Inquiry 1
Growing up in a traditional Chinese family, I am the single child who is living with my parents. In conventional Chinese culture, parents are supposed to take care of their children to such age until the children get married. In some cases, children are receiving family economic support even having their own babies. On one hand, Chinese children are exposed to less social stress with the help of their parents. On the other hand, the parenting style brews a mindset that children should conform to their parents’ requests unconditionally. My family is from one of these traditional families. My parents are businessman and businesswoman who run a same small size company. Since I can remember things, they always try their best to give me the best thing. Meanwhile, they place great hope on me. However, they force me to follow their lead and the decisions they made for me even against my will.
When I reached age to choose my life career to study, my father believes lawyers have brighter future, thereby insisting me to choose a law degree to study. However, being a lawyer is like the least thing I would like to do in my list. “Sitting behind a desk dealing with piles of case files is absolutely not my type”, I told myself. Instead, I love sports since a very young age. I play all kinds of sports including football, basketball, badminton, swimming and so on. Badminton is my favorite sport. I was even granted with a national athlete certificate due to my good performance in national badminton matches. When I knew this school provides a major of sports management, I was so excited and cheered up loudly “I finally found something I would like to do in my whole life”. I want to study this major so eagerly but when I express my decision to me parents, I received a strong disagreement as my father said: “This is such an childish and idiotic idea, you will regret it immediately”. They ignore my super enthusiasm towards sports and the sport management, arguing my opinion is just an impulsive decision which will be faded within a few days. The conversation on that day ended up with my leaving the room, sadly, because my father seemed uncompromisingly on the issue. However, I promised myself I would persuade them that my choosing sports management is not an impulse but a mature decision that follows my heart.
Since that day, I grasped whenever chances I had to talk to my father about my thoughts. Arguments between us were aroused, of course, and my endeavor seemed futile at all because my father still held a strong opinion to talk me into choosing a law major. I even searched on internet over verbal communication skills between children and parents to express more convincing statements. Things were getting a breakthrough in one day. On dining table, I was arguing with my father why I choose sports related major, a situation just as many other tries. However, this time I said “different people have different concept and I want to make a decision for my own life”. I surprisingly found my father seemed to have less intention to disapprove me immediately. I grasped the opportunity and talked all the way in the next 10 minutes on how I set goals for me life and I also depicted my short-term and long-term plans followed by how to achieve these goals in details. Afterwards, when I said “living without an aim is like sailing without a compass”, I saw a flash in my father’s eyes. On that very moment, I suddenly realized all my father had done were for my best interest only. The reason he disagreed with me on the issue was to ensure I was making a thorough but not an impulsive decision. Finally, I said to my father ‘Dad, I’m not a three years old, I want to walk my way without your protection and become more independent. Just for this time, give me a chance to prove myself’. It finally worked out. My father compromised and I can choose my favorite major eventually.
Trying to persuade a person with a strong mind is not an easy thing. From my experience I have learnt the key to achieve persuading lies in persistent and ongoing endeavor. No matter how hard it seems to be, attitude determines everything.
Inquiry 2
For instance, which aspects of the project were challenging and which did you find easier?
I think easier part is i knew these websites very much. and i have experience for shopping online.
For the project challenging is how to add specific strategies use in my essay.
compare different website and to learn some more strategies.
How did you — or did you not — incorporate feedback that others gave on your writing, and why?
Yes i did.
What do you think is your strongest sentence or paragraph and why?
“Shop Style links extra rating function on the products, while Yoox not, and Shop Style classifies products in more specifically than that of the Yoox.”This sentence is part of conclusion and tell the readers what my points is.
Which elements of your writing would you still like to work on?
Argument skill.
Is there anything else you’d like a reader (me or your classmates) to know about this project?
No yet. But these two website are very useful.
Both Shop Style and Yoox are two of the most popular shopping websites in the USA, which first one is found by the Popsugar that is a global women’s lifestyle brand concentrated in scopes of the media, commerce and technology, whilst accompanies with the mission statement that connects women with new entertainment, products, and experiences they are most passionate (Popsugar, 2014). The second one is established in year of 2000 and aims to achieve objective that is wording leading online store for the fashion, design as well as the art (Yoox Group, 2014). This essay is going to compare and contrast both websites in respect of the rhetorical appeals, style and the intended audiences.
