Category Archives: folk metaphor

Sparrow’s gift

Nationality: Japenese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: China
Performance Date: March 15, 2017
Primary Language: Chinese

A friend of mine, who’s an international exchange student from Japan now currently studying in China, contributes this story. She read this story from a Japanese traditional story book, but she says this story is actually quite well-known. We interviewed in Chinese so the following is only rough translation of what she shared.

Story:

”

There were two poor old women living as neighbors in the village. One day, one of the old lady found an injured sparrow in her yard, so she took in the sparrow and took good care of it. Everyone in her family as well as the neighbors laughed at her for “seeking for troubles”, but she ignored them. She fed the sparrow rice and water every day, and tended its wound with great care. Days after, the sparrow was fully healed and the old lady let it flew away. However, the sparrow came back a while later with some seeds in its mouth. The sparrow left the seeds to the old lady and took off again. The old lady took the seeds and planted it in her yard. The next morning, where she planted the seeds now there has fully grown trees of countless gourds. Each gourd was as huge as a human head. The old lady took a gourd and opened it — the gourd was full of rice! The overjoyed lady then shared the rice and her amazing story with the neighbors and friends.

The other old woman of course learned the story. Since her family blamed her for not able to do anything for them while the lady next door get herself and her family trees of rice, she decided to do the same thing — tend for the sparrows and get the seeds. For the next few days, she threw stones at the sparrows stopped by in her yard and successfully hit one. However, to make sure she would get the magical seeds, she continued to do so till she got three injured sparrows in total. She then tends for the wounded sparrows just as her neighbor did, and let them go once they were healed. The three sparrows did come back with seeds, and the old woman planted them in her yard as well. The next day, just as she expected, there grew trees of huge gourds. She took gourds inside with her family and cut them open, excited to store all those rice for themselves. However, it was not rice in it but poisonous snacks and bugs. The woman and her family were all bite and died.

”

Thoughts:

Animal tales seems to be popular i Japan. In fact, this informant shared several animal tales with me, and every each of these tales were seemed to aim at teaching people a moral lesson through animals — this story would be a lesson of not to be jealous and greedy but to be kind. The ending of the story seemed to be a bit extreme but I think only through exaggeration the folklore could send out the message and warn people. A funny thing is, there is a similar Chinese folklore that every thing is the same except the old women were brothers in the Chinese version.

오비이락 烏飛梨落

Nationality: Korean American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Torrence, California
Performance Date: April 20, 2016
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

My informant is a student who originally came from Korea, but moved with her family to Los Angeles since her middle school.

 

烏飛梨落

오비이락

Bird flies away, Pear drops off.

 

My informant told me Korean also use this kind of  four-word phrases to convey some philosophy as Chinese people do; many of them are written in Chinese characters but pronounced in Korean.

For this specific one, she said, “You didn’t do anything, but something happens coincidentally, then people think you did it.”

It is quite interesting to me that there are many metaphors like this in asian cultures, which I think more or less relates to their hieroglyphic language (especially traditional Chinese) that allows them to randomly connect two things that share similar features together.

 

安利 Amway/Brainwash

This word is also a very popular phrase that has been widely used online for these couple years in China.
The word now means strongly recommending somebody to do something.
Usually the person who uses it personally likes the subject so much and therefore wants to share with others so badly.
The interesting thing is, the word itself actually originates from an American marketing company Amway, the sub company of which has a huge reputation for being overly persuasive when they try to sell their products in China. Then people started making fun of that company and using the word “安利” (Amway) as a verb instead of a noun to describe the behavior of strongly recommending others to try something.
Moreover, as the word has been widely spread on the Internet, it tends to mean more like “brainwash” when people use it for fun.

Stubborn as a mule

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 18
Primary Language: English

The informant, J, is 18 years old born and raised in Coachella, California. His mom is from Delano, California, while his dad is from Indio, California. He is majoring in Print and Digital Journalism with a Media, Economics, and Entrepreneurship minor. He also considers himself Mexican.

J-“In the Mexican folklore there is a saying, ‘mas terco que una mula’. It means more stubborn than a mule in English”

What does the saying mean to you?

J-“It literally means what it translates to. It means that someone is being very stubborn or hard-headed and doesn’t want to change how they are thinking”

When would you use this?

J-“You would tell someone they are more stubborn than a mule, again if they are being really stubborn and don’t want to listen to reason. If they keep insisting about something and they want to be right all the time. I always yell this at my brother since he’s always thinking that he is always right”

Analysis- It can be seen that the proverb originated in a specific area of Mexico at a specific time. Mules were used to help with farming and pulling the ploughs. They are also known to be very stubborn and do not like to listen or do what the owner wants them to. Farming is also more common in northern Mexico. Therefore, the proverb must have originated somewhere in northern Mexico during the farming period before the industrialism changed agriculture and machines, instead of mules or donkeys, were used to turn the fields and harvest the crops.

The Two Wolves Inside

Nationality: USA
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/23/16
Primary Language: English

Folklore Piece

 “Ok so, there’s this young uh kid who’s talking to his Grandpa. This is a Native American proverb. So he’s talking to his Grandpa and he’s having a really hard time kind of, uh, with life and making certain decisions and his Grandpa says ‘Well listen there are two wolves inside of you. When you face hard times, when you’re facing hard decisions, I see it as there are these two wolves constantly battling inside of you. You have one wolf that represents, kind of, the evil and represents anger and has all the negativity that’s bottled up the way that you could react to things by looking at it cynically. But there’s also this other wolf that’s fighting for happiness and its fighting to work as hard as you can to enjoy life and for positivity and for love and compassion.’

So you have these two wolves that are constantly battling. So the kid says to his grandfather, ‘Well Grandpa, but which one wins?’ and he responds ‘The one that you feed.'”

 

Background information

The informant said that he really liked this piece because it helped him get through some tough decisions. He thinks about it often when he’s faced with a lot of stress or negativity in his life. He first heard it at his camp in northern wisconsin. He has no Native American heritage.

 

Context

 The informant often tells this to people when they’re going through a tough time, and to all of his campers during the summer that he is a camp counselor. He really identifies with it, and so shares it with many people that he is close to.

 

Analysis

This was a very hard piece of folklore to categorize because it’s a piece of meta-folklore. The whole story is in narrative form, and would best be described as a legend. However, the essence of this folklore is embedded within the story, regarding the two wolves constantly battling and the fight between good and evil.

Native American tribes often use animals to describe the natural world and humanistic nature. I believe that this story about the two wolves is originally in a mythical format, describing the origin of conflicting ethical dilemmas. It is both outside this world, in that it features spiritual wolves, and helps explain the origin of one facet of human nature.

Another thing I found interesting was that the informant learned this story at a summer camp in the woods of northern Wisconsin. While he is from the suburbs, he would spend every summer out in this area. The woods, and natural American landscape is associated with Native Americans. Therefore, it is interesting that he would learn this story in that context; he is still removed from the Native American heritage, but experiencing their sacred truths in an environment that they would inhabit.