Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

端午节 (Duānwǔ Jié) Dragon boat festival

Title: 端午节 (Duānwǔ Jié / Dragon Boat Festival)

AGE: 18
Date_of_performance: May 1, 2025
Language: English
Nationality: Canadian
Occupation: Student
Primary Language: English
Residence: Toronto, Canada (formerly lived in Beijing, China for 11 years)

Folklore Explanation:
“Dragon Boat Festival came every summer when we were growing up in Beijing, and while we didn’t really do the full traditional thing, we definitely participated in some of it. Sometimes we’d go to watch the dragon boat races—usually if there was something happening at Houhai or a local event—but most years we just focused on the food. You know how obsessed I am with 粽子? Those sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves? That was the best part. Some had red bean, some had pork—there were even a few sweet ones I really liked.

We’d usually either buy them fresh from the market or sometimes help someone make them if we were invited over. The festival itself wasn’t something we celebrated formally, but it was part of the rhythm of summer. You’d start seeing 粽子 show up everywhere, and there was always this feeling that the season had officially started. It wasn’t about rituals for us—it was about the food and kind of being around it, taking part in a way that made sense for our family.”

Analysis:
The Dragon Boat Festival is a ritual calendar festival and an example of hero commemoration folklore, centered on the legendary poet and minister Qu Yuan, who is said to have drowned himself in protest against political corruption. Traditionally observed on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, the festival blends narrative folklore (the story of Qu Yuan) with material culture (making and eating 粽子) and performance folklore (dragon boat racing).

It has both secular and spiritual dimensions. The races represent the villagers’ attempt to rescue or honor Qu Yuan, while the consumption of 粽子 is linked to ancient offerings meant to protect his body or ward off evil spirits. This festival is transmitted through intergenerational family practices, school events, media, and public cultural programming. It holds particular weight in southern China where dragon boat traditions are strongest, but food-centered practices like 粽子-making are widespread and deeply tied to domestic life. In urban settings like Beijing, participation varies—some engage fully, while others experience the festival more casually through its culinary and public components.

中秋节 (Zhōngqiū Jié) Mid Autumn Festival

autumn moon festival

Title: 中秋节 (Zhōngqiū Jié / Mid-Autumn Festival)

AGE: 54
Date_of_performance: May 1, 2025
Language: Mandarin Chinese
Nationality: Canadian
Occupation: Retail worker and teacher
Primary Language: English
Residence: Toronto, Canada (formerly lived in Beijing, China for 20 years)

Folklore Explanation:
“When we lived in Beijing, we always made a point to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival. It’s such a beautiful time of year—the air would start to cool, and you’d see mooncakes everywhere, all wrapped in ornate boxes. We’d pick some up, usually with lotus seed or red bean filling, and head to one of the parks in the evening. The full moon that night always felt enormous, almost too perfect to be real.

We’d find a quiet spot, usually one of those pagodas near a pond or on a hill, and set up a little picnic. Tea, fruit, mooncakes. It was never fancy, but it felt meaningful—just sitting together and watching the moon. Around us, you’d sometimes see other families doing the same, or even lighting lanterns, but we usually kept it simple. It wasn’t about tradition in the strict sense, more about soaking in the atmosphere. It was one of those nights where everything felt calm and reflective, like the city was collectively exhaling.”

Analysis
The Mid-Autumn Festival is a calendar-based seasonal ritual, rooted in harvest celebration and lunar worship. It falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month and centers on themes of family reunion, cosmic harmony, and abundance. The legend of Chang’e, the moon goddess, is the mythological centerpiece, making this a form of mythical and narrative folklore. Its practices—moon-gazing, eating mooncakes, lighting lanterns—are considered participatory folklore, passed down through domestic traditions, community gatherings, and increasingly, commercial influence. While originally tied to agricultural cycles and Taoist cosmology, the festival today blends spiritual symbolism with secular celebration. In urban areas like Beijing, participation often includes public space rituals, shared meals, and aesthetic appreciation of the moon—bridging the traditional and the contemporary.

Birthday Pushups

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Language: English

“In ROTC or Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, we had a tradition to, or I guess it’s kind of ritualistic. Um when it was someone’s birthday, we would in class, we would have to do our birthday pushups. So, we would have to, ou know, get down in push up position and then the leader in at the time would command us to basically begin push ups. And as you do the push ups they sing happy birthday. But they sing it really slow. And so even if you finish your push ups you have to stay in a plank position until they’re done singing it. And then you have to wait for the leader to let you come back up.”

Context: High school Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, on someone’s birthday.

