Category Archives: Material

Taiwanese Festival: Lunar New Year

Nationality: Taiwanese
Primary Language: Taiwanese, Mandarin
Age: 46
Occupation: Branch Manager
Residence: Taipei, Taiwan
Performance Date: 19 April 2024

Tags: Lunar, New year, firecrackers, red, family, Asia

Text:

Lunar New Year (also called Chinese New Year) is one of, if not the, most famous festivals/traditions in all of Asia. Starting at the turn of the Lunar Calendar (around February in the Gregorian calendar), families from all around Asia come together to enjoy good food, share fortune with each other, and have good times. Various activities before and after the main celebration include cleaning the house to let the good fortune inside, putting scrolls and characters on doors and walls, decorating various places with red, and lighting fireworks. The latter two are in relation to the mythological story of Lunar New Year, about a fierce beast named Nian who would come and terrorize the local people before they warded him off with firecrackers and the color red. Now, elders give the young red envelopes filled with money (usually after a short give-receive ritual of sorts), eat foods like dumplings in the shape of money and other such cuisine that invoke good fortune, and have an overall wonderful time with each other.

Context:

C was born and raised in Taiwan, and has traveled the world various times due to her work and studies. She regularly participates in Taiwanese and Asian festivities with friends and family.

Analysis:

I put “Taiwanese Festival” in the title, but really, any sort of Western Asian country would do due to how widespread this particular festival is. Virtually every single action one takes and food one eats can be linked to a specific belief or superstition, making it one of the busiest times of the year for Asians due to how much work gets put into everything. It truly is a showing of how various different people from different backgrounds can come together and share in one traditional time.

Taiwanese festival: Dragon Boat Festival

Nationality: Taiwanese
Primary Language: Taiwanese, Mandarin
Age: 46
Occupation: Branch Manager
Residence: Taipei, Taiwan
Performance Date: 19 April 2024

Tags: Taiwan, dragon, boat, rice cakes, summer

Text:

The Dragonboat Festival is a holiday that happens on the fifth day of the fifth month in the Lunar Calendar, which equates to around the summer solstice for non-Lunar calendars. The story behind it is that there once was a wise advisor who failed to convince his king that a great enemy would destroy their land, causing him to commit suicide by drowning himself in a river. The people were so saddened by his death that they made rice dumplings wrapped in leaves called ‘Zong Zi’ and threw them in the river to let the fish eat those instead of the advisor’s dead body. Nowadays, we eat ‘Zong Zi’ to remember him, and to celebrate the summer festivities. The epynomous dragonboat races take place around the rivers, and since it’s around the time of the summer solstice, the earth’s position is at the perfect place to allow eggs to stand up on their own when placed on a flat surface, so people often go to their homes or outside and attempt it.

Context:

C was born and raised in Taiwan, and has traveled the world various times due to her work and studies. She regularly participates in Taiwanese and Asian festivities with friends and family. She has been said to be quite good at the egg-standing activity during the Dragonboat festivals, and has participated in a smaller version of the dragonboat races.

Analysis:

Interestingly enough, even though the festival is named the ‘Dragonboat Festival’, the origin didn’t actually start with dragonboats or races, though I suppose it would be weirder to call it the ‘Rice Dumpling festival’. The mandarin name of the festival is ‘Duan Wu Jie’, literally “dual five festival”, but perhaps the name wouldn’t make sense in english due to the different ways of tracking time. This is an example of how globalization makes its way into tradition and festival, giving new names and meaning to already-existing festivities.

Birthday Breakfast & Dinner Ritual

Text
K: “Okay so another one that we have is when it’s somebody’s birthday, in our family, uh, for- for breakfast, they would get a choice between, um, cinnamon rolls for breakfast or donuts for breakfast, like, specifically dunkin’ donuts or like the pillsbury cinnamon rolls that you would buy at the grocery store. And then every night for dinner they got to choose a place to eat out, or like, choose what we eat for dinner.”

Interviewer: “That’s awesome! Where did the food selections come from? Like, who kind of decided that those were the food selections?”

K: “I think my mom, uh, because cinnamon rolls for breakfast or donuts for breakfast, those are like- like a big deal in the house. Like, that’s not something we do, we would normally- I mean I don’t get really hungry around breakfast time, but whenever, like, whenever we would eat breakfast it would just be waffles or a bagel or like, a piece of you know, toast. So like making cinnamon rolls or ordering donuts is like a special occasion. They’re like special breakfast foods.”

Interviewer: “And for the choosing, um, where you wanna go for dinner, is that something that’s discussed beforehand or is it like, the person no matter what is like ‘we’re going here’?”

