Category Archives: Humor

The Minus One Horse

Nationality: China
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Shanghai China
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Backgrounds:

P-M was born in China and finsihed his middle school and high school in LA, California. He is currently studying at USC. P-M shared this piece of folklore with me after I asked him whether he know of any interesting folklore when we were chatting after dinner.

Some Background Knowledge:

三国杀（san guo sha）is a very popular board game in China, which is based on historical events in late Han Dynasty. In this game, there is an equipment called 减一马（jian yi ma）, word to word translation, minus one horse. The function doesn’t matter.


The Main Piece:

P-M: Bro, what should I say if someone thinks only kids who cannot make it into good universities in China study abroad?

Me: WTF? I though only people who cannot afford studying abroad go to Chinese universities.

P-M: I’ll give him jian yi ma.

Me: What does that mean?

P-M: Word by word, he’ll have minus one horse. (in chinese, the word “horse”, ma, sounds super similar to the word “mother”, ma) Every San Guo Sha player knows that.

Me: Duuuude!! That’s sooooo cool.

Analysis:

P-M gives the other guy minus one horse, which means minus one mother. In other words, his mother is dead. This is a very offensive curse in the Chinese language. However, by using a card in a game to refer to this curse, it seems a lot more gentle and humorous, and therefore more acceptable. This shows how board games has influenced our everyday life and how curse words can be expressed in humorous ways by refering to games.

Hanging Conan

Nationality: China
Age: 19
Occupation: Rapper
Residence: Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
Performance Date: 4/27/2021
Primary Language: Chinese



Backgrounds:

“Gatsby” is a college student at Stony Brook University in New York. He is also a rapper. During the pandemic, he was unable to complete his college courses in-person in New York, and particcipated in a Go-Local program at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), where he is taking several in-person courses, instead.

He shared the following folklore with me during an interview when we were having dinner together.

The Main Piece:
In Chinese universities, a lot of students will hang a poster of Detective Conan on their walls before taking exams. This is like a ritual, and the students are hoping to pass the exam by doing so.

Hanging the poster of Detective Conan is said as “hanging Conan”

in Chinese：挂（hang） 柯南（conan）

                     Gua              Ke Na

The sound “Gua Ke Nan” is also the pronounciation for “it is difficult to fail”

                挂科（fail the exam）   难 （difficult）

                Gua Ke                           Nan

So Chinese students hang posters of Conan to hope that it is going to be super difficult for them to fail, which implies that they will pass.

 

Analysis:

The kids draw connection between two events that are entirely unrelated to one another through their identical pronounciations. 

Exams are in deed a painful thing. Although a poster cannot really help students pass the exam, making fun of it is a good way to relieve pressure. It is being spread rapidly through the internet where college students communicate with each other, and it reflects the students’ anxiety for exams as well as their humorous ways of making fun of exams.

 

 

Chinese Food & Jewish Christmas + a Joke

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 56
Occupation: Microbiologist
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04/25/2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

How would you describe this tradition?

“For American Jewry, frequently if they don’t have friends or family to spend Christmas with, they needed somewhere to go on Christmas when everything was closed, and one thing that seemed to be open was Chinese food restaurants, which were not closed on Christmas. And there’s a joke that goes along with this: If it’s the Jewish year 5749 and the Chinese year 4257, what did the Jews do for 1276 years? All my numbers are wrong, but it works because the Jewish calendar is older than the Chinese calendar. And this tradition is national.”

Context/Background:

The informant is my father. He was raised culturally Jewish, and his career is within the science field. This information was collected during a family zoom call where we were checking in with each other. Jewish people tend to not celebrate Christmas because anything related to the figure of Jesus isn’t a part of Jewish scripture. 

Analysis:

I have consumed Dim Sum (a category of Chinese food) every Christmas day for as long as I can remember. A tradition that emerged out of convenience became something to look forward to every year. If my family sees other non-Chinese people at the Dim Sum restaurant on Christmas, we probably know them because they’re members of our synagogue. The joke emphasizes how widespread this tradition is, and how reliant Jews have become on Chinese food to feed themselves every Christmas. Getting Chinese food on Christmas has become a stereotype, so much so that even some Jewish Channukah merchandise includes images of Chinese takeout. 

Jewish After-meal Prayer Alterations

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04/25/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

Main Piece:

I talked to two informants who attended the same Jewish summer camp at two different times. 

How did you alter aspects of prayers at camp?

Informant 1: “We change the words of Birkat Ha’Mazon [the after-meal prayer].”

Informant 2: “Though it’s different from when I was at camp before you.”

 חֲבֵרַי נְבָרֵךְ Chaveirai n’vareich (Let us thank God)

  • Informant 1: N/A
  • Informant 2: Rubber tires never break

יְהִי שֵׁם יְיָ מְבֹרָךְ מֵעַתָּה וְעַד עוֹל Y’hi sheim Adonai m’vorach mei-atah v’ad olam.  (Blessed is the name of God now and forever)

  • Informant 1: N/A
  • Informant 2: Naked swimming is illegal in the state of Idaho 

בִּרְשׁוּת הַחֶבְרָה Birshut chaveirai (With Your permission)

  • Informant 1: Your shoes have arrived
  • Informant 2: Bear shit in your eye

לימשיכו Limshicho (The anointed one)

  • Informant 1: Cream Cheese Balls
  • Informant 2: N/A

Context: 

Informant 1 is my twin sister. She attended this camp during the 2010s. Informant 2 is my mother. She attended this camp during the 70s. This information was collected during a family zoom call where we were checking in with each other.

Analysis: 

In general, Jewish youth assign humorous English phrases to Hebrew ones to try and break up the monotonous prayers they are forced participate in throughout the day. At this camp, Birkat Ha’Mazon is said after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and saying it three times a day gets very old, very fast. Having silly jokes within the prayer makes it a lot more bearable to complete. When comparing the prayer alterations from Informant 1 to Informant 2, Informant 2’s alterations are far more inappropriate and cruder. This reflects the agenda of the camp administration to crack down on these alterations and make them more appropriate. Their biggest issue with these alterations is that they disrespect concepts involving God. If the administration would have it their way, there would be no alterations at all, but for now, they have settled for “Your shoes have arrived” because it is far better than “Bear shit in your eye.”

Spanish Names

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04/25/2021
Primary Language: English

What is Spanish Names?

“This game is full of cultural appropriation but here we go: You can only play it with a new person, and you say ‘hey, let’s play Spanish names,’ and someone is in charge and they assign everyone a Spanish name. And the new person, you name them ‘Arted,’ and the other people, you name ‘Maria’ or ‘Rosa’ and stuff like that. And then you go around and you say “Eif” and then your name, so the person names Arted says ‘Eif Arted’ which is like ‘I farted.’ And then you go around and say it louder and louder and faster and faster until the poor new kid is yelling ‘I farted.’ (laughs) It’s totally not real Spanish.”

Where did you play it?

“(laughs) Hebrew School! At our very PC synagogue.”

Context:

My informant is my twin sister. She is Jewish, attended Los Angeles public school, and is currently a USC student. She attended Hebrew school from third grade through high school. This information was collected during a family zoom call where we were checking in with each other.

Analysis:

Spanish Names is a game where there is an obvious in-group and out-group. There are those who have played the game before and understand the joke, and then there is the one person who has never played and is unknowingly going to end up as the butt of the joke. It plays into young children’s senses of bathroom humor through fart jokes, plus it humiliates a new person through a made-up Spanish word places between stereotypical Spanish names. The entire game is a set up to embarrass a single person, which brings a lot of joy to those who are in the know throughout the entire game.