Purpose    Justification    Advertising    Audience    Maintenance    Checkpoints    Resources    Current Issues    Future Issues

   The purpose of this website is to educate the readers about Chinese culture by focusing on the central unit from which culture develops: family.  It will explore the Chinese family through a historical perspective and also its present-day existence in the US.  The reason the Chinese family is a topic of increasing interest is because Chinese people make up at least 19% of the world’s population [www.chinese-culture.net and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html] and China is now playing an increasingly bigger role on the world stage.  Readers will begin to interact with Chinese people more and more in all careers, whether it is manufacturing, finance, or technology.  By understanding the Chinese family and thus more about the Chinese culture, they will know how to better communicate with and deal with Chinese people.  Also, as there are more and more Chinese immigrants in the US, more and more generations of American-born Chinese lose sight of their heritage.  This site can help Chinese readers understand their background, heritage, and culture so that they can retain that part of their identity.  Personally, I am interested in developing this site because I have a vested interest in learning more about heritage and in better understanding my culture and my parents.

    This website is worthwhile to make because there are few sites on the Chinese family—there are many more about Chinese culture in general which have the Chinese family as a subsection.  This site can delve much further into the Chinese family and give readers much more information about that particular aspect of the Chinese culture.  The few sites that I found that are on the Chinese family, however, are not very good sites; they have too much information on a single page, are not aesthetically pleasing, and are not easy to navigate.  My site provides easy organization and navigation, and is also pleasing to the eye, inviting readers to stay longer and explore the site. 

    Concerning how I would get readers, I would first do verbal advertising by personally tell my friends, family, and teachers (especially East Asian Studies teachers) about this site.  I would also do guerilla marketing by putting up fliers in libraries near the Asian Studies sections and also in the East Asian Studies building at college.  I also hope that users will consider this a good enough resource that they will pass it on to others who may find it interesting or useful; I especially hope that East Asian Studies scholars can pass this on to other colleagues in the field in other universities, who can then popularize it within departments at those universities.  

   The market size will most likely be limited at the beginning, since this website would appeal mostly to scholars and Chinese people, but there is potential for the market to be huge, as more and more people will become interested in better understanding China and Chinese people.  In particular, Chinese people interested in this site would be American-born Chinese hoping to better understand their heritage, parents, identities, and non-American-born Chinese people who want to better understand their background and/or compare their current existence with those of Chinese-Americans.  Non-Chinese people who may possibly be interested in this site would be those who are friends of Chinese people, significant others of a Chinese person, teachers/tutors of a Chinese person, and adoptive/foster parents of a Chinese person.   

    The website will not need much maintenance at the beginning, since it is just an information site and the history portion especially will not change.  The history section may be updated later on if other sources are found, but it will be infrequently updated due to the unchangeable nature of history itself.  The information for the modern section will be periodically updated as more studies come out with information on trends.  In the future, if this site becomes especially popular and the resources are available, the site can be greatly expanded as more information sources are gathered and the history, immigration, and present areas can all be expanded.  Also, if grant money is received, workers can be hired and they can efficiently maintain and remodel the site.  A small office can also be set up and as well as a Q&A section on the site for readers to send in any specific questions they have; a worker or workers at the center can do research to answer the questions.

    Checkpoints along the way for the success of this site are gathering material, which was completed in April 2008, organizing and reading the material, which is currently what I am in the process of doing, synthesizing information and writing it, and then updating and expanding the site later on as more resources are available to make the site’s scope more broad.

    I have many resources to make the website successfully informative.   Much information can be found in newspaper and magazine articles, books, on websites, and in studies that have been done.  I can also obtain monetary resources by applying for grants from non-profit Asian-interest organizations and museums.  Specifically, my project fits the criteria for the AAS China and Inner Asia Council Small Grants, so I would be able to start there.  I can also add in a Paypal donation system on the website and solicit personal donations from readers who feel particularly generous.  At the moment, I am the only person working on this site, but I can have a bigger work force in the future with grant money.

    Current issues with this site include the fact that I am inefficient with coding; my website-making skills are rusty, especially with tables, and I have not learned the new XHTML code and new ways to organize websites with CSS.  Also, because of this setback in making the website, that causes inefficiency in my research because I’m trying to do this all at once by myself.  Later on, this could be solved with hiring more people—those who are experts at making and maintaining websites and then those who could help me research.

    Future issues include inefficiency by having too many workers—since this is a fairly small website right now, if there are too many people, there would not be enough for each person to do.  Also, another issue is that it may be extremely hard to generalize about Chinese-Americans in the future as there are still many immigrating to America.  With so many different families from different places (some families from Taiwan, some from China, etc) immigrating at different times and to different places, each family’s adaptation to America will be different.  Only time will tell if studies can show trends with all these varying Chinese immigrants that are coming to America.