Category Archives: Festival

Tang Yuan

Nationality: Taiwanese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Animation Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA / Queens, NY
Language: English

Text:

“One of the foods that we made is um.. Tang Yuan, which is like a… kind of like mochi? It’s like a glutinous rice ball and then on the inside is sesame paste. And so, it… it’s usually typically eaten during the New Year. Um… it’s just like kind of a dessert. I know it’s been more popularized within like, um… like, Taiwanese dessert places nowadays, or like dessert places in general, but they’re usually served as like a treat for introducing the New Year. Um… a while ago, like when I was really really young — I’d say like before I was five — my grandma used to make Tang Yuan by like… She didn’t have the sesame paste, it was just like flour balls, I guess? Like she’d make the sort of like, dough out of rice flour and water and then she’d dye it into different colors and like, cut it up into strips and then she’d have me and my cousins like prepare the dough balls together. And then she’d prepare a kind of uh, kind of soup, like a sweet soup to go with it. Um… I believe also typically… I prefer to eat it plain, but my dad um… My grandparents on my dad’s side — and my dad — they both kind of… they have like a somewhat Cantonese background, so they end up drinking it with like, this fermented wine, like rice wine. And it… has an ‘interesting’ taste, it’s like… it’s like the sweetness of the Tang Yuan on itself is pretty good, and it’s like, the fermented rice wine is very bitter, and very pungent…. and so it’s like, I don’t know how they acquired the taste for it but, um, my dad typically eats it with this sort of rice wine. And also, when you eat it… I think it represents currency. ’cause the ‘yuan’ at the end… and ‘tang’ is usually like ‘sweet.’ So like ‘sweet money.'”

Context:

Tang Yuan are a traditional Chinese dessert, although they can be sweet or savory. They are often made for holidays and festivals, especially the Lunar New Year. There are several variations on Tang Yuan recipes, but the most common one involves making a dough out of glutenous rice flour and water, stuffing the dough balls with a sweet black sesame paste, boiling, and serving warm in a sweet syrup. Tang Yuan are said to represent togetherness and completeness.

Analysis:

Dishes like Tang Yuan are often made for festivals to commemorate calendar cycles and bring people together. They represent connections to community and a sense of continuity of tradition and culture. For informant JC, Tang Yuan are a dish that holds significance beyond the process of cooking and eating — they play a role in connecting him to his Taiwanese identity as he and his family navigate American culture and expectations of assimilation.

New York Ticker Tape Parade

Nationality: Irish

Occupation: Financial Engineering

Residence: New York, NY

Text: 

“After the Giants won the Super Bowl in 2008, they did the traditional victory parade through New York. The parade goes along a narrow section of Broadway in lower Manhattan called the ‘Canyon of Heroes’, where all of the employees of the banks watch the parade from their office windows. When I worked at BGC my office was along this section of Broadway, and that morning someone had left out boxes full of thin strips of paper. As the parade went by everyone threw the paper out of the window like it was confetti. Workers used to throw ticker tape, hence the name, but ticker tape was obsolete by 2008 so we just used paper.”

Context:

New York City has been doing ticker tape parades since long before my father moved to America in the early 90s. Historically the parades were done to honor anyone considered worthy, including returning soldiers, astronauts, and politicians. However in the time my dad has lived in New York, they have only been done for championship winning sports teams, and he only worked in an office on Broadway for one of them. Historically, these parades featured employees at financial firms throwing ticker tape; ticker tape is a thin strip of paper which was used to receive live stock market updates through telegraphs. The employees would throw the tape out of the window in celebration, and it would fall down like confetti. After the internet rendered ticker tape obsolete, employees began throwing slits of paper out of the window instead.

Analysis:

Both the use of ticker tape (and the paper that replaced it) and the parade going down the “Canyon of Heroes” are ways that New York differentiates itself from other cities when conducting championship parades. First, there is the deliberate choice to use paper that replicates ticker tape instead of using normal confetti (like any other city would). Ticker tape symbolizes Wall Street and the stock market, which are major parts of the fabric of New York City. Additionally, the parade route going through the financial district to have employees watch from windows is very different from other parades. Most parades go through areas with areas for spectators, but in New York the parade is meant to be watched from an office window. This is a reflection of the work culture of New York, especially in the financial industry. At businesses where employees often work 60+ hours a week, nobody would have time to leave the office to watch a parade, so instead the parade follows a route allowing it to be watched from the office. Ticker tape parades turn generic championship parades into unique celebrations that reflect New York City.

Beltane and Modernizing Tradition

“A lot of it is making it up as I go along, it’s really hard to pin down which are the fire festivals because they all involve fire. Beltane is for sure one of them. This is a midpoint festival, in between the spring equinox and summer solstice. It’s about the coming of the bright half of the year, something more heavy and developed than Ostara, which is about light. Here, things actually start blooming.

