I had originally enrolled in this class expecting Professor Jack Chen to be teaching...surprise, it was actually Evan--a young freshly bonified professor. However he might as well be an 85 year old fart.

His style is aggravatingly dry. He drones on and on and twitches when he lectures. He assigns way too much reading. He expects you to know every Anglican spelling of every single name. His quizzes are inconsistent, sometimes they focus on readings, sometimes not at all.

Mengyin is one of the worst TAs I have ever had. She mumbles and you can always expect to never understand what she is saying in discussion. Unsurprisingly, everyone just sits there, bored, and not listening.

Don't expect this to be an easy GE or even a fair GE. Avoid this lazy, dreary professor and his mumbling TAs like the plague.

Evan made this GE way harder than it needed to be. Way too many readings assigned in this class! There are even readings assigned for discussion, and none of them are really relevant to the midterm or final. Discussion would be better off if the TA's reviewed the readings assigned during lectures rather than just piling on more work. His teaching style is to throw as much information as possible to his students which is just not effective.

Lectures are boring and could be more engaging. He basically talks from his notes at the podium and includes lots of confusing details. Chinese history can be really dense and dry, so it's easy to miss something that he's saying.

If you're taking this class, a tip would be to don't do the readings assigned before class until after he lectures on them. His midterm and final involve a part that has quote recognition, but he only tests it off the lecture slides. That way you can save a lot of time and not read the other assigned readings that are irrelevant.

There are also four 2-3 page writing assignments assigned throughout the quarter. I had Meng and it was hard to get a perfect score with her, and she didn't explain what was wrong with my paper very well.