Author Archives: Chung Chan

The Curse of the Secret Flan Recipe

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: College student
Residence: Denver, CO
Performance Date: 4/30/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Oh yeah so my mom has this secret recipe for flan… that… as I understand it you can make the flan in a third of the time as it usually takes, and it’s… considered the best flan anyone’s ever had… according to people who eat it, but I don’t like flan so I don’t actually know… um… and, yeah, she’s got this secret recipe and everyone she’s ever told this recipe to has like, vanished from our lives, and…”
[“Do you know the recipe yourself?”]
“Myself?  No.  I’ve glimpsed it but I don’t… I didn’t commit it to memory.  Yeah… everyone who’s… who’s read the memory, has been like friends who then move away suddenly, and we never talk to them again…  or like yeah, I don’t know, the worst was when she like… gave my girlfriend the recipe… and… and then yeah… and then she broke up with me.  Eheheheh.”
[“Does everyone in your family now, like, believe the recipe…”]
“I mean, we knew the curse before she told, but she’s like… ‘okay, it’s alright, this will break the curse, and it didn’t…”

My friend is an Interactive Media and Games major at the University of Southern California.  His father is from Colombia and his mother is from Spain.  He was born in Texas.

This story is about one of his mother’s recipes, and for him, the flan is significant not so much because of its taste or recipe, but for its effect on his family’s friends.  Thus, this is more about the folk belief than the particular foodway.

The curse of the flan does affect his family’s willingness to share the recipe.  Apparently, the times his mother has been willing to give out the recipe have significantly lessened.  But she does believe that there’s a possibility to break the curse.  As the attempt to give it to my friend’s ex-girlfriend demonstrated, however, the curse has not yet been broken.

While the giving of the recipe and the departure of friends might not be correlated, the fact that my friend and his family correlate them indicate that there’s some belief that divulging this secret can actually lead to broken friendships.  Since they believe in the curse, my friend’s family might not share as much as they could with their friends in order to maintain relationships.
One thought that I had while listening to the story is that it reflects a belief in distance for maintaining healthy friendships (not completely, but to some extent).

It’s interesting how my friend, who’s neither tasted nor made the flan, accepts that the curse exists through experience.  There’s no need to explain it with any other factor outside of the giving of the recipe.  Overall, it’s a humorous story and I wonder if the curse will ever be broken.

“An American, a Russian, and a Mexican are in a plane…”

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: College student
Residence: San Francisco, CA
Performance Date: 4/30/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Uh… an American, a Russian, and a Mexican are in a plane… and umm… the plane is about to crash or something that’s the joke.”
[“Uh huh.”]
“So the… the Russian jumps… jumps out and says ‘for my country!  And… the American jumps out and says ‘for my flag!’ And then… the Mexican jumps out, and says, ‘for my sandalsss!!!!”

My friend is an animation major at the University of Southern California.  She has some Irish relatives and Mexican relatives.

My friend remembers a joke her father told her in Spanish, but since I didn’t understand Spanish she told it to me in English and told the joke as best as she could.  The joke is supposed to make fun of some stereotypes that Mexicans are aware of.  The “sandals” referred to in the joke are “chancla,” which, as my friend described it, are sandals that Mexican women wear.  Chancla are  also associated with the image of angry Mexican mothers with chanclas in their hands, possibly beating children who upset them.

I find it interesting that this motif of introducing nationality as a primary piece of exposition finds its way into Mexican humor.  I remember a joke that begins with “An Irishman, a Japanese, and an American were all in a hot air balloon” that proceeds to operate off of stereotypes as well. It never occurred to me to think that that particular motif would be in other cultures’ jokes. Since my friend heard this from her father, I’m guessing that more often than not this is a joke Mexicans would tell other Mexicans, since they’d understand why “chancla” are so iconic and so humorous in this context.  The stereotyping of the Russian and American also seem to go off of Mexican perceptions of those two nationalities and their fervent nationalism.  Since I heard this joke in English and had to have my friend explain the punchline for me, I believe this joke would be far better for someone who understood Spanish and understood Mexican culture.  “Sandals” still evoke a pretty silly image, but “chancla” have a particular significance for Mexicans.

