Comments on: Sanjiazi 06: Textbooks

By: Echoes of Manchu » Sanjiazi 07: Showing off students

Echoes of Manchu » Sanjiazi 07: Showing off students — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:32:39 +0000

[...] Previous entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. [...]

By: Randy Alexander

Randy Alexander — Sun, 03 May 2009 03:09:37 +0000

Wow! I’m blown away (in fact, all of us here at Echoes of Manchu are!). We never would have expected that this little geeky blog would have such an impression on someone that they would move halfway across the world!

But I’m glad to hear that you did. And I’m jealous that you’re in such a picturesque warm place while I’m up here just north of the southernmost tip of Siberia!

By: Duncan

Duncan — Sat, 02 May 2009 04:23:14 +0000

彼此彼此。。。

Seriously, one of the motivating factors in my moving out here and liberating myself from the UK was reading this blog and getting heavy doses of blog/China-envy. So, thanks, I guess?

Although the government has done quite a lot to promote minority culture in schools in recent years, I believe the real problem is the lack of incentive to learn these things. Why send a child to learn Manchu when they could be getting English tuition? Teaching in school isn’t really enough, it needs to go hand in hand with promotion of literature, newspapers, tv reports, all kinds of media, otherwise the language is preserved in a limited, artifical way.

By: Randy Alexander

Randy Alexander — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:51:51 +0000

There aren’t any suitable textbooks for kids, unless you count textbooks that were printed in Ili, in Xinjiang province — but those are Xibo, and I’m not sure that the Heilongjiang Manchu people would accept that (there’s kind of a “they’re not the same as us” feeling between the two, even though they are the same, basically.

There is a slight amount of government backing from Fuyu county, otherwise the school itself wouldn’t exist, but not much. I want to go up there again and see if I can coordinate something with the Fuyu government to improve their learning situation.

Your blog is awesome, by the way!

By: Duncan

Duncan — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:37:15 +0000

It’s interesting that they rely on self-printed textbooks – are there any textbooks available that have been published somewhere? Isn’t there government backing for Manchu tuition? Where I am, the local government has a scheme that provides local schoolchildren with fancy textbooks to study the local minority language/script. But that might just be one of the benefits that come with huge tourism revenues….

By: Randy Alexander

Randy Alexander — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:38:38 +0000

Should be fixed now.

By: Kaonohi

Kaonohi — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:28:28 +0000

It seems that the link(s) to the textbook pictures is broken or the pictures aren’t available any more. Any chance they are available online or from you directly? I’m studying Manchu and would really like to see these textbooks.