Author Archives: Sierra Chinn-Liu

“Baller Rituals”

Nationality: Japanese, Caucasian, Native American, Hawaiian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student/athlete
Residence: Kailua, Hawaii
Performance Date: April 14th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

I’m not very original or exciting, so at least for this year, it was always taking a nap before games and practices. But to list some other ones…

Before games, always show up exactly an hour and half early to get warmed up, stretched, relaxed before the game… listen to some really pump-up music, and… before the game starts, always make two layups and a free throw. I always wore the same spandies and bra, and one teammate always took a shower before a game. I knew one girl who just had to shave her legs before each game. Even if there were multiple games in a day, she’d shave before each and every of them. One teammate always drank only red Powerade during games, and had to have an apple during the game. Most of my teammates, their superstitious things that they do are just coming in and shooting around before each game.

Most of the time it’s just because it something you know that worked in the time before another game, and then you grow into it like a habit. Like in high school I never had any of these. You take these more seriously the more serious your sport becomes. Like compare a middle school/intermediate game with NCAA sports or… the Olympics… then there’s this crazy, elaborate list of rituals, things you just do out of habit/routine.

I had a coach that used to eat a quarter pounder with cheese before the game, just to show how ridiculous these things get… I feel like in all my experience most people fall into the category of eating something or wearing something that “worked” before in the hopes that it will again.

 

How did you come across this folklore: “This is kind of a culmination of “rituals” that I’ve come across/picked up in my personal experience, over 15+ years of playing basketball at clinic, intermediate, high school varsity, and college varsity levels.”

This collection of rituals can be interpreted as protection, and both contagious and homeopathic magic. With these techniques, athletes and coaches aspire to protect themselves and their teams from loss/injury, inherit the winning properties of something that was done before and for whatever reason was attributed to victory, and induce a like outcome with a like setup.

“Ya Sui Qian”

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 29th, 2013
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

So there is a tradition in China: Elder generations will give lucky money to younger generations during the Chinese Lunar New Year. The reason why parents choose to give their offspring lucky money come from a story as follows:

A long time ago, there was a monster named “Sui.” It came out every New Year’s Eve to touch little children’s heads when they were in deep sleep. Whoever being touched would had a fever the next morning, and would become idiots when the fever had gone…

There was a family who got their only son in their late years. So both of the parents loved their son a lot and were afraid that “Sui” would came to their son on New Year’s Eve. On New Year’s Eve, in order to prevent “Sui” from coming to their house, parents decided to play with their son till very late. They gave their son a piece of red paper and eight coins to play with. The boy wrapped the coins and unwrapped them, until he was tired and went to sleep. Later that night, “Sui” came to their house eventually. Wind blew out the candle, and “Sui” was about to touch on their son’s head. The moment when “Sui” extended its arm, the bronze coins in the red paper shone with brilliant light, and “Sui” was so scared that it escaped out of the house faster than the light. Other villagers learned the story, and they chose to follow the same thing that the family had done. No single child was touched by “Sui” and got fever thereafter, and that’s why Chinese people now still keep the tradition to give their children “Ya Sui Qian”–literally meaning the money to prevent “Sui” from coming during the Chinese New Year, which is also called “lucky money.”

 

How did you come across this folklore: “When I was in the elementary school, my Chinese teacher tried to explain what “Sui” means in Chinese, which means “one year.” Then she expanded the word with some phrases and Chinese traditions to help us better understand the meaning.”

Other information: “And this story was part of her explanation of “Sui” –marks one year in the Chinese lunar calendar with all kinds of related folklore.”

Lucky money is clearly a protective measure… in this story used by parents to prevent their children from becoming idiots. But as a whole, this story also represents the way that one word (“Sui”) can encapsulate not just a direct translation, but an entire story and is strongly tied to a tradition.