The Ghosts of Happy Valley Cemetery

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 51
Occupation: Housewife
Residence: Arcadia, CA
Performance Date: 4/27/2013
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

My mother told me that there is a folk belief among tram drivers in Hong Kong.  Whenever a tram driver passes along the Happy Valley cemetery on their route at night, they stop their tram regardless of whether or not they see people waiting on the sidewalk.  This is because of a fire that occurred in the area:

“Many years ago, in Hong Kong’s Happy Valley, there’s a horse racing track.  Back then Hong Kong didn’t officially build stands at the race track, so they’d often make stands out of bamboo.  So every time there’s horse racing people would watch in the stands as others race horses.  One time there was a fire, and there were too many people who couldn’t escape.  Many people burned to death.  Now, across the horse racing track, they’ve built a Happy Valley Cemetery, you’ve passed it before, haven’t you?”

[“Yeah, I’ve passed it before.”]

“The victims of the fire are buried there.”

The Cantonese name for Happy Valley is 跑馬地 (Pao ma dei), which literally means “horse racing grounds.”  It’s interesting to hear about the story in English – the name “Happy Valley” makes the story of the tragedy and the existence of ghosts even more eerie.

My mother emphasizes that the fire itself took place a long, long time ago.  It surprises me that these legends of ghosts still remain.  The cemetery has contained many people not related to the disaster since then, but the circumstances surrounding its construction continue to haunt it.  My mother noted that she would hear a lot of colleagues talk about these ghosts along the cemetery; the tragedy still resonates with many Hong Kong residents, even if it’s been decades since the accident.

Trams are considered relics of the past in Hong Kong (they’re kept running for their penchant to attract tourists and retain a sense of nostalgia), so I also find it interesting that it is the tram drivers who keep this tradition alive the strongest.  Perhaps trams are the primary vehicle that still remain from that era, and the belief is that ghosts would recognize it.  It’s really interesting that my mother made sure to point out it was tram drivers, not taxi or bus drivers (who operate more modern modes of public transportation).

Dia de los Muertos Altar

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: College student
Residence: San Francisco, CA
Performance Date: 4/30/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My friend is an animation major at the University of Southern California.  She has some Irish relatives and Mexican relatives.

My friend would celebrate Dia de Los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) by creating an altar for a loved one.  She said that traditionally, the altar had to have cempazuchitl (yellow marigolds) and candles.  The cempazuchitl bring about a festive look to the altar and indicate an air of celebration.  My friend said that Dia de los Muertos is much more about celebrating death and celebrating dead loved ones.

On Dia de Los Muertos, the spirits come out and their surviving loved ones put candles on their altars.  The candles then serve to “light the way” for the spirits to their loved ones.

This year in college, my friend had to adjust what she could put on the altar.  The setup became much more simplistic and focused on the cempazuchitl and the candles.  Each altar is supposed to be dedicated to loved ones – my friend dedicated her altar to her grandfather, but did not have a personal item of his in college.  The tradition is to put a personal item of the deceased one as a way to indicate the altar is for them.  As a substitute, my friend placed a photo of her grandfather on the altar.

I find it very interesting that this tradition of creating the altar revolves on the belief that the spirits are still a part of this world, and that those who are living have an obligation to maintain interactions with the dead.  The fact that my friend talked about having to simplify the altar also makes me believe that altars are usually a really vibrant arrangement.  Many of the elements of the altar visually reinforce the idea of celebration instead of mourning.  It also calls for a personal involvement from the altar maker.  The effect of dedicating the altar to a particular loved one is different from generally dedicating to the dead.

