Chinese Studies Research Group Lunch Seminar 23rd May 2008

Chinese Studies Research Group Lunch Seminar

Date: Friday, 23 May, 2008

Location: Tutorial / Committee Room, Ground floor, Baillieu Library.

RSVP to Bick-har Yeung bhy@unimelb.edu.au by 19th May 2008 for catering purpose.

Program

10:30 - 10:45

Registration and morning tea

10:45 - 11:00

Welcome (Jonathan Benney, President, Chinese Studies Research Group; Ph D Candidate, Asia Institute )

11:00 - 11:40

Topic: Understanding factors that influence farmers' use of groundwater in rural villages in North China.

Speaker: Kai Rebensburg, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Land and Food Resources.

Summary:

Irrigation farmers in the North China Plain increasingly rely on groundwater as their sole water source. The rapid growth in use has played a vital role in maintaining the increase in agricultural production.
However, falling groundwater tables, salinisation and land subsidence bring into question the future exploitation of the resource.

In this presentation, I will talk about the unsustainable use of groundwater in rural villages in North China. I argue that farmers’
irrigation water use partly depends on the groundwater table depth of the tube well. In my PhD research project I compare two research sites in Hebei with variation in groundwater table depth to prove its influence on farmers’ use of groundwater. The impact of the local implementation of national agricultural policies on rural households’ water use will also be explored in this presentation.

11:45 - 12:25

Speaker: Associate Professor Qinghua Guo, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning.

Summary:

A large gate-shaped hollow brick is kept at Musee Cernuschi in Paris, acquired in the early last century. This image is striking for two reasons: its architectural presentation and representation. It is one of a few such a type of tomb bricks survived from ancient China, and it is unique. Nothing remotely like this object appears to have been published to date, and even this one is absent from the museum catalogue, thus it is little known to scholars. The reason for this was explained by the curator as that its original location was unknown.

Although there is an unresolved issue, the intention of this study is to link the brick to its original tomb sitting by connecting it to similar ones excavated from Han tombs in China, and comment on some aspects of Han architectural conventions. The examination is divided into four steps. The first is about the museum's brick. The brick reminds us the que gateway, thus the second is about the architecture represented. The third is ornamental motif, particularly about animal head, and the last concludes the clues about the identity of the brick.

12:30 - 1:10

Topic: Teaching and Learning Report Writing in Senior Secondary Chinese in Melbourne and Hong Kong.

Speaker: Associate Professor Mark Shum, Visiting Scholar, Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong.

Summary: As part of reforms in many national economies referred to as globalisation, curriculum reforms with similar educational objectives have been carried out in many parts of the world in the last decade. However, relatively little is known about how these reforms have been realised in classrooms in different cultural contexts. A cross-cultural case study was conducted into how similar curriculum goals, viz. how L1 learners learn to write Chinese report genres at matriculation level, have been implemented in Melbourne and Hong Kong. The results reveal that despite great rhetorical similarities in terms of curriculum objectives, the implementation of curriculum reforms has led to marked differences in actual practice, both in classroom pedagogy and in students' learning.

1:15 - 2: 00 Lunch

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