Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Travelling Tradition of Eating Noodles and Dumplings

Text:

“Whenever you’re going after travel, even if it’s just one day or something, you have to eat dumplings before you go. And when you come back, you eat noodles. Like for the first meal. The meal right before you leave has to be dumplings, and the meal right after you come back has to be noodles. We have a saying that goes “When you get in the car, you eat dumplings. When you get off it, you eat noodles.” It might be a Beijing tradition, but my grandmom is from Shandong, and they still follows this tradition. The dumplings look like small pieces of gold. You have to eat an even number of dumplings. Even numbers are considered luckier than odd numbers. When you come back, you eat noodles, which symbolize that you are attached to your home, because the noodles look like ropes. They held you to your home. Noodles are also not tangled, which simplifies a smooth future and a smooth return home.”

Context:

The informant describes a travel-related food tradition practiced in her family. This tradition is possibly rooted in northern Chinese regions like Beijing and Shandong. Before leaving for a trip, even a short one, the family must eat dumplings, and upon returning, the first meal must be noodles. She learned this practice from her grandmother, who continues to follow it, showing how the tradition is passed down across generations. The informant also explains specific rules, such as eating an even number of dumplings because even numbers are considered lucky. This ritual remains important even when travelling becomes routine. For the informant, it functions as a meaningful way to frame movement away from and back to home.

Analysis:

This tradition shows that everyday practices create a symbolic order. The pairing of dumplings and noodles structures the uncertainty of travel into a predictable and meaningful sequence. Dumplings, shaped like gold, symbolize wealth and a good beginning, while noodles represent connection and continuity, emphasizing a safe return home. The rule of eating even numbers further reflects how ideas of luck and order are embedded in routine actions. These practices turn travel, a potentially uncertain experience, into something culturally organized and emotionally reassuring. Thus, this tradition reinforces values of safety, prosperity, and attachment to home.

Housewarming Ritual

Text:

“Before moving into a new house, you have to invite your friends to come and warm up the space. And then, on the same day that you spend your first night there, you have to cook for yourself. So it’s like a housewarming — a good omen to ensure safety.”

Context:

This text was collected from a Chinese international student from Beijing. The tradition she describes is a folk ritual practiced before settling into a new home: inviting friends over to “warm” the space, and cooking a meal on the same night as your first stay. She learned this practice through her family rather than any formal channel, and presented it as common knowledge — something simply done without much question. The phrase she used, “好兆头” (hǎo zhào tou), meaning “good omen,” suggests the ritual carries protective intent, ensuring the new living space is safe and welcoming before fully inhabiting it. While housewarming traditions exist across many cultures globally, the specific requirement to cook on the first night distinguishes this as a regionally and culturally particular variation. The informant currently lives away from her family in the United States, making this tradition part of practicing a piece of folk knowledge she carries from home into a diasporic context.

Analysis:

This piece is a folk ritual operating through the logic of sympathetic magic. More specifically, the ritual aligns with the contagious variety that Frazer describes, where the warmth, activity, and presence of friends physically and spiritually transform the new space, transferring positive energy into it before the owner fully settles. Cooking on the first night extends this logic: the act of preparing food activates the home, making it a lived-in, nourishing space rather than an empty one. Together, these acts perform what Van Gennep would define as reincorporation, as the ritual closes the liminal threshold between leaving one’s home and fully belonging to another. The new resident is neither fully displaced nor fully settled until the ritual is completed. The tradition also functions as a rite of passage that converts an unfamiliar space into a safe, socially sanctioned home through collective participation. The requirement that friends be present also connects to the idea that rituals derive their power from collective belief. The warmth brought by “housewarming” is not just metaphorical but socially produced.




Senior ditch day: rites of passage

Text:

Senior Ditch Day was something I experienced — or at least knew about — at both high schools I attended. For context, I transferred halfway through my junior year from one high school to another for personal reasons. The concept of Senior Ditch Day was that once a year, typically in spring, all the seniors would collectively skip a single day of school. What you did on that day was entirely up to you — some people just slept in, others went out with friends, like to Great America. As long as you weren’t doing anything illegal, you could pretty much do whatever you wanted. It was just meant to be a day to decompress.

It wasn’t officially sanctioned by the school, but it was something each senior class would organize among themselves. Some teachers would actually anticipate it, because they knew it was tradition. Seniors could also use their one permitted absence on that day if they hadn’t used it already.

Personally, I wasn’t able to participate in Senior Ditch Day, which is both funny and a little sad in hindsight. It landed during AP testing week, specifically on the day I had AP Music Theory. On top of that, I had a makeup test in my Psychology class the same day. So unfortunately, I missed out entirely.

Context:

This text was collected from a college student who attended two different high schools in California. She shared this piece conversationally, recounting Senior Ditch Day as a tradition she was aware of at both schools, suggesting it circulates widely across different institutions rather than being unique to one. Senior Ditch Day is an unofficial, student-led tradition in which the entire senior class collectively skips one school day, typically in spring, to spend time however they choose. Notably, the tradition exists without institutional sanction — and yet some teachers acknowledge and anticipate it, placing it in an interesting middle ground between school folklore and quietly tolerated custom.

