Abstract
My CC-TDG project was for the development of the Common Core course CCCH9059 “Encounters between China and the West,” which explores how the encounters between China and the world beyond. In this course, my goal is to train the students to explore the complexities of history through examining a wide range of sources ranging from historical records, contemporary practice, visual culture, and material objects. The students first learn about the contexts of several historical cases before they consider and compare the perspectives of different historical actors; furthermore, they are encouraged to hypothesize alternative outcomes of the encounters.
In addition to exploring different perspectives in the texts, I also asked students to discover history from material objects and visual culture, especially through fieldwork research. To inspire them, I utilized some of my own fieldwork research in China and Japan to present stories in picture slides and short clips; I hope to edit these visual materials and to include some sources from southeast Asia in the future. Hong Kong itself has doubtless provided very rich sources for our research into various cases of encounters between China and the West. Last year, the students presented different interesting cases of cultural encounters observed in Hong Kong in their final projects, such as a religious landmark, a cultural practice, or an event. From this year, we will broaden the regions of our case studies to Macao, Mainland China, and other regions, provided that the students have had extensive knowledge about them.