Based on East Asian history going back to the 17th century, explain why and how East Asia has two economies that produces pop culture products that are enjoyed by people outside of their language/cultural group. Explain its significance. Essay 2: Everyone must answer this question (or its optional substitution): You are a disembodied soul about to be reincarnated as a baby born in East Asia at any time between the earliest dates covered in this course and up to and through the 20th century. Because of your saintly previous life, you can be reincarnated as any ordinary (e.g. not Mao, Kim Il Sung, a member of BTS, or a Daoist Immortal living for centuries in the mountains) East Asian of any country or gender that you wish. You desire to live a fun, happy, fulfilled, and truly modern life, living your entire life within East Asia without ever living or going to school overseas. What nationality, gender, year and type of parents do you choose to be born to? Justify your choice at length with detailed historical facts and analysis to prove your chosen complete life (including death) will be fun, happy, fulfilled, and truly modern. (Optional substitution to this question for the misanthropic: as you were evil in your previous life, similarly describe the most wretched East Asian life [within the same time period] you could imagine, a tedious, sad, and ‘backward’ life.) You are writing a fictional autobiography from birth to death (deaths no later than the year 2000), so it cannot be your own life if you happen to be someone who was formerly a baby that was born in East Asia. It is a fictional biography but all of it has to be written drawing on the resources of this class (e.g. lectures, textbook, readings, chats, etc.) to make it as historically accurate as possible. You wish to live a modern life, meaning, you need to show how your ‘ideal’ (or ideally wretched) East Asian life exemplifies modernity, or lack thereof, as explained in my very first lecture of this course, posted in the first week entitled ‘Defining the Modern in Modern East Asia’. (P.S.: the opening of this question is just a light-hearted metaphor.