In the first place, the primary similarity between Shop Style and Yoox is the shopping category. What is meant by this that both of websites not only provide wide range of products for the women, such as: shoes, dresses, jewelries and the cosmetics, but they target consumers of men and kid as well. For instance, the variety of toys, such as: Lego Star Wars and Lego bricks, are also offered by the both websites. In addition, another major similarity of them is essence of the websites. In other words that to say Shop Style and Yoox belong to the online shopping websites, which is not only able to deliver goods to the US markets, but also the products can be delivered to the large number of foreign countries, such as: Australia and Japan. Moreover, style of them also is similar. In other words, logo of each one is located in the top-left of the homepage and category of the products normally are available under the logo, which facilitates customers to observe and select preferred goods, whilst majority part of the homepage is occupied by the clothes pictures with the models. Besides, both websites in general require people to register their own account that incorporates into the latest address, contact number and other relevant personal information, in order to make purchasing and delivery conveniently. Lastly, both websites share promotion approaches in common, which enable users to share them via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google plus and other social medias.
On the other hand, several of the tremendous differences are existence amongtheShop Style and Yoox. First of all, web design of the first one is much more colorful in comparison with that of the second one. Specifically, red and yellow colors normally are utilized by the Shop Style to catch customers’ eyes and then encourage them take out their wallet, whereas the white background is used by the Yoox to reinforce its simplistic sense. Moreover, target consumer of both websites probably is different. From aspect of the Shop Style, it pays more attention to the searching function, which consumers not only can search products in its apparent searching column on the homepage, but they are able to choose certain product in according with the brand’s initials from letters A to Z in bottom of the homepage as well. In term of the Yoox, it focuses more on the function of the making a bid deal, so that both prices that before and after discount normally are available in the website, in order to assist consumers to get sense that extent of the benefits they can enjoy. For example, original and on-the-sale prices of the M Missoni’s Cardigan are the $707 and $424 respectively (Yoox, 2014). As a result, Shop Style is more likely to target consumers who concentrate on the life quality and enjoyment, while the Yoox aims at customers who are price-sensitive. What’s more, comparing with the Yoox, the Shop Style is connected with the extra function, called: rating scale, which the shape of love exists under the each individual product with the different numbers. For example, both Paige Nina Dress and De Lacy DeLacy Dawn Dress are linked with the numbers of 41 and 92 love shape separately, which indicates how many people like this particular product, at least are interested in it (Shop Style, 2014). This additional function in fact is another effective way to help consumers to make rational purchasing decision. Last but not least, classification of the goods category within the Shop Style is more specific than that of the Yoox. For instance, Yoox just classifies all of products into the main 6 categories, which are the fashion, women, men, kids, design and art, while 11 of types are divided by the Shop Style, which are the women, bags, shoes, beauty, jewelry, men, kids, home, offers, sales as well as the Marchesa Voyage. Basically, it is common sense that the more detail products classifications, the easier for consumers to find out own preference ones.
In conclusion, both Shop Style and Yoox are US based shopping websites and share several of the perspectives in common, which are the shopping lists, boundary of the deliveries, style of websites and the promotion method. However, major four of different aspects exist among two of websites, which are the web design that Shop Style is more colorful than that of the Yoox, both sites target varied consumers who concentrate on enjoyment and price respectively, Shop Style links extra rating function on the products, while Yoox not, and Shop Style classifies products in more specifically than that of the Yoox.
Reference list
Popsugar 2014, About us, Popsugar, retrieved by 21 October 2014, <http://corp.popsugar.com/#about>.
Shop Style 2014, Clothing, Shop Style, retrieved by 21 October 2014, <http://www.shopstyle.com/browse/womens-clothes>.
Yoox Group 2014, About us, Yoox Group, retrieved by 21 October 2014, <http://www.yooxgroup.com/en/yoox.asp>.
