Category Archives: Festival

Qing Ming Festival

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 47
Occupation: Artist
Residence: Beijing, China
Performance Date: March 12 2017
Primary Language: Chinese

Background of informant:

My informant LWQ is a 47 years old Chinese artist. She was born and lived in southern part of China, especially Nanjing for many years before she moved to the north, Beijing at age 36.

The conversation is in Chinese.

 

Main piece:

LWQ: “This is the day that we go to cemetery and pray to the ancestors. In total, there’re four day in a year that people pray to their ancestors, but each day has different name and each of them is different. In winder solstice, that day, it’s the first one. And April 4rth on the lunar Calendar, which is the one that is coming, is called QingMing Festival. Then is July half, also on the lunar Calendar, is the Festival of the Dead. And then is the New Year Eve day. These are the four. There are commons among these four days, that people burn those money made from paper, the money that is only efficient in the ghosts’ world, not our human world.”

SH: What kind of money?

LWQ: “We have a piece of paper in the shape of normal RMB, but the portrait of Mao is changed to the God in the ghost world on the paper. And also, there’re paper money in the shape of ancient Chinese copper coin, which a hole in the center. And also some in the shape of Chinese shoe-shaped gold.”

LWQ: “For the differences of the four days, I think… the most recent one, on April. 4th, we bring some green plants or flowers to the deceased family members tomb. That’s why QingMing festival is also called ‘Tomb-swiping Day’. We need to revitalize the ancestor’s tomb because spring is coming. [laugh] I remember when I was little, I followed my parents to ancestors’ tomb on the day QingMing Festival, and it’s a day to play and enjoy the warm weather for me and my other little friends. Now, I will go to my grandparents tomb on this year’s festival next week, and it is now to me a day to reunion with my family, because my brothers and my parents will be there too.”

 

Context of the performance:

My informant LWQ told me one day that she will travel back to her hometown recently because the QingMing Festival was coming. This conversation was done two weeks before the festival day.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

My informant said that the day of QingMing festival is an official holiday set by the government, so it’s a day off for everyone in China. Respecting to ancestor is always a major focus in Chinese traditional culture, and there’s a huge emphasis on family lineage and bounding between family members. However, this emphasis was neglected once around 1970s in China. Now, for the recent 20 years, the traditional focus on lineage is recollected and reemphasized. Since the festival is highlighted to the public as an official holiday, this is another example of how institution helps revitalize folklore.

Carnival of Binche

Nationality: Belgium
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Brussels, Belgium
Performance Date: April 1 2017
Primary Language: French
Language: English, Spanish, Dutch

Background of informant:

My informant YF is an international student from Brussels, Belgium. He spent the first two years of high school in Los Angeles, and the last year back in Brussels. He lived in Wallonia in Belgium, which is the French-speaking region that accounts more than a half of the country.

 

Main piece:

YF: “We have the Carnival of the year around spring break. Every region in Belgium will have different character for the carnival. Each one has its story, its name. ”

YF: “The most memorable one that I went to is the Carnival of Binche. The most famous character in the carnival is called “Gilles de Binche”, directed translated as “Gilles from Binche”. This is the name of the character of the Carnival. So depend on the different city the Carnival is taking place, there will be different character, also different names. Gilles de Binche are only done by guys. They have white outfit, and orange jacket that has patterns of roasters on it, because roaster is the Coat of arms for Wallonia. And on the jacket there are also lines in black, yellow and red since those are the colors on Belgium flag. And also straw on the edge of their jacket. On their head, they have a huge hat with feathers, and traditionally, they also wear mask on their face made of wax. They walk on the street at the days of Carnival, and each of them carries a basket with blood oranges inside. They throw the oranges to the crowd and people will try to catch them. ”

SH: Why do they throw oranges?

YF: “Oh, so blood oranges are seen as gift given by the Gilles and they carry good luck.”

YF: “The Gilles also wear wooden shoes. The special thing about Gilles de Binche is that they are the only group of Gilles that stay in the city, so they can only stay in Binche, while others can go around and participate the parade in other cities.

“At night, we have ‘feu de bengale’, which means ‘fire from Bengol’ for people to dance around. It’s about the size of a human. Two meters high. Basically, when you’re a kid, base on which city in Belgium you’re from, you’re assigned to one character. It’s really old-fashioned, that based on the town you were born, you have the character that you can become when you’re older, and then you choose to take part into the culture and go into the circle of the character.

“So every early, like 6 am in the Carnival day, participants will go to people’s family to party with them. So you’ll have numerous cups of champion in each house you went to at the end of the day. And I did practice this!!”

 

Context of the performance:

This is a part of the interview I had with my informant YF.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

Though Belgium is a small country, the differentiation within the country is huge and obvious. Not only do people from different regions speak different languages (three main languages: French, Dutch and Germany), the Carnival are different and the characters for each Carnival are different.

Durga Puja

Nationality: Singapore
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: Apr 13 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

My informant AM is an international student from Singapore, and her family is originally from Bengal, India. She goes back to Bengal every year, and spends most of the time in the capital city Kolkata.

 

Main piece:

“Durga Puja” is a traditional festival of India. People celebrate the festival for 10 days. “Durga” is the goddess Durga, and “Puja” means “prayer”. The festival is in different time every year, but is around October and November.

 

AM: “We’re celebrating several things in this festival. Firs of all is Durga. We call her “the mother”, she is very respected, because she’s really powerful. She has ten hands, each of the hands hold a weapon. She is known as defeating an evil Buffalo demon. Thinking about Indian Gods, there’re so many of them. So Durga have so many forms, that she shared the same identity with some other gods and Durga is one form. In Bengal, we celebrate this incarnation of the goddess, which is Durga. She is married to one of the three main gods, Shiva.

