Toponym is the origin of the name given to a place on Earth.
Site is the physical character of a place. Situation is the location of a place relative to other places, also helps us understand the importance of a location. Pacific American School Toponym Pamela Chu, the founder of Pacific American School, named the school Pacific American because the school locates in Taiwan, which locates on the Pacific Ocean. Site Pacific American School located on the East side of Hsinchu downtown. Situation Pacific American School is one of the four international schools in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Pacific American School has one of the best college acceptance rate in Taiwan. Hsinchu Toponym Hsinchu was called Zhu Qian before Qing dynasty conquered this island. After Qing dynasty came to Taiwan. They want a new name differ from the name that the aboriginals named it. So the Qing dynasty used Hsin(新), means new, and Zhu(竹) from the original name and combined it together and created Hsinchu (新竹). Site Hsinchu located on the North West of Taiwan. Laying on the lower elevation of the central mountain range, which shapes the back bone of Taiwan. Situation Hsinchu is the major center of technology in Taiwan. Most of major technology companies locates in Hsinchu Science Park, which is one of the major technology community in South East Asia. Formal regions is an area in which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics. Functional regions ( a.k.a nodal region) is an area organized around a node or a focal point. Vernacular regions is an that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity. Pacific American School/Hsinchu Formal Regions
Vernacular Regions
Dense, Concentration, and Pattern PAS locates in the most populated area of Hsinchu. Most of the population concentrated in the downtown area, where Big City locates. Chupei's population, on the other hand, is not that dense compare to that of Hsinchu. However, there are both student from downtown and Chupei attend Pacific American School. The living standard of Hsinchu generally consider as high in Taiwan. With the existence of Science Park, Hsinchu is the highest earning city in Taiwan. Globalization and Culture Hsinchu is a cosmopolitan city with western influence. There are totally 4 international schools in Hsinchu, which showed the common idea of sending children to a better education institution and a larger world. Hsinchu also has a lot of western chain shops such as, Starbucks and McDonalds. In fact, There are MOS burger, Starbucks, and McDonald's next to Pacific American School. Hsinchu is well known for its rice noodle. Hsinchu has a nickname called "The Windy City" because Hsinchu has a lot of wind, which contributed to the making of rice noodle that requires wind to dry of the noodle. Hsinchu is a unique place because of Science Park, which attract foreigners to live in Hsinchu. Being a city with influence by globalization, Hsinchu also has a robust culture of making rice noodle and meatballs. Hsinchu is has the best traditional Chinese orchestra in Taiwan. Hsinchu is similar to other place on Earth because Hsinchu is a city that has been influence by globalization. English can be understand by most of the people in Hsinchu and also a lot of western shops can be found in Hsinchu. Today's Socrates Seminar was a good start of the year; however, I think that I will need to improve on a lot of things. All of the people in the class are friendly. I tried to drew less expressive students in to the discussing because I think this event is beneficial for everyone in the class. So, participating in these kinds of discussions will benefit and deepen knowledge in this course, by listening to people's opinion and ideas.
I need to improve on how to directly draws question out of the reading material. Although I spoke a lot and asked a lot of question, I was not confident and sure about all of my questions. Some of the questions I asked had weak stance and not well developed. Directly relate back to the book can let people know what I was trying to say and connect them with the reading material. I was not satisfied about people not directly answer my question about globalization because I think we spent a lot of time discussing about natural resources demand. I personally think globalization can be one of the main factor that driven natural resource demand and climate change because of its inevitable identity. Did globalization benefit us or harm us? However, I really look forward to the next socratic seminar. It is so exciting to hear everyone taking his or her position and share what they think and what they learn. This photo shows an assembly line in China. It is a symbol of globalization. As a developing country, China had focused on its economic for over the past 40 years. Aware of the growing population, It is unacceptable to not find ways to help the poor of the 1.5 billion population. The overly populated country's labor is so cheap that attract most of western companies to settle their factories in China, which define globalization that it is a trend of world becoming more interconnected. We often may bought a car with part made by different countries. It is the cheap labor that attracted western companies, but is it fair for the Chinese people to accept low payment and long working hours? I think it is the only ways for China to incrementally improve its citizens living standard. It is a process that developed countries such as the United States and Britain had already went through. "For the last two decades, cities in the developing world have been growing by about three million people per week.49 That is equivalent to adding one more Seattle to the planet every day. Asia is only about 40% urban today, but by 2050 that number will top 70% in China, with over one billion new city slickers in that country alone. Already, places like Chongqing, Xiamen, and Shenzhen are growing more than 10% annually." (World in 2050, p. 31,32) Is climate change inevitable? I don't think so. It is caused by what we had done. Researcher said the earth would be an icebox if there are no greenhouse gases; however, when first person on earth died from heat wave, the globe began to be aware about the global warming and climate change issues.( World in 2050, p.26) In this picture,tires stacked up as mountains. Tires are unhealthy to the earth, which means the earth is hard to digest tires. It will cause greenhouse gas emission and also, if not recycled, it will occupy a lot of spaces stack up mountains like the picture above. Developed countries have most of the resources in the whole world. But, what about developing countries? They extract resources for the developed countries but what do they get? As population in developed countries consumes significant amount of resources and produce significant amount of waste, population in developing countries do not consume and produce that much of resources and waste. However, what if the population in developing countries do? Those the population in developed countries willingly give up the limited natural resource? I don't think so. The world would be overwhelmed with waste that will affect climate change. I sure hope not. The world you just created would be frightening. Global consumption would rise elevenfold. It would be as if the world’s population suddenly went from under 7 billion today to 72 billion. Where would all that meat, fish, water, energy, plastic, metal, and wood come from? (World in 2050, p 23) Are we selfish or just trying to save the world?
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