Inquiry 3
Nowadays, people in many big cities are complaining about the heavy traffic. It has seriously influenced people's daily life and economic development. To solve the problem, some pieces of advice are put forward. Some people suggest that more streets and roads should be built. In this way, the traffic density can be reduced so that the flow of buses and cars can be more fluent. But the new roads and streets will be filled with new cars and buses soon. Some people advise to limit the number of bikes and cars. This can reduce the density of the traffic flow. But on the other hand, this will have significant negative influence on the extent of convenience of the consumption made by the public and make buses more crowded because more people will be filled into limited number of buses. In my opinion, the number of private cars should be under control. And at the same time, buses should have their own special routes which cannot be used by other vehicles. Besides, underground train and city train should be developed quickly.
“How bad is China’s traffic problem? It’s really bad. You may have heard about the China National Highway 10 traffic jam on the news a few years ago; it was 100 kilometers long and lasted ten days, involving thousands of cars. But outside of the mega-jams, most cities are plagued with daily traffic that rivals the worst gridlock in Western cities. And thats despite a plethora of affordable public transportation options and anti-traffic legislation in many cities that mandates (for example) that cars with even and odd-numbered license plates must drive on alternating days, so only half of the city’s cars can legally take to the road at any given time.”
http://chineseculture.about.com/od/businesseconomy/a/Chinas-Traffic-Troubles.htm - Chinese traffic trouble.
“(Beijing) – At a press conference in Beijing in December, Steve Kearns of Transport for London, the city's public transport operator, displayed two photographs. Both showed London streets, one at the end of 19th century, the other at the end of 20th.
"It's hard to imagine that these two pictures are separated by only 100 years, judging by the primitive modes of transport we used before," Kearns said, a reference to the horse carts in the first picture.
But despite the advances in technology, modern-day traffic problems mean the horse-powered vehicles in the first pictures required the same amount of time to cross London as the autos in the second. http://english.caixin.com/2014-01-22/100632198.html Beijing's Plans to Fix Traffic Problems with 'Congestion Fee' Stuck in Slow Lane,Jan,01,2014.web
Inquiry 3 Part 2
Issue of the income and wealth gap in China
China, as a socialist country, is demonstrating its unique characteristics of both socialism and capitalism. However, it is increasingly discovered that the income or wealth gap between the rich and poor is consistently widening. The rich become richer while the poor become poorer, and, of course, most amounts of wealth is dominated by a few groups with privileged socioeconomic positions. The inequity in regional, rural and urban development has been perceived as a significant contributory factor to the current state of income and wealth gap in China. China today is commonly considered as the one of the typical emerging markets around the world, which is associated with the rapid economic growth during past decades. According to the statistics (The World Bank), annual GDP growth rate of China from 2011 to 2013 were 10.4%, 9.3% and 7.7% respectively and even in the financial crisis, it still experienced the desirable economic boosting. Meanwhile, China already overtook the Japan as the second largest economic organ across the globe, just behind the USA (Barboza 1). In spite of China performs quite well, especially for the economic aspect, it is unable to deny that income and wealth gap among the Chinese citizens become the increasingly wide. This essay is going to discuss this issue in detail and grant some of recommendations to solve it.
In the first place, income gap between either rich people and ordinary people or people who come from the urban and rural places becomes the more and more wide. Based on statistics from the BBC, disposable income of the people lives in the urban cities, such as: Beijing and Shanghai, experienced the much higher growth rate than that of the rural people, which increased from 2000 in year of the 1978 to the 17,000 Chinese currency in 2009, whereas it for rural people just enhanced from 2000 to 5000 over the same period (Tobin 1). In fact, inequality of the China nowadays has surpasses that in the USA already, which is linked with the Gini-coefficient of 0.4 that normally is regarded as the dangerous level of inequality. Apart from the enhancement in gap of the income and wealth among the urban and rural places, it between the Chinese coastal provinces and inland areas become the increasingly broad as well. Goh (et al., 2014, 10) recognizes that between 1989 and 2004, income in costal providence more than tripled whilst that in inland provided, doubled and in 1989 average per capita household income in inland provinces was 892 yuans, making up 85 percent of that in costal provinces of 1149 yuans, whereas by 2004, average income in coastal provinces had grown so rapidly that the mean per capita household income in inland provinces at 2338 yuans was barely two-third of the costal average of 3537 yuans.
