Author Archives: Camille Zhang

Chinese Proverb

Text:

“Man proposes, God disposes.”

Context:

This text was collected from a Chinese international student who shared this proverb in our interview. The original Chinese, “谋事在人，成事在天” (móu shì zài rén, chéng shì zài tiān), translates literally as “the planning of affairs lies with man, but the completion of affairs lies with heaven.” It is one of the most widely known classical Chinese proverbs, originating from the Ming dynasty novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms and attributed to the strategist Zhuge Liang. Despite its literary origin, the proverb has long since detached from its source and circulates entirely through informal, oral transmission — functioning as everyday folk wisdom rather than literary quotation. It is typically deployed as a consolation in moments of uncertainty or disappointment, as it acknowledges the limits of human control while still affirming the value of effort.

Analysis:

This proverb is an example of a fixed phrase carrying metaphorical wisdom. It is transmitted orally across generations in an unchanged form, lending it the vernacular authority that distinguishes folk speech from ordinary language. Its staying power lies in the philosophical tension it holds together: human agency and cosmic limitation are acknowledged at the same time, offering the speaker neither full determinism nor full helplessness. This balance makes it useful as a coping tool across an enormous range of situations, from personal failure to collective misfortune. The proverb’s original literary attribution to Zhuge Liang is a compelling illustration of the idea that folklore and literature exist in a continuous feedback loop. More specifically, the text begins as authored writing, detaches from its source through centuries of informal transmission, and eventually circulates as anonymous folk wisdom. It has effectively become folklore through the process of diffusion. The proverb also demonstrates a distinctly Chinese cosmological worldview — the concept of “天” (tiān, heaven or fate) as a force beyond human control — reflecting how folk speech preserves and expresses deep cultural values across generations without naming them explicitly.




Chinese Proverb

Text:

“Dogs can’t change their habit of eating shit.”

Context:

This text was collected from a Chinese international student. The phrase is a well-known Chinese proverb, used across generations and regions, and the informant learned it through everyday family and peer interaction rather than any formal context. The proverb is often used spontaneously in casual conversation to describe someone whose behavior has repeatedly disappointed them. It functions as a sharp, often humorous way of complaining about someone’s character, as the phrase implies that no matter how many chances a person is given, their fundamental nature will still reveal itself. The proverb is vulgar in its imagery, which likely contributes to its rhetorical force and memorability. Moreover, it was shared in English translation, meaning some of the original linguistic texture of the Mandarin phrasing may not fully carry over.

Analysis:

This proverb exemplifies core folkloric features as it is a fixed phrase carrying metaphorical wisdom, transmitted informally across generations without a traceable single author. Its vulgarity is rhetorically strong — the shock of the imagery makes it memorable and forceful, which is also how oral traditions like this one are sustained across time. The proverb reflects folklore’s capacity to encode community beliefs and values: embedded in this saying is a culturally shared assumption that human nature is fundamentally fixed, offering a folk framework for making sense of repeated disappointment. This connects to the course’s discussion of folk speech as vernacular authority. More specifically, deploying a traditional proverb rather than plain speech transforms the speaker’s frustration from an individualized emotion state to a sense of collective, time-tested wisdom, making the claim feel less like personal opinion and more like cultural truth.




Housewarming Ritual

Text:

“Before moving into a new house, you have to invite your friends to come and warm up the space. And then, on the same day that you spend your first night there, you have to cook for yourself. So it’s like a housewarming — a good omen to ensure safety.”

Context:

This text was collected from a Chinese international student from Beijing. The tradition she describes is a folk ritual practiced before settling into a new home: inviting friends over to “warm” the space, and cooking a meal on the same night as your first stay. She learned this practice through her family rather than any formal channel, and presented it as common knowledge — something simply done without much question. The phrase she used, “好兆头” (hǎo zhào tou), meaning “good omen,” suggests the ritual carries protective intent, ensuring the new living space is safe and welcoming before fully inhabiting it. While housewarming traditions exist across many cultures globally, the specific requirement to cook on the first night distinguishes this as a regionally and culturally particular variation. The informant currently lives away from her family in the United States, making this tradition part of practicing a piece of folk knowledge she carries from home into a diasporic context.

