GLOBAL ASIA: YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW
6
LESSON TWO
During and After Reading
1.
Ask students to read the article and circle any keywords (significant or descriptive). After they have completed the article, ask them
to write a short three-question quiz based on their reading. On a separate piece of paper, have them record the answers. Finally, ask
them to pair up with another classmate and have each one take the other’s quiz and then compare answers. If some pairs finish this
task early, encourage them to compare the key words each student circled and ask them to discuss their significance.
2.
Building on the above activities, ask students to work in small groups of two or three and find images in books and/or on the Web that
reflect examples of the vibrant cultures during this time period. These can be images of emperors, shoguns and cultural artifacts (religious
or palace architecture, coins, clothing, tools, armaments, musical instruments and agricultural equipment, as well as art forms such as
religious paintings and icons, woodblocks, cloisonné, laquerware, calligraphy, scrolls, bronze and other metal work, ceremonial vessels, etc.)
3.
Finally, ask each group to reflect on the saying “every picture tells a thousand stories.” Ask them to choose one of the images that they
have collected, project it on the screen, and share a few stories from this photo. You may want to start out this exercise by projecting
the Taj Mahal — one of the most-photographed buildings in the world. Your students have probably seen this photo, but do they
know that, according to the UNESCO World Heritage site, it is “the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired
masterpieces of the world’s heritage” and that it tells a “great love story”? The Taj is a 17th-century mausoleum built in memory of
the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. At this UNESCO site, you can find two (two-minute each) videos.
You might want to show one or both. The first is a photomontage without commentary:
ASSESSMENT
Divide the class into small groups of three to five students. Task each group with setting up an Imperial Time Travel Agency. Their assignment
is to design a two-week tour that takes intrepid travelers to a specific time and place in a region in Asia between the 15th and 19th centuries.
First, each group should choose a different area in Asia: Mughal Empire (India), Ming Empire (China), Silk Road (Central Asia), Tokugawa
Shogunate (Japan) or Southeast Asia (encourage students to “organize tours” to areas such as the 15th-century booming port city of Malacca,
the Indonesian archipelago and areas known today as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam).
Next, have each group design a travel brochure that includes the following:
• Travel dates and year (two-week period)
• Specific daily itinerary and background information: destinations, architectural and natural highlights, types of entertainment and meals
• What to expect: weather, transportation issues, types of accommodations and security issues
• What to pack: clothes and money
• Know before you go: food, language and cultural and religious traditions
• How to prepare: key language phrases, list of contemporary books, poetry, etc.
Encourage students to be creative by designing a trifold brochure with photos and maps. Here are a few background resources:
Columbia University’s Asia for Educators:
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PBS Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire:
BBC Mughal Empire:
Metropolitan Museum of Art:
From this site, see these and many other resources:
Ming Dynasty 1368-1644:
The Art of the Mughals before 1600:
The Art of the Mughals after 1600:
Art of the Edo Period (1615-1868):