Furthermore, inequality of the wealth distribution directly gives rise to level of the infrastructures quite different among the urban and rural places. Those regions with geographical and demographical advantages seem to excel faster than those ones with geographical and demographical disadvantages. For instance, the overall economic development and people's living standard in the western part of China is underperforming that of the eastern part of China. Eastern part of China have many areas with geographical advantage that give ease to transportation and optimization in regards to resource configuration, especially among those coastal cities. In contrast, the western part of the country has long been faced with problems such as drought, insufficient rainfall and undesirable natural climate conditions. These disadvantageous factors collectively drag the overall economic development of the western part behind that of the eastern part. In other words that to say comparing with those urban places which normally accompany with the comprehensive facilities, such as: education institution, medical centers and so on, those in the rural places are quite poor. In fact, the majority of rural places in China now still are absent of the paved roads, markets and safe drinking water, whilst limited access to inputs, financial services as well as the value chains and heavily relies on the traditional farming technique, rather that those advance technologies (Rural Poverty Portal 1). For this particular reason, both income and wealth gap among people live in rural and urban regions will continue to expand. Even more terrible, primary two of negative impacts are caused by the income and wealth inequality. It is able to breed corruption and deter society to achieve democracy consequence, because it indeed represents the reduction of efficient allocation of public and private resources (Bernasek 2). Besides, it is adverse effect on the social wellbeing, as crime rate is more likely to increase, which leads to economic growth rate decrease eventually.
Last but not least, in order to reduce the income and wealth gap among the Chinese citizen, several of approaches are supposed to embrace with. In begin with, minimum wage should rise, especially for those sectors with low skilled requirements. Actually, Chinese government plans to increase to 40% of average urban salaries by 2015 (BBC 3). In addition, those rural areas should be invested heavily. As mentioned above, the infrastructures in the remote places in general are quite poor in comparison with that in the urban area, so that most of the government revenues should be invested here, such as: building good road, establishing adequate medical centers and education institutions and so on, which is effective way to drop the income gap between rural and urban people. Moreover, changing in the tax system also can be utilized by the Chinese government to decrease inequality of the wealth. What is meant by this that either lifting the exemption threshold for personal income payments or imposing more tax on the people who are with the high income level should be used to achieve condition that poor people pay less amount of the tax, even exempted in total and rich people pay more tax.
In conclusion, although China experiences the strong and stable economic growth over last decade, the income and wealth gap always broadens among the Chinese residents, which is not only in the areas of rural and urban, but it appears in Chinese coastal and inland provinces as well. Also, inequality of the wealth leads to unbalance infrastructures development in the urban and remote areas, which further improves and reduces the corruption and economic growth separately. Therefore, Chinese government should improve level of minimum wage, invest rural places more and change the tax system to reduce this gap.
Reference list
Bernasek, Anna. ‘Income inequality, and its cost’. The New York Times. 25 June 2006. Web. 11 November 2014.
Barboza, David. ‘China passes Japan as second-largest economy’. The New York Times. 15 August 2010. Web. 11 November 2014.
BBC. ‘China promises rise in minimum wage to close income gap’. BBC, 6 February 2013. Web. 11 November 2014.
Goh, Chor-ching., Luo Xubei., Zhu, Nong. Income growth, inequality and poverty reduction: a case study of eight provinces in China. CIRANO. Web. 11 November 2014.
Rural Poverty Portal. Rural poverty in China. Rural Poverty Portal. Web. 11 November 2014.
The World Bank. GDP growth. World Bank. Web. 11 November 2014.
Tobin, Damian. ‘Inequality in China: rural poverty persists as urban wealth balloons’. BBC. 29 June 2011. Web. 11 November 2014.
