THE PRINCETON JOURNAL OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES VOLUME III FALL 2012 PRINCETON JOURNAL OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Anji Shin ’13 Jenna Song ’14 COPY EDITORS Jennifer Cho ’15 Charles Fortin ’15 Kevin Liaw ’15 LAYOUT EDITOR Jiweon Kim ’15 FINANCE & OPERATIONS TEAM Alex El-Fakir ’15 Kevin Liaw ’15 Thomas Merckens ’13 Jay Park ’16 Samantha Wu ’16 Heidi Yi ’15 IT TEAM IT MANAGER Eeh Pyoung Rhee ’13 STAFF Thomas Truongchau ’14 CHINA EDITORIAL TEAM JAPAN EDITORIAL TEAM KOREA EDITORIAL TEAM ASSOCIATE EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR Charles Fortin ’15 Ryohei Ozaki ’14 Tanny Kang ’14 EDITORS EDITORS EDITORS Ben Chang ’14 Charles Fortin ’15 Jennifer Cho ’15 Gavin Cook ’15 Tzu-Yung Huang ’15 Jisoo Han ’14 Adrienne Fung ’14 Marina Kaneko ’15 Jee Eun Lee ’15 Rebecca Haynes ’15 Tanny Kang ’14 Jay Park ’16 Tzu-Yung Huang ’15 Christian Edwards van Alicia Huaze Li ’16! Muijen ’15 Cameron White ’14 ! ! TABLE OF CONTENTS ! ! 1. TO FIND THE RED AND EXPERT: THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS IN THE REINSTATEMENT OF THE 1977 NATIONAL COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMINATION IN CHINA MARGARET WANG | PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 1 2. JAPAN’S FORGOTTEN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: KIMURA KENKADō AND THE CASE FOR BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY | SEAN O’REILLY | HARVARD UNIVERSITY 18 3. SILK PRODUCTION IN SONG CHINA (960-1279): AN INVESTIGATION OF THE TREATISE ON TEXTILES IN THE OFFICIAL DYNASTIC HISTORY OF SONG | HANG LIN | UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG 32 4. PUBLIC OPINION AND BUREAUCRATIC STONEWALLING: THE LEGALIZATION OF THE BIRTH CONTROL PILL IN JAPAN | REBECCA TOMPKINS | HARVARD UNIVERSITY 45 5. POLITICS OF IDEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT: CASE STUDY OF POST-TRANSITION CHINA AND NORTH KOREA | SOOMIN OH | COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 57 6. A TEMPORARY RELEASE FROM REGULATION: GEOGRAPHICAL AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT DURING JAPAN’S TOKUGAWA PERIOD | MATTHEW HAYES |WRITTEN WHILE AT UNIVERSITY OF OREGON 70 7. CLOTHING AND UNCLOTHING, SEEN AND UNSEEN: A STUDY OF PAN JINLIAN IN JIN PING MEI | MELODY YUNZI LI | WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS 83 8. THE UNITED STATES AND ITS ROLE IN THE TAIWAN-CHINA RELATIONSHIP | PRISCILLA HSU | CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE 98 9. GOT MILK?: CHINA’S DAIRY INDUSTRY AND ITS IMPACT ON A GLOBALIZED CHILDREN’S CULTURE | SERENA PIOL | COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 107 TO FIND THE RED AND EXPERT: The Political Implications in the Reinstatement of the 1977 National College Entrance Examination in China Margaret Wang Princeton University ABSTRACT discussion on the reform of China’s higher education enrollment system in Despite the vast research revolving light of its significant connection to around the 1977 reinstatement of the power, governmentality and education. national college entrance examination (gaokao )in China, little investigation I. INTRODUCTION has been done on the dissonance between the promoted slogans for this revision and In November of 1977, a diverse its actual outcomes. Even though Deng group of citizens, including young migrant Xiaoping and the Ministry of Education workers, middle-aged rural peasants, made many references to Mao Zedong’s veterans, intellectuals, and government egalitarian education policies during the employees, altogether 5.8 million, Cultural Revolution, the reinstatement of nervously sat in exam venues across the the gaokao actually concentrated power in country to take a two-day comprehensive the educational elite (especially in urban exam called the gaokao (). Eager for areas), subjected education to a political the chance to attend college without a and economic agenda, and caused deeper prior educational background, twenty- social inequalities. This contradiction can eight-year-old Wang Jie Dong registered only be explained by examining Deng’s for the gaokao with the hopes of earning a motive for implementing the policy: to secure living for himself and his family in reassert his power against the Gang of the future.i After losing the opportunity to Four after Mao’s death. In this paper I will attend high school because of student first introduce the context of the time uprisings during the Cultural Revolution, period through the great educational he worked as a self-taught electrician for debate during 1977. Then, I will detail the several years until hearing the news various aspects of the gaokao that widened regarding the reinstatement of the national social equality such as localized funding college entrance examination (gaokao through economic decentralization, ). Although unable to attend college development of keypoint universities, after his first gaokao due to his father’s emphasis on science and technology, and affiliation with Taiwan, he eventually took rapid economic modernization goals. the gaokao again in 1978, earning the Finally, I will explain why Deng Xiaoping opportunity to study at Shanghai presented this reformation under the Electrical College. Afterwards, he façade of Mao Zedong’s vision to further continued his education at the Concordia the socialist cause, and why this blatant University of Canada and finally, became a contradiction was so easily received by the successful electrical engineer in California. Chinese citizens. A better understanding of the history of the gaokao will facilitate Princeton Journal of East Asian Studies! 