Analysis:

Senior Ditch Day is an example of school lore, more specifically, the kind of horizontal, student-generated tradition that exists outside institutional control and sometimes in quiet tension with it. The fact that teachers anticipate it without officially banning it reflects the dynamic in school folklore, where institutions tolerate vernacular traditions they cannot fully suppress, and where the tradition derives much of its meaning precisely from being unofficial. The tradition maps cleanly onto Van Gennep’s rites of passage framework: it functions as a collective liminality ritual marking the threshold between being a high school student and transitioning into post-graduation life. The unstructured, do-whatever-you-want quality of the day mirrors the social freedom of the liminal phase: being temporarily outside normal rules and obligations. The spring timing reinforces this, as festivals and transition rituals across cultures center around seasonal change. The informant’s inability to participate makes her what Von Sydow would call a passive tradition bearer — someone who knows the tradition intimately without having fully performed it.




Chinese New Year Tradition of Making “Dern”

Text:

“On the 15th of the Chinese New Year, my grandma would make something called “dern.” “Dern” is like a bun shaped in the form of our Chinese Zodiac. She would make the “dern” for all family members. She would make seven of them, and they are all in our corresponding Chinese zodiac. So, if I’m born in the zodiac of the chicken, then she would make a chicken. This is practiced on the last day of the Chinese New Year. All of our animal characters would be on the same big bun; there are usually three big buns in total. She would also make two fish on one of the big buns, corresponding to the proverb “May you have abundance/surplus year after year.” After I got a boyfriend, my grandmother started making his “dern” as well. It is referred to as “dern” in the Shandong dialect. To be honest, sometimes it is hard for me to recognize which animal is which after she made them. Another thing is that we have to eat it. We have to bring this gigantic bun back to our own house and place it on our table for a day, and then you eat it. I’m not sure why we put it on the table for a day, but if you eat your zodiac, that just means that you are safe and good, and you have to eat the parts with the pieces of gold as well, which means that you can earn a lot of money in the upcoming year.”

Context:

This text was collected from a Chinese international student from Beijing, China. She learned this tradition through direct participation in her grandmother’s annual practice and shared it with me in a casual conversation as she spoke from personal memory. Her grandmother was from Shandong province, and dern is also a word describing decorated buns in the Shandong dialect. The tradition takes place on the 15th day of the Chinese New Year (the Lantern Festival), which marks the final day of the celebration period. The grandmother serves as the sole maker of the buns, crafting zodiac-shaped figures for every family member. A significant detail is that after the informant began dating her boyfriend, the grandmother started making a bun for him as well, suggesting the practice functions as an informal way of welcoming new members into the family. She interprets eating one’s zodiac as ensuring personal safety and prosperity in the coming year.

Analysis:

This piece exemplifies material culture, more specifically when it functions as a family lore, which shows how a broader regional tradition becomes personalized at the household level. This reminds me of Carl von Sydow’s concept of oicotypes: in this case, the family’s specific variation — seven individual buns, three large bases, fish for prosperity, a one-day display — represents a local adaptation of a wider Shandong practice. The variation is shaped by this family’s particular values and composition. Moreover, the ritual also aligns with Frazer’s theory of homeopathic magic: eating one’s zodiac animal and the golden pieces embedded in the bun not only symbolize safety and wealth, it also enact them. Corresponding folk beliefs like those exemplified through the shape of the “dern” collapse the boundary between representation and outcome. The grandmother’s decision to include the boyfriend’s bun is especially interesting, as it functions as a vernacular act of admitting family membership, which comes before any official social recognition of the relationship.





Chinese Birthday Tradition of Longevity Noodles

Text:

“For everybody’s birthday, we have to wear new clothes from top to down. And then we also need to eat noodles each morning, and your whole family also needs to eat noodles with you. And then you also need to like use a chopstick to drag the noodles as long as possible (like hold it as long as possible). And say something like “live forever” or something like that. So that can like represent that you are going to be healthy and have like a good life for a very long time. Everyone has to take pictures as they hold the noodles. Even when we are apart, my family still does it and sends it to me on my birthday.”

Context:

The informant describes a family birthday tradition centred on eating 长寿面 (longevity noodles). This is a common practice in many Chinese households. She grew up participating in this ritual with her family, where eating noodles on one’s birthday symbolises wishes for a long and healthy life. The informant explains that this is not only done in person but continues even when family members are physically apart, as they take photos and share them with each other. For her, this tradition is both a symbolic ritual and a way of maintaining family connection across distance.

Analysis:

This tradition can be understood through Mary Douglas’s idea that everyday practices carry symbolic meanings that reinforce cultural values. The emphasis on the length of the noodles reflects how physical actions are used to represent abstract ideas like longevity and health. The act of carefully holding and eating the noodles shows intentional participation to express these wishes. Other than carrying symbolic value, the shared participation (whether in person or through photos) reinforces family bonds and continuity.