 

Wasting and The Potato

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 41
Occupation: Mechanical contractor
Residence: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Performance Date: April 30th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Waste not, want not…

 

Back when they were in China, when Nai-nai was young, they [Nai-nai and her family] were hungry (well I guess at least Nai-nai was really hungry) and what I remember is this…

Her dad was a drunk, he was really bad. He used to beat them all the time and he wouldn’t take care of them. Every time they had money that would make it so they were able to get food, he wouldn’t use it for that, he would gamble it. And they were mad because he’d lose the money and go drinking, and then he’d feel bad about it so he’d come home and beat somebody.

Nai-nai’s mother was always working, so she was mostly with her sisters. We don’t know her, but she was kind of mean, Nai’nai’s oldest sister. She was really mean I guess because she was the oldest so she had to be like their parent, but she’s no longer alive now… and I don’t think she ever came to the US…

Anyway one day, Nai-nai was really really hungry, and she had no food. She saw, through the neighbor’s window, potatoes, sitting on the windowsill. They were setting it on the windowsill to cool down because they were freshly baked. It was cool, but breezy… so the aroma of the potato wafted in the wind… When Nai-nai saw it she said she could smell it… and it was steaming still, which she could see… and she was so hungry she went and took it, but she took more than one, I think she took two because she wanted to bring some home to her sisters, that she thought would make them happy but it didn’t. And so her oldest sister beat her silly… and made Nai-nai give the potatoes back to the neighbors, who felt so sorry for Nai-nai and said she could take them because they knew she must have been so hungry. But Nai-nai’s sister wouldn’t let her because she said it was wrong. Nai-nai stole them.

 

How did you come across this folklore: “everyone in the family knows this story, and now you guys have probably been told the story as a supplement to the American (soft) version, “waste not (want not)” because of the lesson forewarning you (and all of the other kids) to never waste, especially food.”

Other information: “That was one of the turning points in her life where… she really realized you’re not supposed to steal, period. She became a Pharisee (a legalist); OBEY THE RULES OR DIE, basically. She told it [this story] to us a couple times I guess, but now she uses it more for the little kids, one of those lesson-teaching stories to scare them into not wasting (and not stealing).”

 

Proverbs circulating through families are often accompanied by a story. For my family, the reason why wasting essentially qualifies for consideration as a mortal sin, is because of one of those grandparent stories from “back in the day”…  For us, the ultimate proverb is “waste not, want not,” and the story around it is nai-nai’s (my father’s mother)’s story about the time she was beat to within an inch of her life for stealing a single potato.

Punahou Grey Lady Sightings

Nationality: Self-identified as multiracial/multicultural Hawaiian
Age: 60
Occupation: K-12 Science teacher, working on special science projects
Residence: Honolulu, Hawaii
Performance Date: April 2nd, 2013
Primary Language: English

He (my colleague) was… walking home one day, from his office down in Bishop Hall… when he noticed this lady coming down the chapel steps. And… he goes in front of her and he can see that she has no face. It’s just… black (encircles face with hands), all black inside this cowl. And at that point he realizes that she’s not walking… she’s floating a few inches off the ground, and her left shoulder was up a little higher and she was just floating, floating until she floated right through that grating at Bishop.

***

I used to teach high school… and one of the kids in my AP (homeroom), he worked running the lights in Dillingham auditorium. And he’s looking over at the right side and he sees a shadow, but then he’s looking around for… well you know, he works with lights, so he knows where all the sources of light would be; how could a shadow be over there on that wall, when there’s no light source? And then he takes his light, and with his hands steers it over to shine it on the shadow, because it should just disappear, but what the shadow does, it kind of turns, like it’s facing him, stands up, and then walks down into a crack…

 

How did you come across this folklore: “This is a story that was told to me by a friend, another Punahou faculty member, and another story of a similar interaction from a former student that told me what happened to him.”

Punahou is a very old school, with some buildings well over a century old… and lots of eerie things are known to happen from time to time. In other more detailed versions of the story, the Grey Lady is supposed to be a spirit of a former Punahou faculty member who inhabits the school chapel and reveals herself to people on campus, usually at night and when they are alone. She usually just scares people, and doesn’t cause harm. One of the purposes of this legend is to make the Punahou community more exclusive–it’s a campus wide legend, she stays on campus, and typically is only seen by students, faculty, or staff of the school.