K: “It’s pretty much your choice. Like, whenever I choose dinner, I go to, um, Potbelly’s, which is this sandwich chain that started in like Chicago and they just got a couple in North Carolina. So I just- I choose there, and I mean, someone can not like it but you don’t really have a choice because it’s not your birthday, so everyone just has to go with whatever the um, the birthday person wants to do.”

Context
K is a current student at the University of Southern California. They spent most of their childhood in Chicago, Illinois before their family moved to North Carolina, where they currently live when not in school. In addition to birthday breakfasts, K stated that theri family would sometimes also have donuts after Mass and typically have cinnamon rolls for Christmas breakfast, which they thought contributed to the idea of these foods being for “big exciting occasions.” They also described that they would typically consider and eat these foods as dessert foods. For dinner, K added that their family goes to Potbelly’s outside of K’s birthday celebrations, but that they really like the food there. Now that they’re in college, K says they see it as an extra special opportunity, since they have a summer birthday and the Potbelly’s chain has no locations on the West Coast, where they go to school.

Analysis
Both K’s family’s breakfast and dinner birthday rituals seem to showcase some form of ritual inversion. In the case of breakfast, foods that are typically only had for dessert are instead the main focus of the meal in order to emphasize the special nature of the occasion. In the case of dinner, what restaurant to go to or what food to each, which would perhaps otherwise be a group or family decision, is handed over to the birthday person, attributing them extra power and special status on their birthday. This ritual seems to have taken on an added meaning for K now that they attend college on the West Coast; by almost always eating at Potbelly’s, a restaurant they enjoy, K is able to reaffirm their identity ties to Chicago and North Carolina.

Chinese American Dragon Boat Festival Meal

Text: A tradition, during the dragon boat festival the informants’ family will always make “zhong zi, it is bamboo leaves soaked in water then inside then you have sticky rice with soy sauce, there is also pork belly or red dates. And it is made by steaming them. In Asia they race dragon boats. His family does it every year. Even if his family is not home. He likes pork the most because it’s more savory. It can also be salted egg yolk in the middle. 

Context: The informant doesn’t know much more about the dragon boat festival, His family doesn’t watch it, he loosely knows what they look like but his family cares about the festival that much. To him it’s more about eating a specific food during a specific time of year. Both his parents were born in China but he was born here. 
Analysis: The informant’s family tradition of making “zhong zi” during the Dragon Boat Festival shows how folklore adapts to fit contemporary lifestyles, especially within diasporic communities. Despite limited engagement with the festival’s traditional activities like dragon boat racing, the annual preparation of zhong zi serves as a powerful cultural symbol, preserving their Chinese heritage. This practice highlights the role of food in maintaining ethnic identity and familial bonds, even when historical narratives are not fully embraced. It shows how traditions can persist through adaptable, personally meaningful elements, such as shared meals during cultural festivals.

Jewish Friday Night Tradition in College

Text: Every Friday evening at sundown, the informant and his friends, many who are non Jewish, gather at USC Hillel, the Jewish center, for a communal dinner. Before eating, they recite two traditional prayers: the Hamotzi over bread and the Kiddush over wine. The meal typically includes chicken, challah bread, wine, and vegetables. This dinner marks the beginning of Shabbat, which lasts from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. During Shabbat, observant Jews refrain from work-related activities, including turning lights on or off. The informant participates primarily in the dinners rather than observing the full Sabbath restrictions. This weekly observance commemorates God’s creation of the world in six days and His rest on the seventh, serving as a time of rest and rejuvenation for the community.

Context: The informant does this for fun and because it’s nice to not pay for food in college sometimes, as he puts it. He started doing it once he got to USC and started bringing his friends who weren’t Jewish because they also wanted free food and were allowed to go as well. He doesn’t participate because its too much work to stop everything for a day but he likes being around other Jewish people and sharing it with his friends

Analysis: The communal Shabbat dinners at USC Hillel highlight the adaptive and inclusive nature of cultural traditions within a modern context. These gatherings, which blend traditional Jewish prayers like the Hamotzi and Kiddush with the practicalities of college life, showcase how cultural practices can serve both religious and social functions. The inclusion of non-Jewish friends in these dinners emphasizes the role of folklore in building community and fostering intercultural understanding. While the informant participates more for social and economic reasons than religious observance, this adaptation of the Shabbat tradition underscores the flexible ways in which individuals can engage with cultural heritage. This practice not only honors the historical and spiritual significance of Shabbat but also adapts it to contemporary settings, making it accessible and relevant to a broader audience.