“Historically, this is when a lot of weddings (a.k.a. hand fastings). A lot about sexuality, life and unity. This is where the May Queen, someone getting crowned queen and getting adorned with flowers. Here in particular, fire is a purifying force in the sense of getting ready for something instead of getting rid of something. They would have cows run between their fires for fertility, or extinguish their personal fires to light a communal bonfire. Symbolic of reawakening a spirit of community.”

Context

It’s tough, especially since I’ve been trying to figure stuff out and make my own traditions out of the old traditions. I don’t really have the time to do that now. I grew my first tomato on the day of Beltane. It was a wee little thing, but I treasured it so much. To see something you nurtured coming into itself was really nice. [For this holiday, I] decided to focus on fresh produce, and ate a bunch of tomatoes with a friend. The friend smoked, I had an edible, and we cooked stuff with the tomatoes.”

Analysis

The informant talked at length about cultivating their own traditions, building out an identity, faith, and practice, by looking back at older, more esoteric examples. Rituals are often symbolic of our identities and what’s most important to us. For the informant, a resonance with nature led her to holidays and traditions that honored that connection.

The constraints of modern living, however, have forced her to adapt that celebration to meet her current needs. A busy life doesn’t leave much room for experimentation, and many of the symbols evoked by Beltane can’t really be accomplished in modern settings. It’s difficult finding the space to have cows run between fires these days.

How we celebrate evolves with the times, but why we celebrate doesn’t. Does a ritual still remain the same if the practice of it is different, but the essence of and motivation for doing the ritual remains?

Wu Shi (舞狮) & Nian (年), Chinese Lion Dance

Text:
Wu Shi is a traditional performance where dancers mimic a lion’s movements in a stylized costume, usually accompanied by loud drums, cymbals, and gongs. Commonly performed during Lunar New Year, store openings, weddings, and festivals.

Context:
The informant saw the Northern Lion Dance style when they are a child during New Year Festival on the streets. They remember being afraid of the lion dancer as a child because the colorfully painted mask and seemingly unpredictable movement look like monster. However, the lion is believed to scare away evil spirits, bad luck, and misfortune. Drums, firecrackers, and loud sounds are used in tandem to “cleanse” the space spiritually.
The origin of Wu Shi tracks back to a legend about a beast called Nian (年) who terrorized villages annually. People discovered it feared loud noises and red color, leading to the development of lion dances and firecrackers.

Analysis:
Wu Shi is a ritual drama performed at a liminal moment requiring protection and good luck, in this case, new year. The movements mentioned by the informant, like sniffing, blinking, jumping, are symbolic, mimicking the lion’s investigation of its surroundings; it is a metaphor for purification and control over chaos. Wu Shi is a performative folklore in which a ritual sends blessing with visual language.
The lion is actually not native to China, it was introduced through contact with Buddhism and Silk Road culture, yet it was mythologized into Chinese cosmology as a protector figure. It is a form of cultural syncretism where foreign symbols are absorbed and repurposed within local beliefs.

Chuseok (추석) & Songpyeon (송편), Korean Harvest Festival

Text:

(The following is a cleaned-up transcript from a recorded interview.)

“Chuseok is pretty similar to Chinese and Japanese Harvest Festival, I think. It takes place around late September or early October. And I think historically, it was to celebrate the harvest of rice and other crops. Usually, you have a week off from school and work. During this time, my family visits the cemetery to pay respects to our ancestors. We set out food for them and eat it.
It is also a time when we have a big traditional family gathering. We have meat pancakes, vegetable pancakes, or seafood pancakes. And we also have a special kind of rice cake you only eat on that day called Songpyeon. It is a thick rice cake full of honey and nuts, and super sweet. When you bite into it, it fills your mouth-”

Context:
The informant grew up in Korea and their family has celebrated Chuseok as early as they can remember. They see the festival as a last gathering before winter sets in and “everything gets dark and sad.” The maternal side of the informant’s family is also very Christian, so aside from offering the food and eating it there, they also do prayers. They think people don’t celebrate the festival in a traditional way anymore because a lot of people have moved to the city and are no longer involved with agriculture, so Chuseok has transformed into a great time to gather with family members and enjoy good food. The informant has criticized Koran’s bad work-life balance and overworking culture, pointing out that there is not a lot of time for one to gather with loved ones anymore. To the informant, Chuseok is an opportunity to take a break from life and see family members. It is a time to step back from modern necessities and go back to a much simpler time.

Analysis:
Rituals from Chuseok reflect a continuity of lineage and honoring ancestors is a key way of affirming kinship networks and identity over time. It highlights Koreans’ household-centered cosmology. The informant’s religious background did not take away this traditional cultural value, but instead added to it and continued it.
Songpyeon, the half-moon-shaped rice cake, carries the symbolic meaning of fertility and prosperity to express how harvest is a gift of abundance from nature or spirits. The recipes and techniques are usually passed down through generations orally. Food is narrative in this sense, it tells a story about ancestry and collective memory.
The informant states their deep personal connection with Chuseok and reflects on the change in society. Chuseok is not just a holiday—it’s a ritualized enactment of cultural memory, social values, and spiritual belief.