Analysis: This tradition, as one of many life cycle traditions surrounding birthdays, plays on the idea of shared pain, similar to birthday spanks. The subject has to complete push ups and go through the ritual to prove themselves and be celebrated by the group as a whole. In this ROTC tradition, the object is not just pain but achievement. By completing the birthday pushups, the individual can show their increased athleticism and reassert their place in the group identity based on strength and discipline. By knowing everyone has to do the same when it is their birthday, the individual is more willing to complete their turn in good humor and recognize it not as a punishment, but as a way to bond with their peers and recognize the achievement of another year. 

Hummingbirds

Occupation: Student
Language: English

“One of the signs I look for every year is for a hummingbird. It’s really weird but I can’t consider it spring until I see a hummingbird. So, like, I haven’t seen a hummingbird this year yet. So, I don’t feel like it’s spring and it’s like April. It’s about to be May. So, I’m going to enter May and it’s not going to be spring yet.” 

Context: “It’s really weird but this kind of comes from I think my Nana. My Nana used to tell me that when you see a hummingbird, it means that it’s springtime. I feel like I always did this but I definitely started paying attention more after my nana passed away. Because I feel like it’s almost a sign from her I guess. Like how people believe in certain animals to represent their loved ones. Like I know popular ones are butterflies. Um but I look for hummingbirds. And my nana also passed away in the spring. So maybe that’s a part of it.”

Analysis: 

This seasonal sign is what marks the change of spring, not the date of the equinox, for this informant. I think it is especially important to note that they have not seen a hummingbird yet this year, making this year out of place and off rhythm for the informant. Much like the concept of Groundhog day, the idea of an animal being a sign of seasonal change is both related to the animals’ biological responses to weather and speaks to the individual on a deeper level regarding what spring signifies. The informant mentions the importance of the hummingbird increasing after the passing of her nana, potentially transforming this sign into a symbol of her nana’s rebirth alongside the natural world. As springtime is already associated heavily with rebirth and new life, the correlation between hummingbirds and the spirit of the informant’s nana is perhaps a natural extension of existing similar beliefs. 

DefCon Run

Nationality: American
Occupation: Computer Security
Language: English

“What we used to do is we would run one run- okay when the convention was on the strip, in the middle of the strip, like at Bally’s or Flamingo or that area, there would be a 5k run one day to the north, one day to the west, one day to the east, and one day to the south. The problem is over time it got too large and we couldn’t run as one large group, and the location of the convention went to the convention center, so we’re no longer on the strip. But we still meet in the morning Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday outside the convention center. And then we just get into groups and do different runs. Mainly based on how far you want to run and how fast you are, so if you want to just run back to your hotel you can.  It has grown beyond that, so we try to get together one night at a restaurant and just mingle. So its grown beyond the running in the last few years, I guess. I bump into some of the runners at the conference and we say hi.And we’ve been getting more and more swag over the years, one year they had bandanas, now we have official runners’ bibs- one year they did prime numbers but I don’t think there’s any pattern now. We’ve also had unofficial renewals of wedding vows because the guy organizing it is the guy running some online church that he got a certificate for.”

    Context: “The DefCon run is not officially sanctioned by DefCon. It started where a few people that were involved with Defcon wanted to have a run in the morning and run with people. It was pretty unstructured but it actually grew over time. We tried getting it as a sanctioned event but they were concerned about liability and that Defcon can’t support it. So we’re doing it unofficially without Defcon knowing. We even have a giant flag with a rabbit with Defcon inside of the rabbit. So even though we aren’t official, we try to sneak in Defcon. In the early days, we started with maybe 30. When it got to 100, that’s when we tried to get official status. It’s probably more than 140 now.”

    Analysis: This run, unofficially affiliated with the hacking conference known as Defcon, held in Las Vegas annually in August, is a renewal and formation of social bonds to the informant. He is able to meet new people and run with many of the same people who were participants years ago, when the run was smaller. These acquaintances last into the conference, where they are more likely to be familiar with people in different talks and speaker events. Because the run is several days, as is the conference, the bond is able to be deepened over the course of the four runs, as is explored by the informant’s mention of dinner becoming a part of the celebration. 

    In addition, the structure of the run itself is interesting. Four runs in the four cardinal directions may speak to the natural and athletic search runners are on, especially in a metropolitan area such as Las Vegas. It allows the runners to explore the area and ground themselves within the context of the city as a geographical location, especially considering the rest of the day will be spent inside a conference center and isolated from the outside. The growth of this run speaks to the larger desire to both seek community during the conference and maintain a larger community that they can reliably expect to rejoin year after year, running the same paths and using this tradition as the start to their day.