A blog on the lessons I learnt from the contents as well as the meta-experience of attending the HIST 340 Class at USC, taught by Professor Joshua Goldstein

Meta-lessons about History:

• First hand accounts (eg. diaries) > Second hand accounts (eg. textbooks)
• So much reading! So much writing!

A short summary of Chinese history since the 1800s:

• Qing Dynasty: overthrows the Ming Dynasty.
• Confucianism is rampant.
• The Opium Wars: UK defeats the Qing.
• Century of Humiliation: Imperialists pound China.
• Reforms and Revolutions: 1896-1916
• KMT and CCP
• WWII, PRC and Taiwan
• Mao's Era (1949-76): Land Reforms, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution
• Tiananmen Square
• Factory Girls
• Xi Jinping (2012-now)

Written by Avijit Thawani, a PhD student at the University of Southern California, working on Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, and Knowledge Graphs.