Professor Zackey is funny and cool and knowledgeable. I would take a class with him again if I could. His tests are very reasonable. I think most students would say he is chill.

This course was so interesting and fun! Prof. Zackey is a caring, likeable, and funny lecturer with lots of insight from his many years of living in and studying the human geography of contemporary China. The class is well-organized, informative, engaging, and a great high-level introduction to the political history, natural history, and geography of China. It covers all of the most important topics for beginning to understand China on so many levels - politics, culture, regionality, ethnicity, economics and more. The exams are moderately difficult and require a degree of memorization of important years and specific names of important lists, people and places. He curves grades to very fairly. Be warned that the first two or three weeks of lecture and studying for the midterm will involve a lot of learning history specifically.

This is a great regional geography class, and I really enjoyed taking it. Professor Zackey has spent most of his time in China, so if he offers this class, you should definitely take it with him. He is often funny and approachable. The lectures are very engaging, and the grading scheme for this class is fair. The tests can be challenging if you don't have any prior knowledge about China. The first half is very heavy in historical facts and timelines, so please be mentally prepared for that. There's a map quiz to memorize every China province and physical features of China, which I ended up finding very helpful to situate my mental map of where things happen geographically. The midterm score can really give you a heart attack, and the mean would be surprisingly low, but he is very generous with the curve. There's a project, a 1-2 page paper with your crafted visualization, which I think is quite fair. Overall, I like this class and have learned a lot about China from this class.

Professor Zackey is one of my favorite professors at UCLA. He's passionate about the subject which comes across in his lectures which are interesting and easy to follow. It's essential to go to class because he doesn't post slides online and some of the random tidbits he tells you can pop up on a test. There's one midterm and one final which are both pretty easy and don't require any intense studying to get an A. It's an easy GE, Zackey is a great professor, and the material is enjoyable to learn.