The informant is a USC student and friend of mine from Bangkok, Thailand whose family is Cantonese. She came over to make dumplings at my house, and while we were eating, she kept putting dumplings on my plate for me. This is what she told me when I asked her why she was doing that.
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“In cantonese culture, when you’re sharing a meal with someone, you would have all the plates with food on them, for example, like all the dumplings would be in one plate–if you’re sharing dumplings with someone, you would always take the dumpling, dip it in the sauce, and put it on their plate, and then you would get one for yourself. And when you finish yours, you put another one on their plate. And then, when you get to the last one, you have to put it on their plate, so they get to eat it.”
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I found that this was an interesting custom that seemed to reflect something I have seen in many cultures, specifically non-Western ones; many cultures emphasize the importance of serving others before yourself, or respecting others before yourself. I have seen this reflected in my own Ethiopian culture, which emphasizes the importance of attending to others before yourself in almost everything from serving food to giving houseguests your bed and sleeping on the couch or floor. This custom is also part of a larger customary lore that exists almost everywhere but seems to emerge more when people move away from their home countries: when engaging in the customs of hospitality from their native countries, they are expressing a sense of nostalgia for that community, for the “old country.” These customs also tend to become simplified over time as cultures mix; in more cosmopolitan societies, a lot of the nuance and specificity of certain customs tends to fade away. We can now see them in more generalized customs, such as asking someone whether they would like a glass of water when they visit your home, which are more simple, symbolistic nods to that culture of hospitality.
Monthly Archives: May 2019
The Elbow game
The informant is my 19-year-old cousin who now lives in Pomona, CA, but grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She learned this game from other kids at her international elementary school.
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“So I don’t know if this really counts as a game, but there’s this thing we used to do when we were little…here. Stick out your arm. Okay, so, one person holds their arm out like that [gestures to my arm] and then looks away, or, actually, they close their eyes. Okay, so close your eyes. And then the other person kind of walks their fingers up their arm, but like, really slowly. And the point of the game is for the person who has their eyes closed, they have to see if they can guess when you make it to their elbow. Well, not their elbow, but, like, the inside of their elbow. Or whatever it’s called where your arm bends, but on the other side.”
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Even though she attended an international school, my cousin learned this game in Ethiopia. I found this incredibly interesting, because I also knew this game when I was little, even though I grew up in the New York, and other people who grew up in other states also know this game. It’s interesting how the same games (and more broadly the same folklore) arise in so many different places that are seemingly unrelated. There are other examples of this, including that every culture has a version of the idea of dragons, but this was the first example I had really seen personally of such a specific piece of folklore existing in two such different places. Though it is easier to deduce how such a game might have reached my cousin’s school, being that it was an English-language international school where many students were the children of American expats, it really reinforced to me the “multiplicity” aspect of Dundes’s definition of folklore, which I find incredibly fascinating.
French hand game
The informant is my 19-year-old friend from my French high school. Though she currently lives in New York, she grew up in Germany, and her family is Moroccan. I asked her what games, songs, or rhymes she remembered from growing up, and she volunteered this hand game that is commonly played in French elementary schools. My friend did not know the name of this game, nor does she remember being taught it or teaching it to anyone, but she played it with her friends and most of the kids she grew up with also knew it.
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“Okay, you start by saying, “Si tu perds t’auras un gage,” which means “if you lose, you’ll have a dare,” and then you start the game. Although, to be honest, I don’t think I ever actually did a dare after playing. So … [demonstrating with hand gestures] you clap your hands one time, then you clap once with the other person … diagonally, and then you clap your hands again. Then the same on the other side [demonstrating], then your hands again, then both of your hands with the other person’s hands. And you just do it faster and faster until someone messes up.”
