Monthly Archives: April 2015

One hundred steps

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Shanghai, China
Performance Date: 2/25/15
Primary Language: Chinese

“Basically, yeah, one of our common sayings is that if you, you know, walk, like, a hundred steps after you eat your food, it helps you live longer.”

 

The informant is a 19 year old, undergraduate student at the University of Southern California, studying accounting. He was born and lived in Shanghai, China for most of his life. He spent his high school years at a boarding school in Connecticut, before coming to college in California. He still spends his summers back in China, where he likes writing music and working on potential future business projects.

 

The informant was asked if there were any common sayings that he heard in China. He had heard this saying from his family, often after meals.

 

The Chinese are renowned for their medicine practices. They are largely responsible for what many call “holistic medicine” today—acupressure, acupuncture, and herbal remedies. They are very interested in health and have many folklore remedies, as a result. This particular one, of walking a hundred steps after one eats, is just another of such remedies. Exercise is always a good thing, and walking after a meal can help circulate the blood in the body.

Why 100 steps? Well, 100 is an important number in Chinese culture. On a baby’s 100th day, there is a large celebration. A hundred is also ten times ten. Ten is a holy number, as it is the sum of the first four numbers (1+2+3+4), and people have 10 fingers and 10 toes. Ten would be too few of steps to walk, so the Chinese say 100  to maintain the holiness of the numerical symbolism, while still making it a practical way to maintain health.

It is interesting that the Chinese, with this saying, have people exercise after they eat. In America, there is the saying that you should wait to swim until an hour after you have eaten. This is thought to protect from cramps, and therefore drowning. The Chinese would likely disagree with this way of thinking.

Death Means…

Nationality: Jamaican American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC student athlete
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April1,2015
Primary Language: English

The informant was born and raised into the American culture and way of life. Her mother’s side of the family is in touch with their Jamaican culture and heritage and as the informant grew older she was able to become more into with the beliefs and customs of Jamaica.

Jamaican Death Means…

Informant…

When I asked the informant about different believes in the Jamaican culture this was the first one to come to her head. She said that “death signifies the end of someones physical life, however if someone dies and is said to have “unfinished business” their spirit will not rest. Instead, the spirit roams the earth until it is able to finish it’s business.”

I was then really intrigued by this so I asked her if she had ever witnessed this or knew someone who did and he informant said that her grandmother passed away and a few weeks later the informant’s mother saw her grandmothers spirit or ghost. This was important to the family to know this because it told them that she hadn’t passed on and would watch over them until she was able to continue on. This is a normal thing in there culture, so it is safe to say that this culture believes in ghosts  and spirits waling the earth. This is interesting because it clashes with other beliefs in society.

Analysis…

This culture does believe in ghosts and spirits roaming the earth with unfinished business. This kind of collides with other religious beliefs that the culture may have about God. I didn’t get a chance to ask the informant how that works, and how they deal with the collision of beliefs, but it is definitely a part of my thought process while analyzing this specific aspect of their culture. It seems like Jamaicans are in touch with their ancestors whether that is doing rituals to please them, or seeing their spirits roam, they have a close connection to their families. Maybe Jamaican culture is big on family, I just have to assume this because I didn’t ask the informant this question either.

St. Nicholas Day

Nationality: German/American
Age: 22
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: USC off campus
Performance Date: April 13, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: German

My good friend and roommate, the informant, is half German. Her father was born and raised in Germany and her mother is American. The two met while her mother was in Germany and moved to the United States after they married. She is their only child. Her father still has a thick German accent and speaks German with her; she speaks the language fluently and still has family who live in Germany. She lived there from ages 1-3 and then decided last year to study abroad in Berlin. I talked to her about Germany and asked if there are any traditions that she can remember participating in while she lived there.

Informant: “I might butcher some of the details because I don’t remember everything, but on the 5th of December at night, children put their shoes outside of their door for St. Nikolaus, and he comes in the night and fills all of the children’s shoes with coins and um… clementines, and things like that. And you wake up on the 6th with stuff in your shoes. If you were good, it’s basically your reward. If you’re good, you get that, if you’re bad…you get a stick. At least that is how they celebrate in Germany.”

She describes this to me as we sit on my bed. She says it is basically the same thing as Santa Claus in a lot of ways. I think it sounds magical. I love everything to do with Christmas so I love hearing stories about other cultural festive traditions surrounding the holiday and December in general.

Circling Fools version 2

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Illinois
Performance Date: April 28, 2015
Primary Language: English

Okay, alright,okay…um it’s strange to just randomly start from the beginning. But, okay, yeah, we were all at Morris like every summer. And, uh, one group decides to get in a a canoe and just sort of leaves us. And yeah (laughs), um, meanwhile four of us – Brit, me, you, and Nicole- are um, fucking around, and trying to figure out the paddle boat. And that took a long time.

Yeah and we had a big fight over who was well-equipped to paddle. And I definitely pulled some bullshit like having a skating thing the next day and guilted Brittany or you into it. I’m sure Nicole was in the back with me. And we were just telling you how wonderful you were for paddling, stroking your egos.

And uh we didn’t know which way the canoe went, there’s kind of a fork in it so we just picked a route and start going down it, you know, slowly but surely… and uh eventually at the fork um we start shouting for the canoe because you know, that’s our only way of dealing with things.

And as we’re sort of paddling, this one boat keeps passing us. And it’s got a man, who’s I guess 60 years old…and a young man with him who’s probably like 20.  So the first time, it’s common courtesy on the water, to wave to people and so we uh, we did. People are more friendly on the water, I think.