“During a traditional Indian marriage, there’s a whole ceremony in the wife goes to the husband’s home. So during Durga Puja, these 10 days are believed as the time when Durga come back to her mother’s home. And at the last day of the festival, she goes back to Shiva’s home.

“The festival in total is 10 days, but the celebration starts at the 6th day. I don’t really know the reason behind this, but I do think we celebrate Durga Puja differently in Singapore than how people do it in India. So on the 6th day in Singapore, we have food fair for the festival. But there’s one common thing. Just to clarify, during the festival, it is Durga and her four children come to visit us, and we have statue of the five of them – Durga in the middle and her children aside. At the tenth day, in India, people will rewrap the statue of Durga and float it into the Bengali Rive. But we don’t do it in Singapore, cause it’s illegal, so we just rewrap the statue and send it back, which symbolizing she goes back to her husband’s home.”

 

Context of the performance:

This is a section from a conversation with my informant AM about how Indian culture and traditions are practiced in Singapore.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

I later discussed with AM about the how Indian culture regard women, and gender difference in general. I remember a ethnographic film Mardistan (2014) directed by anthropologist Harjant Gill, which talks about how patriarchal order is controlling over both women and men, specifically in the city of Chandigarh. I mentioned this to AM and she told me this is a really tricky thing to say, because there’re really modern cities like Mumbai but there are also many rural areas. But it seems to both of us that, due to the fact that there are so many festivals celebrating goddess, mother gods, Indian is not as what people would stereotypically regard as the typical patriarchal country. The part of Indian identity is really matriarchal, that people respect to the mother figure, but there’s also sexism in society too.

 

See the ethnographic film Mardistan here: https://vimeo.com/120182667

Spring Festival Gala

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beijing, China
Performance Date: April 10, 2017
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Background of informant:

My informant SS is an international student from Beijing, China. She lived with her grandparents when she was little.

The conversation was in Chinese.

Main piece:

SS: “My relatives will come gather in my grandparents house every new year eve. They will arrive in different time, due to the whether they live far away or not. My grandpa is always the one who do the cooking. Oh he loves to be the chief, and he doesn’t let anyone enter the kitchen when he’s preparing for the spring festival meal! [laugh] And then when the food is being prepared, my family will start to eat and drink, oh, and we’ll all sit down to watch the Spring Festival Gala! When the meal is all prepared, the gala has already began for like… 1 hour.”

SH: What is that?

SS: “That’s the activity that people always do, like every year, with no exception, on New Year Eve day. It’s a huge showcase rehearsed by CCTV, consigned by Chinese government [SS changed her tone]. [laugh, keep using the flat tone] It’s usually consisted with dancing and singing performance, short plays, magic shows, and so on. And normally, while the show is entertaining the audience, there are central ideology penetrated in the show to educate people [SS made the hand gesture of quote when saying “educate”]. But since the Gala has been operated every new year eve for dozens of years, watching Spring Festival Gala on CCTV has become the habit for middle-age to elder Chinese. I’m thinking most younger people also have the habit to open the TV to watch it…while comments on Weibo (a popular social media in China) at the same time… It’s like we are all so used to watch it. And I do think Spring Festival Gala brings people together, it attracts the family to sit in front of the TV, comments on the show, eat some sunflower seeds, and … just… be together!

 

Context of the performance:

This is a section in our conversation about Chinese Spring Festival.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

Regarding to the fact that China has huge population dispersed in different parts of the country, people live in different regions really have drastically different customs and habits. For example, when talking about what do people eat on New Year Eve, my informant SS provided me a list of food that I never had in my home (I’m from southern part of China while she’s from the North). However, after hearing so many differences of what people do on this country-wide festival, watching Spring Festival Gala is the only habit that can be found in almost every family in every part of China at that dat. And since Spring Festival Gala, as SS pointed out, is a show consigned by Chinese government, this common custom is an example of how institutional products gradually become and being transformed into folklore.

Bulgarian folk Kookari ritual

Nationality: Bulgarian
Occupation: Social Worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17

This piece folklore was gathered at the San Fransisco trauma recovery center. I met with a group of social workers and over the course of one hour we all got came together in a meeting room and in one big group we decided to go around the table and each discuss folklore from their lives. At the beginning of the discussion I gave a brief description about what folklore could be. After that everyone shared pieces of folklore from their lives.

“One tradition that we have in Bulgaria, and in my village we do it around Easter but in other places that do it for New Years. It’s a very interesting kind of tradition. People dress up in goat skin and they put those huge bells on them and you like have to make the noise with the bells  and they go all over the village and it is considered to chase the evil spirits and cleans the village and get you ready for good things. The people dressed in the goat skin they are called Kookari and it is considered a huge honor to have them come by your house and kind of cleanse your house.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “I grew up with that tradition. In the village I was raised in it happens for Easter every year. Mostly I remember that as a child I was extremely scared of them because they really look scary. They have like scary masks and I understand now that the idea is to scare bad evil kind of spirits but as a child I was mortified and I refused to leave the house on that day.”

Final thoughts: There are a lot of rituals over the world that have to do with scaring away spirits.  The technique of dressing up and attempting to be as scary as possible is something that people like doing quite a lot even here in America we have Halloween. Another common trope that is present in this tradition is the idea of using noise to help scare the spirits.