Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Spring Festival Gala

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beijing, China
Performance Date: April 10, 2017
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Background of informant:

My informant SS is an international student from Beijing, China. She lived with her grandparents when she was little.

The conversation was in Chinese.

Main piece:

SS: “My relatives will come gather in my grandparents house every new year eve. They will arrive in different time, due to the whether they live far away or not. My grandpa is always the one who do the cooking. Oh he loves to be the chief, and he doesn’t let anyone enter the kitchen when he’s preparing for the spring festival meal! [laugh] And then when the food is being prepared, my family will start to eat and drink, oh, and we’ll all sit down to watch the Spring Festival Gala! When the meal is all prepared, the gala has already began for like… 1 hour.”

SH: What is that?

SS: “That’s the activity that people always do, like every year, with no exception, on New Year Eve day. It’s a huge showcase rehearsed by CCTV, consigned by Chinese government [SS changed her tone]. [laugh, keep using the flat tone] It’s usually consisted with dancing and singing performance, short plays, magic shows, and so on. And normally, while the show is entertaining the audience, there are central ideology penetrated in the show to educate people [SS made the hand gesture of quote when saying “educate”]. But since the Gala has been operated every new year eve for dozens of years, watching Spring Festival Gala on CCTV has become the habit for middle-age to elder Chinese. I’m thinking most younger people also have the habit to open the TV to watch it…while comments on Weibo (a popular social media in China) at the same time… It’s like we are all so used to watch it. And I do think Spring Festival Gala brings people together, it attracts the family to sit in front of the TV, comments on the show, eat some sunflower seeds, and … just… be together!

 

Context of the performance:

This is a section in our conversation about Chinese Spring Festival.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

Regarding to the fact that China has huge population dispersed in different parts of the country, people live in different regions really have drastically different customs and habits. For example, when talking about what do people eat on New Year Eve, my informant SS provided me a list of food that I never had in my home (I’m from southern part of China while she’s from the North). However, after hearing so many differences of what people do on this country-wide festival, watching Spring Festival Gala is the only habit that can be found in almost every family in every part of China at that dat. And since Spring Festival Gala, as SS pointed out, is a show consigned by Chinese government, this common custom is an example of how institutional products gradually become and being transformed into folklore.

Bird, Horse, Muffin

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/4
Primary Language: English

I asked the informant to retell a way of classification that was very important to the informant’s friend group as a way in which they bonded with each other.

“Ok, so bird horse muffin is a way to classify people as either bird horse muffin and they can be a mix of the two, um but they can’t be all three, roughly, although this a very rough sketch is that a bird would be more reserved, a little weird, kinda flighty, a horse is very out there, controls the room uh, big type of person, muffin is very sweet and nice and has like no edge to them, um, that’s the rough outlines. Uh, I first learned it from my friend Nanase who learned it at camp, but it’s also like a real thing that you can find on like the internet. And apparently, like my friend Anna told me that it’s used uh, that it’s used in corporate team building stuff to find out what type of worker you are, and so like a horse who really drives it, but like, a horse can be hard to work with but when they’re on they’re really on. A muffin is so nice to work with but they’re not necessarily going to lead like a horse will, and then like a bird is going to be quiet but then give one really brilliant idea, and then like not do anything else, and so they were saying that you, in your company, you need a balance of these, like if you have too many horses everyone’s just going to argue all the time, if you have to many birds there’s not consistent work, if you have too many muffins like, it is fine, but you’re not doing anything brilliant if you just have muffins. and you can like explain all of world history and interpersonal relations and everyone’s family and how like bird horse muffins interact and how like, and if you’re two, if you’re bird horse in different situations your horse would come out, in different situations your bird would come out, uh, to help or hurt you in different ways”
Analysis:
Bird, Horse, Muffin is a real classification that is used in corporate world, as the informant told us, however, in my research I was not able to find a definitive source for the creation of the classification. This furthers it’s folkloric aspect, a non-authored work. The definitions are relatively the same but have definitely been changed in this case to fit the informant’s friend group. The informant would describe himself as a bird.

