before getting started reading the first 40 “philosophies”. I was able to better understand Taoism with it being compared to other schools of philosophy such as the Legalist school and Confucianism. It was fairly easy to pick up on some major themes throughout the text such as humility, selflessness, and balance. As apart of class preparation for today we were also supposed to look into the Yin Yang symbol. After an exploration of Yin and Yang, text 28 seemed to be a direct reference to Yin and Yang. The Yin part of the symbol is associated with the female, black, and the spirit aspect of things while the Yang is associated with the male, white, and the “form” of things, which makes sense that text 28 says, “know the male, maintain the female” and “know the white, sustain the black”. Since the symbol is all about balance, it comes as no surprise that the text says ,“return to simplicity” because simplicity breed balance. 

Another text that spoke deeply to me was text 33. I really liked how this what was all about having a relationship with yourself. I feel like this text is trying to tell people that, “Knowing others is intelligent. Knowing yourself is enlightened” because if you know yourself then you can better interact with others which helps them. In the last lines a part of me also thinks that the text is telling people to enjoy selfless lives because if you do then your “life will endure” even after death. This then constitutes a selfless act, which is what Taoism seems to be centered around.

https://www.ancient.eu/Yin_and_Yang/

Wow this is exciting, first blog! Welcome everyone. As I was reading A Tiger-Fighter is Hard to Find by Ha Jin I was taken aback by how little consideration people in positions of power had for the workers on set of the film. It was distressing to find out that the director wanted to continue to film the scene with Huping fighting Little Dou who was in the tiger costume, despite the fact that Little Dou was screaming for Huping to stop beating him to death. The physical health of Little Dou and the mental health of Huping were completely disregarded by those in charge of the film. This section sparked an interest in the treatment of workers in China.

Being a political science and history major, many aspects of this class interest me. I have some background knowledge of the treatment of laborers in China after taking Chinese Politics and US and Asia Pacific relations. After a quick refresher and online survey, I found that the treatment of workers at some corporations in China is not very promising. I was not surprised to find out that an American Corporation, Apple, was exploiting some of its factory workers in China. Workers have complained of “exposure to toxic chemicals, verbal abuse and forced labor”. It seems to be the same story that Ha Jin tells just different characters, and unfortunately they are real people serving the injustices.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/09/apple-accused-worker-violations-chinese-factories-by-labor-rights-group/