Dear all,

The draft ideas of my DST project are as follows and I am looking forward to your great opinions on it.

1. Genre and purposes

It is going to be a narrative, achieving two purposes: a) the struggling identity as a half-blooded child of two nationalities in one country; b) a tribute to my mom, a common but great Mongolian woman.

The nationality on my IC in China is Mongolian, however, my father is a Chinese Han and my mother was a Mongolian. The right to be educated in Mongolian was deprived by my father since I was born, as a result I could not speak a single Mongolian word, even though my mom and dad were both able to do so. But sometimes my brother and I were not very welcomed when we were young by cousins from my dad's side, because we were Mongolian, which I was kind of shamed of. However, gradually I realized it's so great to be a Mongolian and my father began to emphasis the good features of Mongolian people that I should learn, especially after my mom passed away from cancer. After reading books about the history, culture and people of the Mongolian ethnic group, I became very proud of being a Mongolian, however, I was shamed again, of not being a real one, who cannot speak the language at all. I have been struggled on my identity a lot.

2. Selection of multimodal artifact

There will be a Mongolian song as the background from the very beginning to the end of the story, which will "cast a mood" of the whole story as Hull and Nelson pointed out in their paper. And Mongolian songs are very typical to bring the views of the grassland and people's lives on it.

The images I will employ will be all still images that I took before and some pictures illustrating cultures, food, scenery downloaded from the Internet.

Narration will apply to relate the images to my own experiences.

However, I am still in the midst to figure out how I am going to pair the images and narration, as the images I have on hand cannot fully express all the meanings of the narration.

3. Arrangement of the DST

a) Title
The title is PROUD of Being a Mongolian, which indicates my attitude of being a minority. Color and font will be blue and white as the sky of my hometown, but I will see if it is going to work well with the rest images.

b) Narration
As introduced by Hull and Nelson that the essential parts of a narration include orientation, abstract and a coda, raised by Labov (1997). In my DST, the orientation will be short with 2 sentences, telling the viewers that who I am. The abstract will bring the issue of my struggling identity. The body part will be focused on my experiences and changes from being afraid of admitting of being a Mongolian to being proud of it. The DST will end to emphasis why I am now proud of my nationality, partially due to my mom.

4. Limitations
a). As the story will mention a lot of my past experiences and my mom, it's hard for me to source enough pictures. We did not manage to keep pictures as we moved a lot and my mom died at a young age. Thus the images I have may not go well with the narration.

b). The song I chose is more than 4 minutes long, however, I plan the story should go around 3 minutes. I will try to cut the song shorter, but worrying the effects after that.

5. The deeper meaning of the DST
Even racial problem is never that serious in China, still minorities face challenges of being assimilated by the dominant Han people. I am a typical example. But how many people in China can realize the seriousness of losing the unique features of the minorities. And the Han people can never understand why some ethnic groups are so against the nationalization, in the name of helping us to be civilized. Deep in our heart, we just want to live a life belonging to us. However, that fact is minority groups are so weak in China nearly in every aspect and that's why Tibetan people are struggling. I am not going to address the issue explicitly, but hopefully it may arouse a little bit sensation on that.