1! Many Chinese citizens who up of those in urban and top tier partook in this examination had similar universities, for the purpose of spurring success stories, recalling how “it was a rapid economic growth at the price of time full of dreams and hopes for the more social inequality. The contradiction future.”ii After all, following close to ten between what was publicized and what years of educational stagnation during the resulted from the reinstatement, however, Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) this can be explained in part by the chaos of revision essentially reinstated a merit- the political scene in 1977: Deng needed based enrollment system in place of one to reassert his power against the gang of based solely on political affiliation. After four (si ren bang ) to take charge of months of deliberation with the Ministry economic reform after Mao. of Education, the rising reformist leader, Deng Xiaoping ( ), finally II. THE GREAT EDUCATIONAL proclaimed the news that would spread DEBATE virally throughout China: “Since everybody requested it, then let’s change Near the end of the Cultural it. This year we’ll just reinstate the national Revolution, due to the lack of stringent college entrance examination!”iii merit-based college enrollment But in 1977, Deng’s reinstatement stipulations, the level of education in of the national college entrance universities was alarmingly low and examination created opportunities to elementary. Qinghua University’s ( achieve higher education and job stability ) president confessed that students’ for only 278,000 citizens. For the “cultural qualities were too poor” and that remaining 5.5 million candidates who “most of the students were at the level of could not conform to the government’s primary school students”iv, attesting to the standard of intellect and knowledge, the necessity of addressing this domestic issue. seemingly monumental policy actually In fact, the great debate over education widened the gap between them and the was publicly acknowledged by the acting elite, and more generally between the premier Hua Kuofeng ()in 1976, urban and rural. Through the façade of during a dinner gala for U.S. President egalitarian appeals, echoing Mao Zedong’s Richard Nixon: “In China, a revolutionary ( ) proclamations for socialism mass debate is going on in such circles as during the Cultural Revolution, the education, science, and technology. It is a reinstatement of the gaokao ironically continuation of the Great Proletarian became the emblem of Deng Xiaoping’s Cultural Revolution.”v support for the previously criticized elite Namely, the quality of education intellectuals, ultimately moving to raise the did not correlate with Mao Zedong’s level of education (ti gao ) rather than promise of social mobility and equality for popularize it (pu ji ). the disillusioned youth. Although the The shift towards a regimented proletarian class blamed the “right education system that focused on the deviationist wind”vi of the bourgeois class select few rather than the common masses for the tarnishing of the education system, is undeniable. Although Deng Xiaoping overall, it too was acknowledging that the reiterated Mao Zedong’s motto to further schooling system had to change. As early socialism for the needs of the common as 1975, Deng Xiaoping began to people, the reinstatement of the gaokao, in dichotomize the paths of education practice, created a centralized force made reform: education for revolution or Princeton Journal of East Asian Studies! 2! development, for the masses or for the “Exams are an important method elite, for popularizing education or to check the situation of learning advancing it.vii In other words, the Central and efficiency in teaching just like Party had to decide between continuing inspecting the quality of products Maoist education policies and reversing is necessary in guaranteeing the them to create the sort of educational factory’s production level. environment that would help China in Obviously, one shouldn’t blindly catching up to other modernized take tests, but it is the only countries. method to effectively monitor To understand the severity of this education. We must seriously domestic debate, we must first understand study, test, and improve the conditions of education during the examination content and exercises. Cultural Revolution.