Category Archives: Life cycle

Taiwanese Joke: Double Naming and Chickens

Nationality: Taiwanese
Primary Language: Mandarin
Age: 50
Occupation: Housewife
Residence: Taipei, Taiwan
Performance Date: 16 February 2024

Tags: joke, Taiwanese, chickens, double meaning, toilet humor

Text:

There was once a man who visited Taiwan for the first time to improve his conversational Mandarin speaking skills. He had heard from his Taiwanese friends that Taiwanese people often like to ‘double say’ (repeat) nouns- for example, ‘喝水水’ = ‘drink water water’, ‘吃飯飯’ = eat food food, ‘大狗狗‘ = ‘big dog dog’.

To attempt to fit in to local customs, the man wanted to try ‘double saying’ a noun. As he was thinking, he saw a small chicken crossing a road. He pointed at the small chicken and loudly declared:

“小雞雞！” (“small chicken chicken”)

After he said this, every local around him burst out laughing. Confused and embarrassed, he hastily called his Taiwanese friend and recounted the experience, demanding an explanation. The Taiwanese friend burst out laughing and explained:

” ‘雞雞’ (chicken chicken) means ‘penis’. “

Context:

T is a born and raised Taiwanese local, and apparently this is a pretty popular (though crass) joke to tell children, which she did in my youth when we ate chicken one day. Growing up learning Mandarin from T, I realized we both subconsciously also used the ‘double noun’ habit, though it’s mainly used for children learning Mandarin growing up as it can seem cute in a way, in a singsong-ish manner.

Analysis:

Thinking back on the joke, there may or may not be a connection to the English interpretation of the word ‘cock’ as both a word relating to ‘chicken’ and ‘penis’, so maybe dick jokes can help connect the world.

Beltane / Birthday Celebration

Text

“What Beltane actually is it’s like an old holiday, like Pagan but also Greek and Roman, it’s just an old holiday back when we were relying on crops cause it’s like the peak of spring, right in between the spring equinox and summer solstice. So what I do is I have a bowl of water that I place at the window at the start of the morning, and it collects the sun during the day and you put in your yellow flowers, or just any flowers you have to symbolize spring, and you can manifest over it. It’s an offering to the Mayday goddess, she’s not necessarily someone I follow, but I just like that it’s the same day as my birthday so I always do a little thing for it, a little offering. It’s more of like, a new beginnings thing, cause it’s actually the start of my next year of life. It’s sort of cleansing, I think in general spring is the time for that, new growth, birth and all that. A lot of people do fertility stuff, for me it’s just clean slate, new beginnings, on my birthday. I find it calming to have my own space, mediate, manifest, and go about my day.

Context

Y is a 19-year-old college student from Denver, Colorado. She started celebrating Beltane when she was in middle school, after she found out it was on the same day as her birthday. She doesn’t follow any pagan faith or celebrate any other Sabbats, so this celebration is both a Beltane ritual and more of a personal birthday ritual. She is actually of the Muslim faith, and says the ritual is technically a sin in her religion. She interprets the ritual and Beltane celebration more as a birthday cleansing ritual and as a quiet moment for her to calm herself before her birthday begins and reflect on what she wants in the year ahead.

Analysis

Beltane is one of the holidays that follows the agricultural calendar and also follows our life cycles, representing the cyclical calendar.. It happens on May 1st, during a time of great agricultural reproduction and the planting and growing of new crops. It also represents the time of budding youth in the life cycle. It’s similar to the saying of a May-December wedding, referring to when a young girl (in her May era) marries an old man (in his December era). May, spring, and Beltane are associated with new beginnings and growth in both the life cycle and agricultural cycle. This particular Beltane ritual especially represents new beginnings, as for Y it represents a new year of her life. The fact that she celebrates this holiday is very interesting because it illustrates an inter splicing of faiths. She is Muslim, and doesn’t usually celebrate the pagan holidays of the Sabbats. She chooses to celebrate this one because it’s on her birthday, which makes it also a birthday celebration. Birthday celebrations are one of the three big steps in life that are usually celebrated: birth, marriage, and death. Birthdays represent coming into a new identity, and are a time of liminality when a person is first becoming that new age. A lot of birthday celebrations are group celebrations, such as singing Happy Birthday together. Some people say that birthday parties started because the birthday, as a day of liminality, is a day when a person is more vulnerable to spirits, so groups would gather to protect the birthday person. Birthdays are also a time of private ritual though, many people have their own private rituals they do on the day to either reflect back on their life, or imagine the possibilities the new age will bring them. Y uses her birthday ritual to manifest good things into her life for the next year. This illustrates Dundes’ argument that the American worldview is very future centric. Instead of reflecting of the past, she looks forward to the future on her birthday. It is also an example of how American society looks at time linearly. Despite celebrating a festival like Beltane that uses cyclical time, her perspective of her birthday moving forward linearly is an example of her experiencing linear time. 

