Singing into the Multifaceted Chinese Reality
S06
Shunzhu Wang
China is a vast country rich in ancient cultural relics and inhabited by 56 different ethnic groups. This long history and great cultural diversity, while fascinating, can be disorienting for a foreigner. This course employs singing as a means of “orientation,” as an effective and fun way for students to learn about the diversity and changes in Chinese culture. Students will learn about diversity through folk songs from different regions and sung by different ethnic groups; they will learn about cultural changes through traditional opera pieces, revolutionized “model opera” pieces, and other modern/contemporary genres such as pop music, rock ‘n’ roll, and rap.

Through exposure to the selected songs, discussion of the lyrics and music, and research, we hope to help students demystify China as the exotic, monolithic, and homogeneous “orient” and usher them into a heterogeneous and multifaceted Chinese reality. In studying lyrics, students will learn to differentiate between the lyric style and prose style, and will rewrite the lyrics into narrative/prosaic paragraph(s). Through analyzing, paraphrasing, and rewriting, students will learn different ways of expressing the same idea. They will learn to understand and appreciate the nuanced differences between them.