Wednesday 24th July
We began watching this movie to observe the differences between characters. One character, Shrek, is the good character, while Farquad is the antagonist, who wants to marry the princess.Issue Investigation: Refugees
Tuesday, 16th July - Tuesday 23rd July
We began looking at the issue of refugees and causes of their plight. We watched a movie on refugees and discussed the problems that the people had.
In small groups, we worked on different tasks that looked at ways in which governments could reduce this problem for their people in their own countries.
Text Study: Mulan
Thursday, 11th July
We have studied a range of things so far in English but I want to concentrate on our work on the movie, Mulan. Here are some notes I collected to assist my understanding of the story.
Chinese culture in Mulan
The Legend of Hua Mulan
The Chinese legend of Hua Mulan centers on a young woman who disguises herself as a man to take the place of her elderly father in the army. The story can be traced back to The Ballad of Mulan. The earliest accounts of the legend state that she lived during the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534). However another version reports that Mulan was requested as a concubine by Emperor Yang of Sui China (reigned 604–617). The film may take place even later, as it prominently features landmarks such as the Forbidden City which was not constructed until the 15th Century. On the other hand, at the time of Northern Wei, the Xiongnu (Huns)
had been already absorbed into Chinese culture. However, according to
the style of dress (traditional Han clothing), the film takes place
sometime in the 15th century or before. The fireworks
featured in the movie indicate that the movie is set during the Sui
dynasty. Although Mulan is set in north China, where the dominant
language is Mandarin, the Disney film uses the Cantonese pronunciation, "Fa", of her family name. In Mandarin her name is pronounced "Hua".
Disney's Mulan casts the title character in much the same way as the original legend, a tomboy daughter of a respected veteran, somewhat troubled by being the "sophisticated lady" her society expects her to be after failing the matchmaker's training, dishonoring Mulan's family. In the original Mulan legend, Mulan uses her father's name Li and not the name "Ping" and she was never discovered as a girl, unlike the film. Also in the original legend, Mulan went to war for her father, because her father was getting too old to fight, and had no sons to take his place. However, in the film, it was added that her father's leg was injured.
Language
The script used for most of the text in Mulan is Traditional Chinese, which is no longer used in daily life on Mainland China (but still used in Hong Kong, Macau, and many overseas Chinese communities), although people are still able to read it. The traditional name for the leaders of the Central Asian Huns was Shanyu. The war between the Huns and China was real, called the Sino-Xiongnu War.When Mulan masquerades as a man, her name is a pun in Chinese. Her first name is "Ping" (瓶), meaning pot, and her surname (placed first using Chinese naming conventions) means Flower (花). Together they make "Flowerpot", a Chinese term meaning an effeminate man. According to Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches by Maurice Baring, "Ping" in Chinese means soldier-man, and if you wish to express your contempt for a man there is no word in the whole of the Chinese language which expresses it so fully and so emphatically as the word Ping. Chi Fu's name literally means, in Chinese, "to bully".
from, http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Mulan