Inquiry 4
When I started my project, I was very lost on how to best tell my story. However, as I looked at the self-summary I had written, it became more and more clear that my heritage is a very important part of my identity. There have been many conflicts in my life because of my strong cultural identity as a Chinese person, and I tried very hard to express these conflicts and how I overcame them with my project.
I think the thing that stands out the most about my self-summary-- before I even began to consider what to do for my project-- is the conflict that I had between my potential career and my family. I knew that this conflict would have to be a central theme of my project, because I have always wanted to be a good child, but I also want to follow my dreams. In my self-summary, I wrote: “When I reached age to choose my life career to study, my father believes lawyers have brighter future, thereby insisting me to choose a law degree to study. However, being a lawyer is like the least thing I would like to do in my list. “Sitting behind a desk dealing with piles of case files is absolutely not my type”, I told myself. Instead, I love sports since a very young age. I play all kinds of sports[] I was even granted with a national athlete certificate due to my good performance in national badminton matches. When I knew this school provides a major of sports management, I was so excited and cheered up loudly ‘I finally found something I would like to do in my whole life.’ I want to study this major so eagerly but when I express my decision to me parents, I received a strong disagreement as my father said: ‘This is such an childish and idiotic idea, you will regret it immediately.’ They ignore my super enthusiasm towards sports and the sport management, arguing my opinion is just an impulsive decision which will be faded within a few days.” I knew that this conflict was something that I needed to show with my project, so I put it in the video. I chose sad music because I felt that this exchange was a very sad one in my life. I did not want to disappoint my parents but I thought it was important to follow my own dreams and not become an extension of their lives. I am constantly torn between being a good Chinese child and being my own person.
I chose to make a Audio because I feel that the visual medium can not shows clear and my mental actively has a lot to offer that words can do. I know there is an English saying that a picture is worth one thousand words, but when words and music are combined they are worth even more together. I wanted to combine them of my family with the words I have written about my family to paint a better emotion for everyone about my story.
There is also another very important moment in my story, and that is when I am talking to my father and we have a sudden understanding. In my self-summary, I wrote: “I was arguing with my father why I choose sports related major, a situation just as many other tries. However, this time I said ‘different people have different concept and I want to make a decision for my own life’ [] I grasped the opportunity and talked all the way in the next 10 minutes on how I set goals for me life and I also depicted my short-term and long-term plans followed by how to achieve these goals in details. Afterwards, when I said ‘living without an aim is like sailing without a compass,’ I saw a flash in my father’s eyes. On that very moment, I suddenly realized all my father had done were for my best interest only.” I chose to illustrate this moment in my video because it is a very important one in my life. First, my father came to see things from my point of view and he then allowed me to start chasing my dreams. But at this time, I also started to see things from my father’s point of view. He was not trying to hold me back or hold me down, he just wanted me to be successful in my life.
When I first started to plan this project, I thought it would go differently. I thought maybe I would talk more about the events in my life, or the people in it; but when I began to plan it, I realized that what I really wanted to investigate was the relationship I had with my father. I chose some music that makes me think of my childhood, because it is music that my father always used to play when I was a child. I know that despite all our differences, I love my father very much and I want to work towards a better relationship with him. When we had this breakthrough with my father, I became a different person and so did he. With this project I wanted to show that a change had happened.
With this project, the peer response helped me a lot. I had some technical problems when I was first trying to do the project, but I got some help and I was able to finish everything that I need to finish. Although there were some surprises, I was really happy to do this project, since it gave me some time to reflect on some things that were very important events in my life. Illustrating them and adding media to them gave me a different point of view than just writing them down.
Final Comment: It is nice to see all these assignments together in one document. This document is 15 pages and 4,500 words. That is a lot of words. Since most novels are 50,000 words, this means that I have written with this in length 10% of a novel. At the time this does not seem like much work. Sometimes it was hard to begin these assignments. I learn that even when you have writer’s block the best thing to do is to just write something. Bad papers can turn to good papers if you put them away after writing garbage and then relook at them to see what it is that you can change. I am also proud with my growing communication level in English.
