Currently a student, my informant grew up in a Korean household and has shared with me the many traditions she grew up practicing and experienced throughout her life.
Context:
She explains
“I’m not really sure what the history behind it is but every year on your birthday, you need to eat seaweed soup or Miyeokguk (미역국) It’s a tradition that I’m pretty sure every Korean has practiced or at least heard about.
Some typical ingredients include: beef, oysters or clam, sesame seeds, scallions, sometimes shrimp, soy sauce, broth, and many others.
It is meant to symbolize or rather it means that by eating it you will live another year healthy and prosperous.
I know that traditionally this type of soup also helps with metabolism, purifying blood, and detoxing which is probably why when you eat it, it’s supposed to increase your health.
My mom usually prepares it for me but my parents will prepare it for themselves on their birthdays to show gratitude to their mothers.
Although there is one exception to this — you can’t eat it on a day of a big exam or it mean you will fail.”
Analysis/Thoughts:
Food is a great way of preserving cultural identity and tradition. I loved learning about the tradition of Miyeokguk (미역국) and the history behind it. I loved how it serves as a connection to the mother and how much it is valued. I love how it serves to honor mothers and the wisdom behind the prosperous life is one that a lot of other birthday traditions also practice. Overall, I enjoyed learning more about a small part of Korean culture and the importance it places on birthdays, mothers, and prosperous living.
Context: Football rivalries are often a major driving force behind school spirit. The Trojan Knights is a USC sponsored organization dedicated to keeping the history and traditions of USC alive, which includes traditions surrounding their rivalry with UCLA. The Knights are known for their shows of school spirit during football games, so informant MF, a member and previous Archivist for the Knights, describes the legacy of the Trojan Knights’ traditions involving USC football games.
Main Piece: By MF’s account, the Trojan Knights’ involvement at football games probably started in the 20s, where the founding Knights acted as Yell Leaders, who would lead the students in chanting for the football team. This was before the Song Girls or the Spirit Team, USC’s two cheerleading organizations, were created.
Likely during the 40s or 50s, when the rivalry between USC and UCLA became more heated, the Trojan Knights began coordinating Card Stunts. During halftime, hundreds of people in the student section would raise signs with different colors or pictures on them to create a word or image. MF says that there would often be four or five images, and you’d have a Knight at the bottom holding up a sign for which image the students would hold up next in their sequence. When Los Angeles hosted the Olympics in 1984, they asked the Trojan Knights to perform “the largest card stunt ever done,” which was “basically like an entire half of the Coliseum holding up the Olympic rings during a USC football game.”
These are examples MF gave of Card Stunts, provided by the Trojan Knights Archive. The Card Stunt of Traveler in black and white is from 1925, where the whole student section wore white and the Traveler students held up black signs.
Despite the flashy and exciting nature of the Card Stunts, in the 90s the Trojan Knights shifted away from that and towards Painting. Painting is where 8-12 “members of the org are painted with body paint. On the front of their chest they have a letter and their whole chest is painted to look like a jersey, and on their back they have a number that usually corresponds to some of the big players.” Painting is the Trojan Knights’ preferred way to rep school spirit at the football games, and when the Painted members are in a line together they spell out a message for the crowd. The messages can range from simple school spirit to jokes about the team that USC is playing; “sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s just fight on, sometimes it’s puns with the player’s names… When we play the Oregon Ducks, we like to paint ‘Duck Hunt’ as a reference to the NES game.”
When I asked MF why the flamboyant Card Stunts were replaced with Painting, he said that it’s because of the changes in how football games are viewed. “A lot of the reason it’s changed is because football games are now broadcast to the entire nation.” Because modern digital cameras have zoom features, it’s easier to get the painted people on camera than a Card Stunt. The Painted members are always visible during the game, making it easy for sports channels to put a camera on them. By contrast, Card Stunts are only feasible at halftime, when the sports cameras are off anyways. MF says that, while some people are sad that Card Stunts have gone away, it’s a great example of how the Knights have to adapt traditions to modern times.
Thoughts: I believe that the traditions of Trojan Knights involvement at football games is really important for both school spirit and tradition keeping at USC. I think that the Yell Leading and Card Stunt practices were both incredibly unifying traditions, and that it’s sad to see them go because of how the student section got to work together to make it all work. However, for school spirit, it’s now just as likely that USC students or families around the world will see the Knights’ Painting on TV, and that small unifying act of school spirit scales up! The fact that this is done at every home game makes it all the more influential and impressive.
