Author Archives: TRC

Chinese folk belief: Signing in red ink

My informant doesn’t remember having ever seen a red pen in her house. When she was in elementary school, she found out why. She’d written her name on a homework assignment in red colored pencil, and her mom made her erase it and write over it in black. Her mom explained that in ancient China, the names of people who were condemned to be executed were written in red ink, so writing your name in red is bad luck.

Though my informant doesn’t believe that signing her name in red will bring her bad luck, she never does it because “there’s no particular reason to sign in red when I could just as easily sign in any other color that isn’t associated with bad luck.”

I found this superstition interesting, since Chinese signature chops are usually stamped in red ink. Also, the Chinese consider red to be a lucky color. Both of these facts seem to contradict this particular superstition.

Chinese custom: Birthday noodles

My informant’s mother always makes noodle soup whenever anyone in the family celebrates a birthday.  Her mother’s mother, my informant’s grandmother, was from northern China, where wheat noodles were a popular food item. The long noodles represent long life. The person whose birthday it is must eat enough to be completely full so that he/she won’t ever be hungry in the coming year.

This custom turns every birthday into a family occasion. The family shares a homemade meal, which promotes family bonding. It’s a ritual of sorts to mark the transition into being a year older.

My informant skipped her classes on her birthday to go home and have a noodle meal with her family, which shows how strong a tradition this is for her family. She says that she will have to learn how to make noodle soup so that she can continue the tradition in the future.

 

Korean myth: Tiger and bear

“So there was this prince-king who was living in the area that is now Korea. And one day, a bear and a tiger came along and wanted the king to turn them human. The king said he would do it if they went into a cave for a hundred days and ate nothing but onions. I think there’s another version where they have to eat only garlic. But anyways, they take on the challenge. But the tiger quit partway through. The bear made it through all the hundred days, and when it came out, the king turned it into a beautiful woman and married it, and their children became the Korean people.”

My informant thinks she first learned this myth at home, but she heard it again recently in a class on Korean culture. She suggested that the bear’s perseverance reflected Koreans’ conception of themselves as an overall determined culture. Also, Koreans use a lot of onions in their cooking, and onions are healthy and a very natural food. She does note, however, that tigers seem to be more important in Korean culture, and are generally portrayed as more fierce and noble in Korean art, while bears sometimes represent laziness.

This is an origin myth and its details reveal how the Koreans think of themselves. They come from the union of a powerful, magic-wielding king and an animal that proved its determination and commitment by eating healthy but not necessarily pleasant food for an extended period of time.

Flip Tag

I was in my informant’s dorm room chatting to her roommate after class, and when I turned around, I found that my informant had flipped my backpack inside out, so that the straps and front pocket were now on the inside.

My informant learned this practical joke in middle school. She first observed the joke when it was done to her, and she subsequently performed it on others. She told me that this joke is typically played as a game of tag, so that when someone flips your backpack, you are now “it” and have to flip someone else’s backpack. The person who is “it” turns the victim’s backpack inside out, puts the contents of the backpack back inside, and zips it up. In another variation—the more annoying one, according to my informant—the entire backpack is flipped inside out and stuffed into the front pocket of the backpack. In this version, all of the contents of the backpack and the front pocket have to be removed since they won’t fit inside, and are left in a pile by the zipped-up backpack packet.

The flipping often occurred in class or at lunchtime, said my informant. Students played the game because it was a way to entertain themselves during the school day using the materials available to them. Everyone carries backpacks in middle school, so everyone is a potential victim. The goal, presumably, is to flip someone’s backpack without them catching you in the act. It probably takes skill to flip someone’s backpack quickly enough that they don’t notice, so this could be a way of impressing friends. Also, it could be a team effort to flip someone’s backpack, with someone distracting the victim while someone else flipped the backpack, turning the game into a “bonding against the outsider” scenario, with the victim being the only one who isn’t in on the joke. Because the flipping sometimes occurred during class, the flipper also had to be careful not to attract the teacher’s attention. The game is therefore a way of defying authority. The flipper also gets to go through the contents of the victim’s backpack, so part of the appeal of flip tag could be that it is a way to satisfy curiosity or invade someone else’s privacy under the pretext of a game.

Korean-American Joke: Sausage

“So there were these four brothers, and they came to this cliff, and there was a genie. And this genie said, I can turn you into anything you want to be, so the first brother said, I want to be a cow so I can work really hard. So the genie turned him into a cow. The second brother said, I want to be a bird so I can be free. So the genie turned him into a bird. The third brother said, I want to be small and hide and be secure, so he became a rat. Now, the fourth brother had always been jealous of the other three, so he said, I want to be all three. So the genie turned him into a sausage. Because in Korean, cow is so, bird is se, and rat is ji, so-se-ji, sausage.”

My informant learned this joke from another Korean-American friend. Only a Korean-American (or someone who knew both Korean and English) would understand this joke without needing to have it explained to them, since the joke is told in English, but the punchline is delivered in Korean. The joke therefore strengthens Korean-American group identity.