 

Manchurian “History”

Nationality: Chinese, Manchurian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Plymouth, Minnesota
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

So when Manchurian people took over China, they actually assimilated to Mandarin culture and language, which is why there isn’t a lot of genuine Manchurian folklore around. And it’s weird because usually when you take over a country, those people become your people but they instead chose to assimilate themselves to the Mandarin identity. They really connected themselves to “Old China”—that’s what my mom said, anyway.

So she told me a little bit about the Qing dynasty in general, and she told me a little bit about Tsu Tsi (I don’t know her name in English), and she was like the woman behind everything, the controlling power behind her son, the emperor. And she died, not too long before the Qing dynasty was over and she had a really bad reputation in China. The communist party hated her, and the Chinese people kind of hated her too because they thought that the country needed someone else to lead it (this is in the transition from the dynasties to Communism, so like the 1940s-60s)…

During her time, she kind of sold out the country to the West, like eight countries invaded China, and we know like Hong Kong was ceded to the British people and China was just generally defeated. So that’s kind of the general historical context of what was going on.

So my great-grandfather (on my paternal side so my dad’s grandfather), fled from Korea because of the Japanese invasion in a war (possibly World War I) and he went to Manchuria, where he married a princess, well not quite a princess, but an aristocrat/elite. And when he moved to China, that was the first time that China really started having Koreans living in the country.

And then the Cultural Revolution started happening in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, so that was when the communists started taking over. And a lot of people were mistreated by the government for their origins. So my grandparents never really ever wanted to even talk about the family history—we don’t have any other stories about it aside from this because it was/is dangerous (rich families and powerful families can get into a lot of trouble). And they had to invent a whole new family history. So my mom only really heard about it from her aunt, and when I asked her about the family, she said my dad’s grandma is the one who’s half-Manchurian and half-Korean.

Her Korean dad actually served the Chinese government after he came from Korea because he went to military school and was kind of in charge of the railroad, so he was pretty high up there, and my Manchurian great-grandma had already in the ‘50s started creating this new family history, and she had to make up stuff because Manchurian ethnicity is supposed to be from your mom’s side? so that’s why they had to hide it because she and my dad are the Manchurian ones, it was especially dangerous for them. And my mom’s side is just “regular” Chinese. So what happened was he was really high up in the military and he was supposed to be killed, because they had a gardener who was secretly Communist and reported him or something, but because they had treated him well, the communists actually spared his life.

And my great-great-grandpa also served the government before the Communists took over, spared later because he was a doctor, and worked burning coal for a public bath, and so they had to create entire new lives for themselves because they were serving the old government. They just lied, basically. You just don’t tell people your actual origins. Like my mom said that my dad, when he’s filling out forms, he just says that he’s Chinese, even though he’s technically Manchurian. The new government was so bad, people were fleeing to Taiwan, and more were getting killed, families were broken in half because half would flee and the rest would be executed. It’s sad because a lot of the family history is lost because no one will talk about it and now all these relatives are dead.

 

How did you come across this folklore: “this is what my parents told me when I asked them about Manchurian folklore. Nobody really talked about the Manchurian stuff my whole life, I don’t even know when/why I was told that it was there at all.”

It’s just one family’s story, but there are a lot of other stories like this, where people have lied about their origins and as part of the aforementioned lie, created entirely new life stories for themselves that over time, basically become the truth. After a few generations, details get really difficult to sort out, which this story shows, and it’s even more difficult to discern the true parts from the fictive ones. What happened to the Manchurian histories is also an example of what happens in the construction of identity on our nationalist basis; because Manchuria isn’t an independent country (anymore), it’s hard to acknowledge, recognize, or respect the Manchurian identity. But generations and their stories are lost in the nation-state homogenization, in the need to belong to this concept of a nationality.