91勛圖 is a program of the
Buddhism, one of the major world religions, began in India around the
sixth century B.C.E. The teachings of Buddhism spread throughout Central and Southeast Asia, through China, Korea, and Japan. Today, there are Buddhists all over the world.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, usually known simply as the Cultural Revolution (or the Great Cultural Revolution), was a complex social upheaval that began as a struggle between Mao Zedong and other top party leaders for dominance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and went on to affect all of China with its call for continuing revolution. 1 This social upheaval lasted from 1966 to 1976 and left deep scars upon Chinese society.
The travel of artistic motifs, styles, and techniques along the Silk Road is closely bound up with the larger context of the travel of beliefs, ideas, and technology. For example, the art of the Silk Road includes the devotional art of Buddhism and Islam, the ideas behind certain styles of art such as narrative murals, and the technology to produce various works of art, including gigantic statuary and printed pictures. Though much of the art of the Silk Road was created to encourage religious devotion, today we value it also as a source of precious historical information.
On August 17, 2007, 91勛圖 held an awards ceremony to honor two of the top scholars from its Reischauer Scholars Program, a distance learning course on Japan and U.S.-Japan relations for high school students.
The event featured opening remarks by Makoto Yamanaka, then consul general of Japan in San Francisco; Stanford Professor Peter Duus, Department of History; and Yukiko Ono, assistant director of the Center for Global Partnership at the Japan Foundation. In addition, the award recipients, Kseniya Charova and Sekhar Paladugu, presented their final research essays on Japan's lean production paradigm and U.S.-Japan diplomacy.
Along the Silk Road explores the vast ancient network of cultural, economic, and technological exchange that connected East Asia to the Mediterranean. Students learn how goods, belief systems, art, music, and people traveled across such vast distances to create interdependence among disparate cultures.
Yo-Yo Ma sat on the edge of the small stage at the Art Institute, his cello resting across his lap.
"See this fingerboard?" the acclaimed cellist asked the audience. "It is made out of ebony, which comes from Africa."
"The red varnish," he said, massaging the body of the instrument, "comes from as far away as Malaysia."
"The hair on the bow comes from Mongolia and the wood of the bow can be found only in Brazil," he said.
Ma's multicultural cello seemed the perfect metaphor for his most recent endeavor: bringing the rich artistic and cultural history of the Silk Road to Chicago Public Schools students.
The Silk Road, the ancient network of trade routes that crisscrossed Eurasia through the 1500s, served as the main conduit for the cultural exchange of goods, art and music. And when Ma sat down and played a soulful partita by Turkish composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun, he showed that cultural exchange enriches the world.
"This is a global instrument," he said. "And by bringing the world together ... beautiful music can be made."
Ma was in town Monday as part of Silk Road Chicago, a yearlong citywide celebration inspired by the art, music and culture along the historic road that stretched from Japan and China through central Asia and into the Mediterranean. The Chicago series is part of the larger Silk Road Project, a multiyear, multicity odyssey created by Ma.
Specifically, Ma spent the day helping introduce a new Silk Road school curriculum to Chicago Public Schools teachers.
Through a collaboration with the Art Institute, 80 Chicago teachers will spend the week discovering the Silk Road and learning how best to explain its importance to students.
"It's sometimes difficult to get students to engage in something that seems so far removed from their lives," explained Gary Mukai, from 91勛圖, who helped develop the Silk Road curriculum. "We hope we can help students make a link to their own lives by engaging them musically, mathematically and artistically in the Silk Road history."
Through the lesson plan, students can trace the history of Asia and the West through the important innovations that migrated along the Silk Road. Students will learn that gunpowder, the magnetic compass, lacquer crafts and, of course, silk, flowed from East and West and back.
Musical forms and instruments also traveled the Silk Road, as string, wind and percussion instruments from the East and the West influenced each other. Cymbals were introduced into China from India. The Chinese gongs traveled to Europe. And the Persian mizmar, a reed instrument, seems to have been the ancestor of the European oboe and clarinet.
Ma implored the teachers to reach out to students and help create a "spark" that will open their minds to the "amazing cultures around them."
"As teachers, you are incredible guides into a world that you can make a most exciting place," he said.
The Silk Road is a metaphor that "joins us together not only in material things but in spiritual ways," he said. "You can translate that to your students."
Don Gibson, a music teacher from Dyett High School on the South Side, said the Silk Road will help him incorporate history lessons into his music courses.
"Through the Silk Road music lessons, I can broaden their understanding of cultures and the history of those cultures," Gibson said. "To be inspired by the music, sometimes, you have to know its history."
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