Author Archives: connorye

Spicy Food in Indonesia

Nationality: USA, Indonesian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Arcadia
Performance Date: 4/20/16
Primary Language: English

My informant SH told me this when we were eating spicy Indonesian noodles. He asked me if I could handle the spice, and when I asked “how about you?” he told me he was training himself to handle more spice. When I asked him why, he responded with this:

“In Indonesia, if you are a guy who can’t eat spicy, people assume that you’re gay!”

“Who told you that?”

“I think my parents or grandma told me this. As a kid because I didn’t like spicy food, they told me this to try to get me to eat more spicy food. I asked around afterwards and apparently it’s a real thing. Even when I went back to Indonesia recently and I was eating with my relatives, they legit thought I was gay when I wouldn’t eat the spicy food!”

Since a lot of Indonesian food is spicy, it is probably assumed that most “true Indonesians” can handle spicy food. Based off this assumption, eating spicy food would be the norm, and if you deviated from the norm, then you would likely be associated with other deviations from the norm in Indonesia, such as being homosexual.

Ugly Names to Avoid Ancestors

Nationality: USA, Vietnam
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Buena Park
Performance Date: 4/25/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Vietnamese

GD is from Orange County. She is a first generation Vietnamese American. Her parents are Vietnamese refugees. GD is a student as USC majoring in global health on the pre-medicine track. She wishes to return to Vietnam to serve the rural populations through maternal and child health care.

“My aunt told me that people don’t like to name their kids beautiful names –like things in nature like flowers – because they’re afraid the ancestors will think they are beautiful and take them away so they name their kids after pots and pans and “ugly” things so the ancestors would leave their kids alone.”

“Haha. So does your name mean pot or pan in Vietnamese or something?”

“Yo my parents aren’t afraid of the ancestors! But my mom does know a family of pot, pan, and lid.”

From an outsider’s perspective, this tradition of naming children “ugly” names seems rather strange. In Chinese culture we see the opposite, where parents name their children according to what they hope their children will become. A few examples of names such as this would be translated to “wise and prosperous,” or “brave and successful.” This Vietnamese belief also shows the cultural fear (and maybe respect) of the ancestors, and acknowledges that dead spirits can cross over to the living realm and steal living children.

The Fox Sister

Nationality: USA, Korea
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Jose
Performance Date: 4/19/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

SP is a Korean American from San Jose. She is a Communication major at USC.

“There was this guy with three sons but he wanted a daughter so he prayed for one, even if she was a fox. And his wife got pregnant and they had a daughter but when she grew up, their cows started dying so the dad told his sons to watch over the cows and tell him what was going on. And they watched and whenever there was a full moon, they saw their sister going to the cows and killing them but the dad thought they were lying, so he disowned them and they wandered around for a while. And then they met their sister by chance and she told them their parents died, so that they could come back. And they stayed with her and were sleeping, but one of the brothers woke up to the sound of crunching and discovered that the sister was eating the other 2 brothers’ livers and she was like ‘I just need one more to be human.’ He sets her on fire and she dies. The end.”

“Hm…interesting. Where did you learn about this story?”

“Foxes are regarded as very dangerous in Korea, and I think I read it in a children’s book, but I found it online when I was researching Korean culture pretty recently.”

I thought this story was rather strange and had an abrupt ending. It doesn’t seem to have a clear moral to the story except for the fact that it seems to portray foxes as evil and secretive. This tale is of Korean origin, but I found it interesting that similar to many stories from Western culture, the fox is depicted as a villain or antagonist of some sort.

Attracting Ghosts at Night

Nationality: USA, Taiwan
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Diamond Bar
Performance Date: 4/26/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

AL is a first generation Taiwanese American who lives in Diamond Bar, California. He is currently majoring in Accounting in the Marshall School of Business at USC.

“In Taiwan you’re not supposed to whistle at night because it attracts ghosts.”

“Why?”

“Back then there were spirit callers and when they wanted to speak to the dead they would use flutes.”

“Also you don’t hang your clothes outside at night because they look like ghosts floating in the wind so ghosts are attracted to what looks like them”

This superstition clearly highlights the Taiwanese cultural belief in ghosts and the supernatural. It also shows that there is intentional communication between the living and the dead, but primarily through means of ritual (as can be seen by the flutes and spirit callers). We can also see that ghosts seem to carry a negative connotation in this culture (they don’t seem to be “friendly” ghosts), because people are warned against attracting ghosts.

井の中の蛙大海を知ら

Nationality: Japan
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tokyo
Performance Date: 4/19/16
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English

SF was born in Tokyo, Japan, and lived there for 10 years. She is a student at USC majoring in Business Administration. SF is in my Introduction to Music Technology class and she had a ton of Japanese folklore to share with me.

Proverb: 井の中の蛙大海を知ら

Pronunciation: i no naka no kawaze taikai wo shirazu

Literal Translation: A frog inside the well will not know the big ocean.

Meaning: This means that if you never go out of your comfort zone and stay in a restricting or small environment, you’ll never get to know about the outside world and will have a narrow world view.

My informant learned this proverb in her Japanese class.

In my own Chinese class in middle school, I learned a similar proverb (shares many of the same Kanji characters) which tells about a frog who can only see his world from the bottom of the well, and when a turtle passes over the mouth of the well and chats with the frog, the frog claims that he knows all about the world because all he can see is a circular sky. Both versions of this proverb emphasize the importance of knowledge and learning about the world.

For another version of this proverb, see http://www.mamalisa.com/blog/the-frog-in-the-well-a-chinese-idiom-story-and-bilingual-book/