Tag Archives: Childhood

The Empty Pot

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This story, The Empty Pot, takes place in a town in China where the emperor was seeking a successor.  The emperor organized a competition where every kid in the village received flower seeds, and whoever grew the most beautiful flower would be named the next emperor. Everyone was watering their plants and making them grow and everyone’s flowers were blooming except one. On the day of the end of the competition, this boy’s flower hadn’t grown at all and everyone else had these beautiful blooming flowers. Even though his seed hadn’t bloomed, he brought it to the emperor anyway. It turned out that the seeds the emperor had given all the children had been burnt, so they weren’t supposed to grow. Everyone else had grown these beautiful flowers because they did not use the seeds that they were given and cheated by using their own seeds. This boy then became the next emperor because he had been honest.

Context
This was a story my informant (JL) and her brother were told by their parents when they were growing up. She said her parents loved story time in general and it was a large part of her upbringing. This story in particular stuck with her the most, largely because the characters were Asian but also because the lesson stood out to her.  

Interpretation
There’s a clear lesson in this story about honesty, in a creative format that can clearly stick with people throughout their lives. My interpretation of this story is quite similar to that of my informant. I enjoy seeing diverse representations of culture in the media that I consume, especially when it relates to my identity. I think, like my informant’s experience, that this story is a very easily digestible and successful way to teach children a valuable lesson through an engaging story.

Tinikling (Filipino Folk Dance)

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Tinikling is a Filipino folk dance. Originating during the Spanish occupation of the Philippines, farmers would use bamboo traps to keep animals away from their crops.  However, the Philippine tikling bird was able to bypass the traps and reach the crops, which is what Tinikling is said to be named after. This dance itself mimics the movements of the tikling bird and was also created to deter birds from the land. There is also another legend associated with tinikling. When the Spaniards had colonized the Philippines, the native Filipinos were forced to work on plantations. As the story goes, those who didn’t comply with the orders from the Spanish leaders had to stand between two bamboo poles while they were clapped together and thus injured their feet. So, the Filipino people would jump to avoid this pain, and this form of punishment turned into a traditional folk dance in the Philippines. 

Context
My informant for this story is my dad (VG), who said he remembers hearing the story and seeing Tinikling performed for the first time when he was a kid.  The Filipino dance of Tinikling involves two long bamboo rods, at least six feet in length.  Two people play the role of clappers while the dancers stand between the bamboo poles.  The apparel of the dancers is often traditional Filipino clothing, for example, a Barong Tagalog for men.  The dancers will step and jump while the clappers continuously clap the bamboo poles together according to the rhythm.  My dad’s mom told him something about birds dancing or flying from branch to branch, and someone else had told him that birds were hopping to avoid bird traps.

Interpretation
I’m curious about the possible origins.  While both could be just as likely, it makes me wonder if they were both true but different sides of the same story, one more appropriate for younger audiences.  Or perhaps one or neither is perfectly accurate, and stories and embellishments were developed to accompany the dance.  Either way, Tinikling is an extremely impressive folk dance that requires lots of skill while also bringing Filipino communities together.

The Princess and the Pea

Informant KK is a USC freshman originally from Pasadena California. KK first heard this tale as a young child from his mother.  

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“So there’s this prince in a castle who still has his mother and father, the king and queen, who tell him he needs to find a princess to marry. Women from all over the kingdom offer their hand to become the prince’s wife, but the queen has a test for them. She places a pea under their mattress to see if they’ll notice it, and none of them do. Because none of them do, the queen says that none of them can marry the prince. Then, one night, a girl wearing rags knocks on the castle’s gates in a heavy thunderstorm, and the queen is hesitant to invite her in. But, the prince is adamant that she be let into the castle because it is unfair to let her be outside in the storm. So they let her in and she asks for a place to stay. The prince allows this, so the queen, wanting to make sure the girl can’t pass the test, places 100 mattresses on a bed with the pea at the very bottom, and says to the girl, ‘This is your bed for the night.’ The next morning, when they have all woken up, the queen asks the girl how she slept, and she said, ‘I slept terribly, there was something under the mattress that was bothering me so much, and when I lifted up the mattress, there was a pea there!’ By the order of the game, she became the princess and married the prince. I like how it’s kind of absurd, like how could someone feasibly sleep on a mountain of 100 mattresses, for one thing, and secondly, how would they be able to sense a pea at the very bottom?” 

Context:

“Some of the variations of the story are like, the prince tests them, or sometimes there’s no competition, it’s just that the queen wants to test her. Sometimes the number of mattresses changes. I believe there’s one version where the queen first tried one mattress, then she passed the test, then the queen asked her to try again on 100 mattresses. My mom told me the first version, and I learned later about the other variations. I believe she told me a very simple version because I was very small.”

As an additional note, the Princess and the Pea is known as ATU 704 from the Aarne-Thompson-Uther tale type index.

Analysis:

This tale has many characteristics from Axel Olrik’s 1921 book, Epic Laws of Folk Narrative research, such as the limitations to two characters to a scene — either the lady and the prince, the lady and the queen, or the queen and the prince — and the repetition of threes, presumably in the number of potential brides which offered their hand in the challenge, which is a common motif in tales. Presumably, the tale carries the moral that a person is not defined by their financial status. The queen wanted to find a “real” and “worthy” princess, so she made it difficult for the lady with the rags to win the challenge, yet she ultimately won in the end, showing she had the value all along inside of her heart — a good lesson to teach a child.

Thanksgiving Ornaments

The informant is a student in university who has spent the entirety of his life in the United States, starting various different traditions that she has the ability to experience due to family members building upon their values.

