The Tiger is Marrying the Fox

Nationality: Korea
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/19/2017
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

Subject:

Korean fairy tale to explain raining while it is sunny

Informant:

Kyujin Sohn was born in Korea but moved to the United States as a young child. The majority of his family is from Korea, and many of them still live there. Although he has spent most of his life in the US, he has visited Korea often and identifies closely with Korean culture.

Original Script:

“So, I think this is actually rooted from China, but in Korea it goes, that, so the tiger was supposed to marry the clouds. Uhh, this is like a cloud, think of it not as actually like a tiger and a cloud but as metaphorical representations of tigers and clouds. And, and they’re supposed to marry, but on the day of their wedding, the tiger meets this fox, and he falls in love with the fox. And so, having fallen in love with this random fox that had come, the fox and the tiger run away together, and because it’s a cloud, it can see from the sky, it can see that he’s been betrayed, or she’s been betrayed – gender’s a little mixed up here – but the cloud is heartbroken, and thus runs away, and the only thing he can run away to is the sun, and so he hides behind the sun and cries. And so it’s like, during a tiger’s wedding with the fox, the clouds cry behind the sun. And so when it sun-showers, we say the tiger is marrying the fox.”

Informant’s Background Knowledge and Relationship with this Piece:

Kyujin learned it from a friend, when he was trying to paint a picture and wanted to include a reference to a Korean folk story. He thought the story was cute, and that it explained why when it is raining and sunny at the same time, people say the tiger is marrying the fox.

Thoughts About the Piece:

In South Africa, when it is raining and sunny, we used to call it a monkey’s wedding. I’ve also heard somebody call it a tiger’s wedding, although I have never heard any explanation or story behind who the monkey or tiger is marrying, and how that relates to the weather, so I think that this is a pretty interesting story.

Korean Creation Myth

Nationality: Korean
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/19/2017
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

Subject:

Korean Creation Myth.

Informant:

Kyujin Sohn was born in Korea but moved to the United States as a young child. The majority of his family is from Korea, and many of them still live there. Although he has spent most of his life in the US, he has visited Korea often and identifies closely with Korean culture.

Original Script:

“Uhh, I guess, we should start, if we’re talking… this is the Korean, the Korean creation myth, in essence. It’s like where the Korean people came from. So, this is uhh, it’s an interesting story. It’s essentially, so there’s this God, or there are multiple Gods but there is this particular God that is kind of like, likes interacting with the mortal world. And so, there’s this bear, and this tiger, and both of them yearn to be human, because in an understanding of Asian culture, humans were seen to be the most free, like they’re seen as kind of the most intelligent and kind of uhh, most like, I don’t know, superior species, right? So, this bear and this tiger yearned to be human so they went to this God and they said please, please let us be human. And this God said ‘Okay, I will grant you this wish, but for 100 days, you must subsist only on garlic and water.’ And so the bear and the tiger both agree to this, right? And they are forced into a cave, where all they have is water, and garlic. And this is what they’re supposed to eat for a hundred days. And if they survive this challenge, then they would become human. And so the bear and the tiger both start eating garlic, and they start drinking the water. And, for 99 days, both of them managed to do it. But on the 99th day, the tiger says ‘this is too much,’ and quits. And on the hundredth day, the bear comes out of the cave, and the God says to him, or her, and says ‘you succeeded the trial,’ and so the bear becomes a human. And she becomes the first mother of Koreans. She is like the first Korean. And, the tiger always has a hateful relationship with the humans because he never got to become a human, because he quit on the last day. And then the God and the bear married, and gave birth to more Koreans.”

Informant’s Background Knowledge and Relationship with this Piece:

Kyujin learned the story from his mom, and was told that it was the creation story for all Korean people. This creation myth he claims is from before Buddhism or Taoism and is just a product of east Asian influences.

Thoughts About the Piece:

I find it interesting that the story features a bear as the parent of the Korean people. Bears and tigers are both aggressive towards humans, and I know Kyujin didn’t really know why the bear was chosen either. I also think the trial is an interesting one: surviving off of garlic and water for 100 days is not a test of strength, intelligence, or kindness but rather a test of will. Perhaps this was meant to represent the determination of the Korean people.

Sideways Shoes

Nationality: Brazilian
Age: 54
Occupation: Dancer/Filmmaker/Motion Graphic Designer
Residence: New York City, NY
Performance Date: April 20
Primary Language: English
Language: Portuguese

“I have a strong belief… that whenever someone take their shoes off and they leave the shoes sideways… ummmm… their mother is gonna die… somebody told me that when I was very young and it stick to my head… I don’t know how popular that belief is… but whenever I go on a place and see someone’s shoes sideways I have to go and fix it.”

This piece is from a person from Brazil. I don’t know many people from Brazil with the same belief. Yet I feel like this belief was from her socio economic background. She was raised in an upper class, proper family that was heavy on etiquette and I believe that this belief was from her culture trying to instill this etiquette within her.

Annapolis Tug of War

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 24
Primary Language: English

“So in my ummm… hometown… ummm… my parents live in Annapolis… and in Annapolis there’s a divide between two smaller little… like… sub cities. There’s downtown Annapolis and Eastport and what’s dividing them is the chesspeak bay and theres the… there’s the bridge. an unnamed bridge that connects the two. and so ummm… each year the city of Annapolis puts on this ummm… tug of war that goes along the chesspeak bay. So they get this massive rope that’s at least a mile long and they get citizens of Annapolis to tug from Annapolis and citizens of Eastport to tug from Eastport and so… it’s usually twenty people on each side of the rope and it’s going across the entire bay and they have like boats like it’s just a rope across the entire bay for like one mile which was super cool to see every year and I participated in it on my ummm… last year and Eastport did win last year, that’s where my family lives and it’s a super cool tradition”

This tradition seems to span an two entire boroughs of a town and seems to focus on conflict between the boroughs of Annapolis. The rivalry doesn’t seem too bitter though as the towns to dedicate this one tug of way every year to this friendly rivalry.

Cootie Shot

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Queens, NY
Performance Date: April 20
Primary Language: English

“We had this ridiculous thing in elementary school… where we had cootie… well we had cooties in elementary school… but we had this ridiculous thing called a cootie shot… did you have cootie shots”

“yeah sort of”

“It wasn’t even like… it wasn’t even like distributed or anything. it was literally… it was literally…just that we would mime…. we would just mime and that would instantly cure cooties so… I mean cooties still had the same amount of seriousness as any other disease it’s just that cure was really really easy to get I mean anybody can just mime a cootie shot, there was no effort in making it or anything we just had to mime it and yet no one picked up on how plentiful this cure to what was the…ummmm… worse disease in elementary school was”

This is an interesting way that people cured the cooties in the informant’s elementary school. In my experiences with the cootie epidemic, people had to be able to fold some sort of origami to be able to cure cooties and only the people in my class talented enough to fold origami were blessed with the gift of being able to cure such a horrible disease. I wonder if this mime like policy was instituted because a teacher didn’t want to waste paper of if nobody in the school knew how to fold origami?