Author Archives: Marcus Wu

Ghost Month

The informant is my father who has always grown up in Taiwan but came to America for grad school. Understanding both cultures, he has a very wide understanding of the traditions in our household and its practices.

Informant: 中元節/鬼節 (Zhong Yuan Jie/Guai Jie) – Ghost month, is when the doors to the underworld open and ghosts come back to our world. This takes place from July to August and we put food outside and burn money for the ghosts and our ancestors. It is believed that the food will feed their hunger and the money is so that they can use in the underworld. It used to be practiced in every household, however, within the past 2 or 3 decades the houses and families have stopped doing it. Nowadays only those who run small businesses keep the tradition alive by putting tables outside their offices and putting out food and drinks while burning money in a large can. I think it has something to do with not upsetting the ghosts and satisfying them to prevent any bad luck.

I think this is interesting since it is still a prevalent tradition, but it has been long stopped being practiced by the households. Only those who run businesses do nott want to upset any of the ghosts and such, thus they try to give them what they want and go on with their businesses, hoping for no bad luck. Although after asking some of my Taiwanese friends, it is still practiced in households, but it is very rarely seen. It is interesting to see how such a prevalent tradition that takes up a whole month during the summer went from households to only businesses to continue performing the rituals.

Tomb Sweeping Day

The informant is my father who has always grown up in Taiwan but came to America for grad school. Understanding both cultures, he has a very wide understanding of the traditions in our household and its practices.

Informant: 清明節 (Qing Ming Jie) – Tomb-sweeping day is a day of respecting one’s ancestors and going to their burial grounds to pray and clean their tombs. In our family, our ancestors are all on a big mountain with a very large grave that holds all of my ancestor’s ashes. Due to the large mountain and many other patrons, there is a group that stays there and periodically cleans the gravesites monthly. So because we do not have to do any of the cleaning, we bring food and drinks to offer to our ancestors. Inside the tomb site, we have a whiteboard that we use to leave our names down every time we visit. It has become a tradition for us to all write our names down every visit along with the date. Because you and your cousins are in America, you guys cannot attend Tomb Sweeping day, so we always write down your names instead.

I always understood that this day was to sweep your ancestors’ tombs, but since I have never experienced it, I never had to do any of the tomb sweeping myself. Honestly, my dad said that after our ancestors have bought that specific land on the mountain, we have never had to do any of the tomb sweeping, which in a sense defeats the whole purpose of the tradition. To better accommodate the traditional holiday in Taiwan, it has become a family reunion day for our family.

Duan Wu Festival

The informant is my grandmother from Taiwan, her hobbies are going to church and cooking. She says because Chinese tradition is very custom and done in certain ways it is weird to “stray” off on doing certain traditions. However, our family has done many of the same traditions, except starting from my great-grandparents time (4 generations), we had done some of these Lunar New Year traditions differently.

Informant:

端午節 (Duan Wu Jie) is the festival celebrating the beginning of spring. The tradition is to make 綜子 (Zong Zi), which is commonly called sticky rice pudding. It is contained using bamboo leaves and wrapped very tightly using a string. It can contain various other ingredients, but my family likes to put in: beef, beans, egg and mushrooms. Instead of the traditional way of steaming it, my grandmother boils it, which is a technique southern Taiwanese people do instead of the conventional and traditional way of steaming it.

香包 (Xiang Bao) is a small parcel that contains some kind of beans that has a certain smell to keep bugs away. The parcels are then hung around the house to keep away mosquitos. They are also considered to be toys that in my grandparent’s childhood would use to throw and hit other kids with it.

This specific festival was something I had known only about eating sticky rice pudding, but none of the other traditions that I had ever practiced. Knowing these new practices are very helpful for understanding my own culture and having a better grasp of my own roots.

Lunar New Year Traditions

The informant is my grandmother from Taiwan, her hobbies are going to church and cooking. She says because Chinese tradition is very custom and done in certain ways it is weird to “stray” off on doing certain traditions. However, our family has done many of the same traditions, except starting from my great-grandparents time (4 generations), we had done some of these Lunar New Year traditions differently.

Informant:

We also eat a whole chicken but cannot eat head, legs, butt. We leave the leftovers to the 5th day, this means keeping your leftovers like your money.

Day 1 – eat only vegetarian for breakfast, a tradition that is still practiced in our family, but do not know the reason for it. Leftover rice is always made into dry rice, making into porridge will bring about rain. For breakfast, we have to eat boiled spinach. When boiling it, we put the whole spinach piece in as a symbol of living longer. 羅波糕 (Ruo Buo Gao) – In the Taiwanese dialect it means being “lucky winning lottery”. This is radish cake that we eat every Lunar New Year, specifically on the first day.

A lot of the traditions are practiced still, but in some cases, the meanings were lost. Although that may be the case, our family still blindly continued the rituals. Our family mainly continues to do many of the traditional rituals, but if it is too complicated or annoying we would rather change it to accommodate our preferences. This was interesting to hear because I had never asked or understood what doing all these actions implied, because I was rarely in Taiwan to celebrate lunar new year, I had no idea what or why my family would do such specific things.

 

Food for even the Mice

The informant is my grandmother from Taiwan, her hobbies are going to church and cooking. She says because Chinese tradition is very custom and done in certain ways it is weird to “stray” off on doing certain traditions. However, our family has done many of the same traditions, except starting from my great-grandparents time (4 generations), we had done some of these Lunar New Year traditions differently.

Informant:

When I was growing up we would prepare a separate meal for these specific mice. Although we do not do it anymore because our house is clean and there are no mice around, it was very common during my time when we grew up. The specific mice we fed were called 錢鼠 (Qian Shu). Because their name had money in their names, we would hope that after feeding these mice, we would become prosperous.

The mice are called Asian house shrew/money shrew in english. This was interesting because even my father did not know or believe that these mice were actually real. My grandmother had to convince my father that they actually existed, but they are not seen anymore. This came as a surprise to me, because during this time my grandparents were under Japanese rule and that these traditions did not come from them, but they were extremely poor during that time. Feeding random mice for good luck seems very weird for me, especially since they did not have a lot of food, to begin with. However, seeing as it all panned out well, I guess feeding the mice did help!