Monthly Archives: May 2022

The legend behind zongzi

Background:

L. is a 19-year-old Chinese-American college student currently studying in Los Angeles, California. He grew up his whole life in the D.C., Maryland, Virginia Area, colloquially known as the DMV Area, and as such, feels connected to the local east coast culture. He attributes his connection to his Chinese culture through his family, not so much Chinese media.

Context:

This legend in Chinese folklore and culture serves to explain why a certain food
(zongzi) dating from long ago is still eaten so prominently today. It involves human conflict and unique usage of the zongzi with a recurring but never fully complete end to the story.

Main piece: 

Q: “Can you tell me more about the legend behind zongzi?”

A: “Alright, zongzi are wrapped up in banana leaves and made of sticky rice with filling in the middle like meat, mushrooms, and salted egg mixed in together along with peanuts and other beans too. They’re wrapped into the shape of a triangular pyramid. The reason why they started is according to Chinese legend, there used to be a famous Chinese poet, scholar, and government politician who lived a long time ago during the warring states period. So he was very respected, very wise, and everybody loved him, but unfortunately, the court did not because while he had the best interests of the people at heart, they did not and just wanted to fill their pockets. The court officials slandered him and decided to banish him. Now that he was exiled, the court made more and more stupid decisions as he was forced to watch from afar. Seeing this, he felt so sad and decided to end it all by killing himself. He jumped into a river and drowned, sunk beneath the waves. But everybody loved him and wanted to keep his body safe, so they tossed zongzi into the river so the fish would eat those instead of his body. As long as the fish are fed with zongzi, his body will be safe in the riverbed. That is why people today eat zongzi.”

Analysis:

This story behind the zongzi cultural food item can be categorized as a legend within the context of folklore studies because there is understood truth value to its real world history. The warring states period was a formative era in ancient Chinese history, so it is natural that folk legends propagated from it to this day. While not exactly a myth, this legend through the lens of Levi-Strauss’s paradigmatic structuralism can help to uncover the key binary oppositions present throughout the story. Some of these key binary oppositions include individualism versus collectivism and hope versus surrender. Being a man of the people, the protagonist of this legend embodied collectivism and was diametrically opposed to the other greedy officials who represented the flip side of individualism. However, despite his upstanding character, eventually he lost all hope of enacting lasting reform and so, committed suicide as an ultimate act of surrender. Even after this, his supporters sought to preserve his body from being desecrated by the fish, demonstrating their hope to continue championing their cause even after their leader had fallen.

Annotation:

For another version collected by a Chinese scholar, see 

Jennifer Lim. (1996). Zongzi and Its Story. Women of China, 5, 52–52.

Heungbu and Nolbu

Background:

J. is a 20-year-old Korean-American college student currently studying in Los Angeles, California. She grew up her whole life in Alexandria, a suburban city in northern Virginia near Washington DC. She attributes her connection to her Korean culture through her family and regular engagement with Korean media.

Context: This Korean folk tale (märchen) is often told by parents, teachers, and older siblings to young children in a storytelling setting where siblings and peers sit together all at once to collectively hear it. 

Main Piece:

“흥부와 놀부”

Translation: “Heungbu and Nolbu”

“There are two brothers, Heungbu and Nolbu. Nolbu is the selfish, greedy brother, and Heungbu is like the good-natured, super nice, and generous brother. One day, Nolbu takes all the father’s inheritance and kicks his brother out, but Heungbu is too nice and says ‘I understand’ so then he becomes super poor, while Nolbu becomes super rich. Time passes by and one day, a small bird, a swallow I think, breaks its leg and falls onto Heungbu’s poor house. Even though he had nothing, he cured the bird and fixed its leg, giving it food and shelter. And it was like ‘thank you so much’ and left. When it returned, it dropped him a seed and gifted it to him. So he planted the seed, and out of the seed—a gourd seed—came jewelry and luxurious things that made him super rich. His selfish brother Nolbu, hearing that story, found a random bird and broke its leg, and did the same thing, faked and cured the bird. The bird came and returned him also a seed. And he planted that seed, and out came goblins and all these evil things that like wrecked his house, so he became super poor. Now the positions are switched, but Heungbu seeing that his brother was struggling, said ‘let’s live together’ and it ended up with a happy family situation.”