DerShann is currently a student at USC, majoring in Philoshophy. His family are from Tsingtao, Shandong, China. He likes to play the game League of Legends, and the following folklore is collected during some of the games we played together via the voice chat chanel.
The Mian Piece:
DerShann:”In Tsingtao, when you eat a fish, if you finished eating all the meat on one side and want to turn the fish over to eat the other side, you cannot say ‘翻过来 fan guo lai（turn it over）’, you must say ‘划过来 hua guo lai（row it）’. Tsingtao is a city that is built on the fishing industry, and a lot of people are fishermen, especially those who sell you the fish. Fishermen are afraid that their ship might sink and they might die, (in Chinese it is called 翻船了 chuan fan le（the ship is turned over）. So they really hate the word ‘翻， fan（turn over）’. So we say ‘划过来 hua guo lai（Row it）’. This is like encouraging the fishermen to row their ships back, to have a safe sail, kinda like, row it to the beach. This is something everyone knows in Tsingtao.
Analysis:
This way of saying things reveals that the city Tsingtao is heavily based on the fishing industry. It also shows how people there value their safety during theiir sea sails. This is a custom that’s specific to cities that are close to the sea and relies on fishing, or have rich histories in fishing.
People believe merely saying the word “翻 fan” might cause the ship to really be turned over by waves and wind, which shows how people draw connections between words and actual events.
DerShann is currently a student at USC, majoring in Philoshophy. His family are from Tsingtao, Shandong, China. He likes to play the game League of Legends, and the following folklore is collected during some of the games we played together via the voice chat chanel.
The Main Piece:
DerShann: I’ve got this one super popular belief: you cannot stick your chopsticks into the rice in your bowl.
Me: I’ve heard of it. But why is it?
DerShann: Because that makes the chopsticks look like incense, burned to serve the dead. So sticking the chopsticks into the rice means the rice is for dead people.
Me: So what do you think of it?
DerShann: I kind of believe it. Like, there’s no certain, immediate consequences, nothing happens if you do that. But it might still bring around bad luck, it’s not a good sign. And, I wouldn’t do it because it kinda makes people uncomfortable.
Analysis:
I think this reveals how people are afraid of dying. They feel uncomfortable when they are using things that are similar to things designed for the dead. Or they don’t like to behave like a dead person. I think being afraid of death is a universal sentiment, but only in East Asia do this piece of folklore exist. Our traditional chopsticks has some similarity with incense that are used to serve gods or ghosts or souls.
Most of the people I know are aware of this taboo, and most of them follow it, although a large portion of them don’t really believe in ghosts or superstitious powers of the rice bowl. But people just follow it because this is the tradition, or the cultural norm.
Context: My informant is a 23 year-old woman who is of Chamorro descent. She grew up in San Francisco and moved to L.A. for college. She described a common practice for her family growing up surrounding food, particularly a snack called “titiyas”. Her Chamorro family passed on this recipe throughout the generations. She loves them because they remind her of her grandma.
Transcription
Informant:
“So I’m really close with my grandma, I’m the favorite and vice versa hahaha. But, growing up we would always make different Chamorro food and one of my favorite snacks to have is called “titiyas” and they’re basically.. like sweeter and a little bit thicker than tortillas. Me and my grandma would have it with cheese or butter usually. Recently, I moved away from home and asked my grandma what the recipe was. She couldn’t give me any measurements or anything and said I just had to watch and taste. I mean that is how she learned and she was the oldest girl of 11 kids so she just learned by watching her mom. Sometimes she still sends me “titiyas” in the mail to eat the next day, I love it.”
Thoughts:
I loved this story from my informant! It reminded me a lot of how my Cuban grandmother makes “arroz con pollo” (chicken with rice), a popular dish for Cuban people. My grandma never has the right measurements and just goes off of how it looks and smells. It is so sweet how her grandma is able to send her “titiyas” still. My grandma also packs me the Cuban dish every time I go to her house.
It is interesting how this recipe had been in her family for so long and it had still not been written down. This shows how important oral tradition has been as well as how important sharing in person human experience is. Now with technology, you can talk to more people than ever before, but you lose the opportunity of experiencing all the senses with that person. Cooking together at home with family, there is nothing else like it.