Girl’s Day

Text:

On March 3 in Japan there is a festival called Hinamatsuri celebrating young girls primarily under the age of 10. This unofficial holiday prays for the health and prosperity of all young girls. Traditionally the festival made young girls dress up in kimonos and make dolls out of straw or paper. Then releasing the dolls in a small constructed boat on a river, allowing any bad luck to float away with the doll. To celebrate families will display porcelain dolls dressed in decorative robes to imitate the ancient imperial court.

Context:

M.S. celebrated this festival growing up in Japan and continued to celebrate it once she moved to the United Sates, but instead for her daughter and not herself anymore. She and my mom (M.S.’s daughter) participated because they thought it was fun and didn’t exactly believe the meaning that releasing the dolls down a river will get rid of their ”bad luck”.

Analysis:

I think the dolls are a form of both contagious and homeopathic magic because the dolls are supposed to mimic the girl making the doll, in order for any bad luck lingering around the girl to transfer to the doll. The girl creates the doll forming an instant connection which tricks the bad energy. As the doll floats down the river it imitates the negative energy attaching to the doll leaving the young girl. The holiday date is also important to note, as March 3rd is the third month of the year on the third day of the month. That is no coincidence as women and girls are a very important part of society, they need a special day. This day ensures that young girls are healthy enough to grow up and create the next generation.

Indian burial ritual

Text:
AS-“It is a weird burial ritual. Well, weird for other villages near my town, because no one except our village does this.”

Interviewer-“Has your always been doing it or did something happen in the village for everyone to shift from the ‘traditional’ burial rituals?”

AS- “I don’t know. It has always been like that. Maybe it was because my village mostly houses farmers and their land, and the rituals just symbolize their connection to their land. Anyways, coming back to the ritual. It is not something extremely groundbreaking but, in our village, instead of cremating out dead near a river and throwing their ashes into the water, our dead are cremated on familial ground and buried right there.”

Context:
AS is a middle-aged woman born in a small village in eastern parts of India. She spent most of her childhood in the village that she talks about, but moved out to attend school in a different city. Her father was buried following the same burial ritual that she describes in the above text.

Analysis:
In the above burial ritual, we see the impact of local sentiments into a more widespread cultural practice. By shifting from the widespread tradition of cremating beside a river, the village tradition of burying the dead on familial grounds integrates a smaller community’s culture with that of a bigger one. It is an example where we can see social norms and meanings (here, a farmer’s connection to their land) integrating with religious customs.

Atam Hatik

Text:
Atam Hatik is an Armenian tradition that families do to celebrate their baby’s first tooth coming out. The baby is places around several different objects that correlate to a certain job (one example is a stethoscope. If the baby picks up the stethoscope, the family believes that the baby has a high chance of becoming a doctor in the future). On my own Atam Hatik, I picked up a pencil. Now, I am an English major and hope to pursue screenwriting as my profession.

Context:
TL is a sophomore in college and is pursuing her passion of screenwriting and working in the film industry. She was brought up in a culturally rich Armenian immigrant family and enjoys listening to her grandmother’s folk tales. TL told me about the Armenian tradition during a conversation through text.

Analysis:
The Armenian birth tradition is another example of the celebration of one of the three major events- birth, marriage and death. The celebration of birth, in this case, also works to integrate the child into society by assigning an occupation at the time of birth. This tradition also reflects one of the major trends in Asian societies which are predominantly centered about finding a stable job to make oneself financially stable.