Kristin Congdon’s essay “Making Merry with Death,” included in Peter Narvaez’s collection Of Corpse, contains a version of this altar, which is part of the ofrenda (offering) in Dia de los Muertos:

Narváez, Peter. Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2003. Print.

Red (a Ghost Story)

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 16
Occupation: High School Student
Residence: Arcadia, CA
Performance Date: 4/28/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

“So there’s this ghost story that I heard at Mock Trial state, and… it goes something like… There’s a man who checks into this hotel, and… he’s there alone.  So every night he’s there he goes down to the bar, and while he’s sitting in the bar, having a drink… he observes… up at the counter… he sees the back of this beautiful young woman.  And… he keeps trying to muster up the courage to go talk to her, but as soon as he’s close… uh… she just… goes away.  So he’s keep trying every night and every single night he sees the same beautiful woman and he keeps… trying to bring up the courage to go talk to her.  But she leaves every single time… he’s supposed to go talk to her.
So at night when he retires to his room… he… hears a scratching… at the door.  He wakes up… and he asks, “who’s there?”  But nobody responds.  So… he goes up to the door and looks through the eye hole… and all he can see is red…  There’s nothing there but the color red.  He finds this… kinda odd so he just goes back to sleep.
Uh, when he goes back to the bar he sees the woman again, same chain of events occur… he’s back at his room that night… hears the scratching again.  He looks at the eyehole, asks “who’s there?” No one’s there… it’s JUST the color red.  So the next day… he goes back to the bar… and he sees that the girl is gone.  So he goes up to the bartender and says… “Where’s that girl who sat here every night,  I really wanted to talk to her.  And… the bartender is like… “Oh… um… you mean that young woman?  Well… she left… but there was something really really odd about her.”  And the man asks, “what was that?”  And the bartender says… “Her eyes were colored red.”

My sister heard this story from a friend on a car ride back from a mock trial competition.  She and her friends were sharing scary stories when it was around evening.

My sister was particularly disturbed by this story and claims to think about/dream about it for the remainder of the day and night she hears or re-tells it.  She says that the thing that scares her the most is the connection between the girl’s eye color and the red that the man sees through the eye hole.  The catch is that every night she was here, the girl was peering through the eye hole, watching the man.  She says the thought of being watched in places of supposed privacy frightens her.

When I first heard the story, my first thought aabout the color red was that this either represented a trait of the man or the girl.  I thought that the color would imply something sexual about the story, so I was surprised that the association was quite literal – that the girl’s eyes are red and so when she went to watch the man it covered the eye hole’s view with red.  The story was not as disturbing for me, probably because I was expecting some form of bizarre twist when I had the conversation with the informant, and it was outdoors and fairly light.  The place in which this piece is performed is important. My sister heard this story during the evening in a car – the cramped and dark environment probably contributed to how the story impacted her.  However, I do agree with her on the frightening prospect of being watched without knowing.  I think the element of having the man “watch” the girl without knowing the girl was watching him all along helps emphasize that twist and underlying fear in the audience.

I also noticed that my sister learned this from a high school classmate and was performed in a group of high school students.   I think that the story is scary for high school students because privacy is something adolescents value a lot.  Although adolescents use things such as social networking and are pretty immersed in an environment of disclosure, they also want a certain extent of privacy for their own thoughts.  I feel like high school students like the informant worry about surveillance because they understand how the world they’re growing up in is becoming more and more transparent (partially because of their own practices).

In my opinion, this story shares similarities with other scary stories involving being watched.  The main recurring elements in the story (the girl and the red behind the eye hole) are kept mysterious throughout the entire story – at the end, another character/informant makes the terrifying connection for both the main character and the audience.  But the girl doesn’t really come across as a ghost to me.  She has an unusual characteristic and doesn’t actually speak to the man, but the story itself doesn’t explicitly call her a ghost.  So I find it interesting that my sister calls this a ghost story.