Ritual/Ceremony:

On Thanksgiving, the United States’ annual national holiday, the informant, her family and extended members join together to “share [their] love with one another by bringing [their] Christmas earlier in the year.” The ceremony that takes place accompanying the traditional Thanksgiving feast and activities includes the “exchange of an ornament on Thanksgiving because we often won’t be able to be together during Christmas but we get to carry a reminder of them on the tree.” This is typically done “after the meal ends, giving each other the ornaments, symbolic of our love on Christmas eve and day, is mainly for the extended family members who we don’t get to see on the most chaotic days of the year”.

Context:

The informant states that this tradition has existed in her family since “[her] brother was 5 so that was 13 years ago” and was a very important ceremony that played a “unique part of Thanksgiving day” as it was “more symbolic than the turkey was to [them]”. She had also expressed that these ornaments were usually personalized according to each family member and their interests, specifically over the course of that year. Examples of this in her family exist through an ornament that she received years ago that was “Nemo themed because it was my favourite movie as a child” and that resonated with the rest of the family as they put it on their tree for that Christmas season. Ornament ceremonies had a certain dynamic and were typically done between specific individuals most of the years with an exchange of “the older generations giving the younger generations personalised ones” and the entire family giving the elders “a collective personalised one” from their descendants. This can be seen through her family giving their grandfather a wooden ornament because of their “family memories and love for nature.” She summarises her experience with the ceremony as a “matter of how we can share our love with unfortunately not being able to be in the same space as each other” on Christmas day.

Analysis:

This unique ceremony being done during Thanksgiving presents a different approach to the traditional holiday by implementing the effects of the religious/community holiday of Christmas together. The mix of holidays in a familial setting embraces and highlights the true impact of these holidays on the informant and her family, placing her family in an important position in their lives. Although it is not a generational tradition that has existed for decades, it emphasises the significance of this tradition to the informant herself and her siblings. The personalisation of the ornaments presents the beginning of a narrative of sorts as she is able to collect the personalised ornaments she has received over the years to show the growth in her persona and values as a human. Besides this allowing the family to celebrate the family essence that they do not have on Christmas with the ornaments received on Thanksgiving, it also supports the ideology of feeling extreme gratitude on Thanksgiving. Spreading the “love and family joy” all year round as they prepare for the year ahead of them, with the ornaments piling up over the years symbolizes the impacts of implementing this ceremony onto Thanksgiving. It allows the informant to have grown up feeling connected to her extended family which is evident in the manner she has expressed the importance of family in her life, missing the ones who are not there for Christmas Eve.

Donna Maria’s Enchanted Gardens (Sawfar)

My informant is a family member in Lebanon that has lived in the mountains for her entire life which plays a large role in this important narrative that has “become part of her identity forever.”

Narrative:

Wedding at Donna Maria Sursock Gardens

My informant states that they “lived in a village named Sawfar, far into the mountains of Lebanon. Although, it wasn’t different to many other villages, on top of our mountain stood a castle that belonged to our beloved Donna Maria.” The woman who was known to be “the most generous and beautiful of all” lived in a small castle built by her husband, Albert to live out her fairytale dreams. However, after the passing or disappearance of the family for some unknown reason, the castle was “torn apart by the militia in 1975 and left in ruins.” My informant describes her childhood on the open castle grounds as magical and “some of the best moments of [her] life” even in it’s fractured state. After many years, weddings had begun to take place in the castle gardens and some describe “seeing Donna peering from the balcony, sending her wishes to the newlyweds and then it became a tradition, blessing each couple that keeps her memory alive.” The music of the weddings “erupted through the valleys, filling the mountains with the magic of Donna’s castle” However, the informant describes playing in the grounds once as a child and revealing part of the house that had been covered, “it was a dungeon filled with unknown bones. Nobody had known until [she] found it and it became a horror, even Donna may have had a darkness to her and skeletons in her basement”. 

Context:

She states that this became known to the entire village but the weddings never stopped, because it would tamper the ‘magic’ that Donna had given them. Her story and castle history was passed on for generations as children were even brought to learn about Donna and her past as “she is a vital part of Sawfar history” It has become an integral part of her family history and her children’s lives as she says “even though I never met Donna, her descendants and their ground are a big part of my upbringing in making me the person I am today” The castle is not only grounds for the descendants of Donna Maria but the rest of the village to enjoy and pass the joy that the bricks and gardens brought to others.

Analysis:

The narrative that my informant presents seems to be a pivotal part of her upbringing in the village as she had lived through most of the experiences at the Donna Maria castle. The element of the fairytale castle on top of the mountain allowed Donna and her family to thrive and incorporated that into the village. When the story was described, the informant said she passed it on to her children and brought them to the castle grounds to experience it. This allows the children to gain a sense of what their heritage is and a glamorized version of a story such as a castle encourages the learning of their culture and gain a patriotic view of their country and specifically the village. Adults are able to have a stable grounding in their village, even in unfortunate circumstances such as wars and attacks on their homes, they are able to look to the withered castle, with so much mixed history, and see it still standing. The castle represents the hope of what their village was, what it still is and what it will continue to be as the beauty of the story and the gardens is presented to residents of the village, their descendants and tourists who hope to see the history of what brought this village together. The ‘ghost’ of Donna Maria symbolises the blessing of eternal life, especially for married couples and children that still have growth to come as they not only learn about her beauty but also the dungeons that lie beneath her gardens. At times when married women struggled with events in their lives, they regret not getting married at the blessed grounds and being led by Donna who seems to have been viewed not only as a privileged woman but a queen atop the village that was a guiding light in the darkness of wars in Lebanon. Even after all the trials and tribulations that the entire country experienced, Donna’s damaged castle stood as a landmark in the people’s hearts and identities.