And then a couple minutes later, they pass again and so we wave again. And we’re thinking that it was kind of weird, like they kept smiling at us…pretty strangely.

And eventually, you know, we’re just stagnant. People are yelling at each other, probably Nicole was, even though she was in back. And eventually, uh that same boat came back and slows down and is just coasting past us.

And we’re thinking, “Oh God.” and the old man goes “Do you guys need help?” or something but we were all like “No, no, we’re fine, no problem, no, no.” and then the next thing you know they were circling us!

And we are feeling so vulnerable and we couldn’t even paddle away if we wanted to like we didn’t know how.

And the 20-year old guy takes out a rope and just starts like lassoing in the air. And I think we were all halfway laughing and halfway panicking. Just like, “Is he going to lasso us?”

And he passes the lasso to I guess his father and he fucking dives into the black water like the depths of this lake!

And we’re just sitting there and call out but don’t see him. Where is he? Where is he? And then he just puts his arms over the boat! And looks at us with this like grin on his face and goes (in a deep southern accent) “Y’all ever been tipped?” and we all look at each other and we’re not sure, just a mix between laughing and screaming.

But because we’re all pathologically polite from our Catholic school upbringing we’re just like “No, no, no, it’s fine.” But I feel like we need to get out of there.

And I remember you, (the collector), you were just laughing your head off, your turkey cackle laugh, and we are not moving and so I yelled at you and I just go, “Grace, FUCKING PADDLE!” (laughs).

But you don’t. And Brittany is sitting in this awkward position in the front and she’s not paddling either and I go “Brit what are you doing?” and that’s when I realize she peed herself. Are you kidding me?! And she gives me this like impassioned plea look she does sometimes and goes “Katie. I can’t. No.”

So I tell her to get out of the way and switch spots with her… and I had to sit in this girl’s PISS and…’cus she couldn’t move… and I paddled away from those fuckers (laughs a lot).

Then, we get back to the, um, the shore. And of course, our parents are there. We’re like strangely close to our parents… anyway, yeah, and we’re trying to tell them what happened and just laughing and freaking out.  And they just shrugged it off as if it were nothing! And we were all shocked at this, but eventually let it go.

So I guess all this was, Morris 2010? I think, not sure. But fast forward to 2013 or 2014, I feel like ’14, and yeah, so last summer, and we’re there and Brit’s uncle takes us for a pontoon ride and we bring it up because you know, we tell this story any chance we get, and he just looks up at us and knew who we were talking about. Like “Bob and Joe?” or I don’t remember their names but you know and he says “Keep your voice down…those guys cause a lot of trouble on this lake.”

And apparently, he tells us that they make their money, based on suing other people. And so now the son in estranged from his father and the father…(very loudly, animatedly) the father faced criminal charges for smacking someone in the head with a SHOVEL!!

Collector: When was the first time you told this story or it was told?

The second we got back to shore.

Why do you retell it?

Um… I think that uh, we retell it a lot because it is so characteristic of our friends to get into shit like that…and our reaction were so funny. Panic or laugh? And the fact that we um, we just really love that “Y’all ever been tipped?” line, definitely the climax of the story. It’s just shocking someone actually said that… he definitely said “y’all” but not sure if he was that Southern, now that I think about it.

Also our friends tend to embellish and you know, sensationalize, but this is fucking true.

After all these years, we realized we were in serious danger, like hit your head with a shovel kind of danger!

Context of the Performance: 

I asked the informant if she would tell this story specifically so we could compare with the Circling Fools tale previously posted, as told by another informant, Brittany. This was the first time she had told it individually, as it is generally a group performance, but this time she told it directly to the collector. The “you” she refers to is the collector, once again in this case, because she told it to me, a close friend.

My Thoughts on this Piece:

In both tales, (Circling Fools and Circling Fools, Version 2) the basic plot points are the same but some key details change, which is interesting and sort of speaks to the informant’s worldview. As mentioned in the first version of this tale, typically it is told by several people at once, with lots of interruptions so both informants felt odd telling it by themselves directly to one single person.

 

 

Skating “Five-0”

Nationality: White
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Brea California
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: English

Tanner is a student at USC and one of my closest friends. He grew up in Brea California, on the boarder of Orange Country. He was a part of both soccer, skate, and fishing communities as a kid, as well as the public school community and his local community.

 

Performance: “So we’re at the skate park, and everybody has to wear helmets at the skate park – it’s the law. obviously we’re all skating and nobody is wearing helmets because… come on. haha. So we will all be skating and somebody is sitting at the top and all of a sudden you will hear somebody yell “Five-0!” And then you hear it and everybody panics and then runs to the bleachers and acts like they aren’t skating. I mean you say Five-0 because of the whole Hawaii Five-0 thing, and obviously the cops are showing up, and if you’re skating around and you don’t have a helmet on you get like a $200 ticket…which is like…not chill.”

Do you think that’s just a thing in Brea (where he is from) or do you think that’s a larger skate community thing? i asked.

“I mean i’ve been to other skate parks in like Chino and Santa Anna and people will yell Five-0 and the exact same thing happens. so yeah, I guess you could say it’s a bigger thing. One time though I was skating in Palmdale and yelled it and everybody thought I meant somebody was getting arrested and got really sketched out. I guess it means different things sometimes.”

 

Analysis: I believe that this skate folklore has both multiplicity and variation. As I never skated when I was younger, I had never heard of this warning call. It’s like a sort of code to say that cops are nearby without notifying the cops that the kids know. It is interesting that Tanner referenced a potential cause for the saying, the TV series Hawaii Five-0. The saying seems to sometimes mean different things in different skating communities but always has something to do with the police.