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Though my friend and I both went to french-language schools growing up, she grew up in Germany, and I lived in New York, which made it interesting to me that we both had played this game as children. This was another place I observed Dundes’s stipulation that folklore must have multiplicity. I also thought it was interesting that the game never really had a name; an interesting aspect of folklore is that things can be spread, reproduced, and taught to other people without having a specific name for what that thing is. I also thought that might have to do with the fact that it one of the things children teach each other, which might be it is so simple (no name, very easy to learn). Another thing I found interesting was that neither she nor I ever actually had to perform a dare after losing the game, because the fact that the song starts off with that line suggests that there was a time where that was a legitimate part of the game, and that over time it was eventually lost. I thought it was an interesting example of the fact that folklore is never static, because the game is so simple and has so few parts, and yet it has still changed over time.
Someone died at EVK
My friend, a 19-year-old USC student, shared with me a campus legend that she heard from another student when she was a freshman.
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“Okay. Um, so freshman year… wait, back up. So at USC, there are three dining halls, and EVK is, like, the worst one. So it’s kind of like a running joke, just like about how bad it is, like someone found a caterpillar in their salad there…yeah. It’s bad. So, anyways, our freshman year, like week 2 of school, there was this rumor going around about how this one kid had died at EVK. And I don’t know if this actually happened, like, if there was an actual guy at USC who died, but if he’s real, I’m like a hundred percent sure it wasn’t because he ate at EVK. So I think that part is way exaggerated. But anyways, the story was that he caught norovirus from eating at EVK, and then it got so bad that he had to be airlifted to Cedars-Sinai. And the reason no one ever talks about it is because apparently his aunt was on the board of USC, and she, like, threatened the news orgs and stuff that wanted to report on it, and that’s why there’s all those “wash your hand so you don’t get norovirus” signs at EVK now.”
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This story is particularly fascinating to me because I had also heard it my freshman year at USC. USC has a rich tradition of campus lore, but this is one of the more recent pieces of folklore I have encountered at USC, and it is probably less widespread because it is more of a parody folk legend. It is highly unlikely that something like this ever happened or that dining hall food would cause someone to die. In fact, almost all of the story is implausible, which makes this legend all the more interesting; it means that the people who hear it and spread it are suspending their disbelief in order to participate in a piece of USC culture. Folklore is often a way people connect, and the in-group aspect of being able to joke with someone else about how bad a dining hall is through a legend solidifies one’s identity as a USC student, as someone who would know what EVK is and why the story takes place there.
Blue Ghosts in Okinawa, Japan
AM: So, it was- like the first month or two when i moved to Japan and I was hanging outside at like…2am like at night in a park. Um, the military base we was staying on was built like near like Japanese Shrines and whatnot and they said that you know the shrines are haunted and there’s a lotta “superstitions” with those. So while we’re out hanging, there was like oh look- you can see a bluf- blue figure on a hill like on top of the shrine and when I looked over you- I saw like a bluish like glow from the hills where the shrine was and they said that this island is one of the most haunted places and that there’s a lot of spirits around.
VG: Woah. What island was it?
AM: Okinawa.
VG: Woah-
AM: And that is- it is very common to see those there… so we was like “yeah, let’s get the hell out of here.”
Background:
Location of Story – Okinawa, Japan
Location of Performance – Dormitory room, Los Angeles, CA, night
Context: This performance took place in a group setting – about 2-3 people – in a college dormitory room. This performance was prompted by the call for stories about beliefs, ghosts, or superstitions as examples of folklore. This story came after a few others. The one prior was specifically about a high school grade being cursed.
Analysis: One point of interest in this performance is the effectiveness of the subtlety of the description of the “spirits.” The only physical description the audience receives about these supernatural beings is that they humanoid in figure and blue. The color is particularly notable because, at least in my experience, I have always viewed the ghosts in ghost stories as being neutral toned or white. Therefore, this description was able to create a whole new image for me and draw me deeper into this performance. It also reinforces the foreignness AM might feel since he had just moved to Japan: not only is the location different but also all of the local lore. One might even go so far as to say that this story was presented with a negative conation despite having no description of graphic hauntings or threats.