Analysis:

This Korean folk tale (märchen) carries messages of morals intended to be imparted from older, wiser figures to younger, more naive listeners. J. recalls learning to be generous as opposed to greedy from repeatedly hearing this story as a child, in multiplicity and variation depending on the storyteller because of the typical oral performance without specific reference to an authored literature. While the values of selflessness and generosity embedded in this folk tale are common to many cultures, certain details in the story make it specific to Korean folklore and culture. One of note is the cultural belief that gourds can magically withhold unknown treasures or horrors inside. In other words, gourds, apart from being a common vegetable food item, in this tale represent both sides of the human experience, reflecting the actions and ethics of those who plant them. As with many tales from other cultures, children who listen to this story by their elders become aware of real world rewarded values through fantastical suspensions of belief. Additionally, some of Propp’s syntagmatic structuralism and 31 functions (narratemes) appear in this tale like “14. Acquisition: Hero gains magical item” and “19. Resolution: Initial misfortune or lack is resolved”.

Annotation:

For another version collected by a South Korean scholar, see 

Kim. (2019). Aspects and Meanings of Narratives in “Heungbu and Nolbu” (1967). The Studies of Korean Literature, 64, 145–174. https://doi.org/10.20864/skl.2019.10.64.145

The Crayfish Sides with the Crab

Original Text: 가재는 게 편이라
Translation: The crayfish sides with the crab.

K is a Korean American whose parents are of Korean ancestry. He is currently in college. He says that he had heard this proverb from his parents. This piece is memorable to him because it simply stood out as peculiar and memorable and is one of the pieces of Korean culture that his mother would say to him frequently.

Context: This proverb came up in a discussion about proverbs. There was a back and forth between interesting proverbs and what they meant before this piece came up.

As with many other childhood proverbs, this proverb serves the role of teaching a young child on how to survive the world. Because both crayfish and crabs are hard shelled creatures that live in similar environments, they normally share similar goals, desires and attitudes. As such, it would be wise for them to take similar sides of an argument because they are so similar. This teaches children that you should help people who are in similar situations as themselves because they will hold similar stakes. This idea of sticking with similarities is present in much of Korean culture as they tend to be cautious of foreign people.

Even Monkeys Can Fall from Trees

Original Phrase: 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어진다
Translation: Even monkeys can fall from trees.

K is a Korean American whose parents are of Korean ancestry. He is currently in college. He says that he had heard this proverb from his parents. This piece is memorable to him because he tries to take this message to heart when it comes to doing anything.

Context: This proverb came up in a discussion about proverbs. There was a back and forth between interesting proverbs and what they meant before this piece came up.

This proverb is very similar to other childhood proverbs in that it uses animals to teach children an important lesson in life. This lesson is that even the best, most specialized people can still fail. So do not be over confident. This is because monkeys are typically seen as adapted to living in trees. They spend all their time swinging from tree to tree, often looking like there isn’t a care in the world. In reality, however, these monkeys will still miss and fall from the tree. This message is pretty important to children as it teaches them to be humble about their skills. If you become arrogant and comfortable with your skills without being sufficiently cautious, you can still fail.

Tiger and the Persimmon

Text: A long time ago, a widowed mother and child lived alone in the mountain forest. At night, the baby would not stop crying. SO, the tiger that lives in the mountain comes out at night to look for food. He heard the baby crying and made his way to where the family lives. The mom could not stop the baby from crying, and the tiger saw that there was a mother and child in the house and wanted to eat them. The mom said.” If you don’t stop crying, I will give you the persimmon. The persimmon is dry and unpleasant. The tiger hears this and thinks the persimmon must be very scary because it stopped the baby from crying. But he does not know what a persimmon is. And the tiger ran away. And the baby stopped crying.

Background: K is a Korean American whose parents are of Korean ancestry. He is currently in college. He says that he had heard this proverb from his parents. This piece is memorable to him because his mother would tell him this story at night before bed.

Context: This tale came up during an interview regarding Korean folklore. This was told in English for ease of understanding.

This tale is used as a bed time story. As such, it is primarily targeted towards children. There could be many ways to interpret the message of this tale. If you look at it through the tiger’s point of view, the lesson of this story is to try to confirm something and not go solely off of rumors. In that the tiger of this tale came over to the house and was close to eating the family but was scared off by rumors of stuff that it did not fully comprehend. If it had individually assessed the situation, it would have walked away with a decent meal. If you look at the perspective of the mother, the moral of the tale could be that the protecting the child is very important and sometimes one must do stuff they don’t like to protect their family. But the moral takes a drastic turn if you look at the child’s point of view. In his point of view, the message is that you should not make much noise at night lest you attract the attention of a tiger or other scary creature.