Analysis:

This piece is a folk ritual operating through the logic of sympathetic magic. More specifically, the ritual aligns with the contagious variety that Frazer describes, where the warmth, activity, and presence of friends physically and spiritually transform the new space, transferring positive energy into it before the owner fully settles. Cooking on the first night extends this logic: the act of preparing food activates the home, making it a lived-in, nourishing space rather than an empty one. Together, these acts perform what Van Gennep would define as reincorporation, as the ritual closes the liminal threshold between leaving one’s home and fully belonging to another. The new resident is neither fully displaced nor fully settled until the ritual is completed. The tradition also functions as a rite of passage that converts an unfamiliar space into a safe, socially sanctioned home through collective participation. The requirement that friends be present also connects to the idea that rituals derive their power from collective belief. The warmth brought by “housewarming” is not just metaphorical but socially produced.




Making Daisy Chain

Text:

Context:

This text was collected from a close friend of mine, who shared a photo of a daisy chain she had made. Daisy chain making is a traditional craft in which flower stems are linked together to create a wearable object, typically worn as a crown or bracelet. I learned the technique from a YouTube tutorial and subsequently taught it to my friend in person, who then practiced independently and shared the result. The practice is typically associated with outdoor settings and leisure time, and carries a nostalgic aesthetic. My friend photographed only half of the finished chain, suggesting the image was shared casually and informally rather than as a deliberate documentation of the craft.

Analysis

This piece raises interesting questions about the boundaries of folklore in the digital age. The transmission chain here — YouTube to me to my friend — exemplifies the post-modern collapse between oral and digital culture, where informal skill-sharing that once happened exclusively face-to-face now moves fluidly between online and interpersonal contexts. The YouTuber functions as what Von Sydow would call an active tradition bearer, putting a personal spin on a widely shared traditional craft and broadcasting it to a mass audience, yet the craft itself remains folkloric because it exists in multiplicity and variation and is disseminated informally. The in-person transmission from collector to friend represents the more classical folk process, learning by demonstration and example rather than through any official instruction. This piece also connects to discussions of folklorism: daisy chain making is an ancient craft now circulating through commercial platforms like YouTube, raising questions about whether the folk process is preserved or subtly transformed when it moves through digital spaces. The craft’s persistence across these shifting transmission channels speaks to its deep roots as a form of vernacular, embodied knowledge.




Senior ditch day: rites of passage

Text:

Senior Ditch Day was something I experienced — or at least knew about — at both high schools I attended. For context, I transferred halfway through my junior year from one high school to another for personal reasons. The concept of Senior Ditch Day was that once a year, typically in spring, all the seniors would collectively skip a single day of school. What you did on that day was entirely up to you — some people just slept in, others went out with friends, like to Great America. As long as you weren’t doing anything illegal, you could pretty much do whatever you wanted. It was just meant to be a day to decompress.

It wasn’t officially sanctioned by the school, but it was something each senior class would organize among themselves. Some teachers would actually anticipate it, because they knew it was tradition. Seniors could also use their one permitted absence on that day if they hadn’t used it already.

Personally, I wasn’t able to participate in Senior Ditch Day, which is both funny and a little sad in hindsight. It landed during AP testing week, specifically on the day I had AP Music Theory. On top of that, I had a makeup test in my Psychology class the same day. So unfortunately, I missed out entirely.

Context:

This text was collected from a college student who attended two different high schools in California. She shared this piece conversationally, recounting Senior Ditch Day as a tradition she was aware of at both schools, suggesting it circulates widely across different institutions rather than being unique to one. Senior Ditch Day is an unofficial, student-led tradition in which the entire senior class collectively skips one school day, typically in spring, to spend time however they choose. Notably, the tradition exists without institutional sanction — and yet some teachers acknowledge and anticipate it, placing it in an interesting middle ground between school folklore and quietly tolerated custom.

Analysis:

Senior Ditch Day is an example of school lore, more specifically, the kind of horizontal, student-generated tradition that exists outside institutional control and sometimes in quiet tension with it. The fact that teachers anticipate it without officially banning it reflects the dynamic in school folklore, where institutions tolerate vernacular traditions they cannot fully suppress, and where the tradition derives much of its meaning precisely from being unofficial. The tradition maps cleanly onto Van Gennep’s rites of passage framework: it functions as a collective liminality ritual marking the threshold between being a high school student and transitioning into post-graduation life. The unstructured, do-whatever-you-want quality of the day mirrors the social freedom of the liminal phase: being temporarily outside normal rules and obligations. The spring timing reinforces this, as festivals and transition rituals across cultures center around seasonal change. The informant’s inability to participate makes her what Von Sydow would call a passive tradition bearer — someone who knows the tradition intimately without having fully performed it.