Naming Pets in Rural Mexico

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: Middle-Aged
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Performance Date: April 23, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Actually, when we had little chicks, too, we didn’t like, like, you name your pets here, like ‘little Peter,’ or ‘Johnny,’ or ‘puppy,’ whatever you want to call them. There, we didn’t name our pets, you know. We just name them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. [laughs]

 

Not to feel bad when it was like time to slaughter them… ‘cause we grew pets for eating, you know? It was, it wasn’t like we were just playing with them, it was actual food on the line! [laughs]

 

Was that a common practice, did everyone name their pets something like that?

 

More or less, something like that. Very, very like, crazy names, like you know, like May, July, June, those. [laughs] Because they were going to slaughter them that month. [laughs]

 

There was a little rooster named father’s day [laughs] because they knew they were going to do that, ‘where’s father’s day, where’s father’s day,’ ‘donde esta dia del papa,’ you know, in Español, ‘oh you know he’s there, he’s there, and this and that,’ and sure enough, you know, time came and… cut some necks there. That was crazy.”

 

Analysis: This is a fairly straightforward but interesting and widespread folk practice in rural Mexico. Whereas pets are normally seen as members of a family in the United States, pets were instead viewed primarily as food sources in rural Mexico. As such, the cultural norms surrounding the animals are substantially different from what an American may expect. Naming animals after the date that they will presumably be slaughtered is a very efficient way of keeping the age of a pet on hand. It is worth nothing that the informant’s repeated use of the term “crazy” may be revelatory of a culture shift upon moving to the United States and owning two pets.

Sex Taboo in Rural Mexico

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: Middle-Aged
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Performance Date: April 23, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“I have some… some things about my culture and my village, and umm… we were a 9 girls at home. So… sex was umm… nobody can talk about sex. And then, uhh… My mom… how mothers protect their daughters, not to be pregnant and not to be with boys before marriage, she always said to us, ‘don’t touch your body. Because if you touch your breasts, it will damage. So just be careful not to touch it, and also when you take a shower, don’t wash your private parts, because they can get sick.’

 

So that way, we don’t touch our private parts. So… It was a taboo, nobody wants to speak about that.”

 

And was that a common thing, did everybody tell their daughters that?

 

“I think so, I think so. I think it was like that. So no girls got pregnant. No girls got uhh… got a sex before after marriage. So, sometimes, we think if you give a kiss to a boy, to your boyfriend, you will get pregnant. So not even wants to kiss a boys. It… It was kind of a… umm… we grow up, all the girls in our village, and nobody talk about sex. We all just tried to avoid that, and if somebody wants to tell us about sex, our parents, my mother and our parents, said, ‘Run from there! Because this is no good, God doesn’t wants that.’

 

So… Everybody behaved really well with that! [laughs]”

 

Analysis: Taboos are very interesting folk beliefs, and that is very much the case even here. What is interesting to note, however, is the notion of value applied to the body of a woman and its ties to physical purity. In other words, the less a woman had experienced in the realm of sexuality, the more valuable she was assumedly perceived to be. Given the parent-to-child transmission of the norm and the reliance on God, this taboo on sex and understanding the female body could very well be a cultural norm and rudimentary form of birth control passed down from generation to generation in order to preserve the honor and finances of families. It is also worth noting that, using the informant’s family as a hypothetical typical family, the size of the family after marriage is much larger than most families in the United States, implying that more effective birth control may not be available, thus necessitating the narrative.

Ecuadorian Time

Nationality: Ecuadorian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04/23/17
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Subject: Custom

Informant: Daniel is originally from Guayaquil, a city in the coast of Ecuador.  He is an only child and has just received a diploma in Business. He has lived in California for the past four years, but will be returning to Ecuador in the coming month.

Original Script: In Ecuador, if friends invite you over at 7pm, you are really only supposed to arrive around 8-9pm. It has now become a custom to arrive late to everything.

Background information by informant: You arrive later simply because no one wants to be the first ones to arrive, especially if others will only arrive a significant period later.

Context of performance: Usually surrounding any form of social gathering or occasion.

Thoughts: The custom is part of a larger body of knowledge specific to one community. Hence, the scheduling of an event for example, can be misinterpreted by those that are not part of that specific community.