Patintero

“Well… yung patintero, it’s a street game.  Compared to other games, parang unique siya, diba? Usually, sa streets talaga ‘yun ginagawa.  Typically the kids go out into the streets after the time called the siesta… that’s really how it was for us back then, kung pinalaki ka sa Pilipinas.  Pag uwi nila sa school, kakain sila, mag na-nap tapos maglalaro sila.  Talagang maingay sa kalsada tuwing afternoon.  

(Well, patintero, it’s a street game.  Compared to other games, it’s unique, right? It’s usually played in the streets.  Typically the kids go out into the streets after the time called the siesta… That’s really how it was for us back then, if you were raised in the Philippines.  When they get home from school, they’ll eat, take a nap, then play.  It truly is noisy in the streets in the afternoon.)

It’s not a seasonal game, they always play no matter the time of year.  You can say it’s a team game, because all of the children are like… in layers.  Gumagamit sila ng chalk sa street, and they assign who’s playing and those kids need to be able to go through the other layers of kids who are trying to tag them.  Your teammate has to try to confuse the other team so that you both can get through.  Nag tutulongan kayo na makarating yung grupo mo to the end of the barrier.  (You help each other so that your group can make it to the end of the barrier.)  Whoever gets tagged… becomes part of the layers of kids trying to tag everyone else.

I like the team aspect of it…  These kinds of games are best for entire communities where everyone lives close together in rural areas.  In places that are urbanized, the kids don’t really come out to play anymore.  Games like these are ways to make friends.  Kahit hindi kayo magkakilala, nagkakaroon kayo ng mga opportunity para maglaro… (Even though you don’t all know each other, you get an opportunity to play together).”

Background: The informant is describing a Filipino street game called “patintero,” where children form layers of kids who are “it” and the others try to bypass their barriers and avoid getting tagged together.  She used to play this game growing up, and it is one of the most popular traditional Filipino games.

Context: This piece was told to me in person, at the dinner table.  The game is only something I have heard of other kids such as the informant, playing.  I was raised in an urbanized part of the Philippines, so I never really got the chance to participate.

Many of my cousins grew up playing these games in their neighborhoods where all of the community’s families lived close together.  The nostalgia the informant had for the game is interesting, as they described the game as being more for communities that are rural and more collective-based.  Such communities in the Philippines are called baranggays, and the informant grew up in one such community.  These neighborhoods tend to have families living in very close quarters without much disposable income, which would seem like an undesirable way to live.  However, the informant’s view on it was that it promoted an easy way for the town’s children to get to know each other in an authentic space, differentiating from the isolated nature in which children (like me) in urbanized areas tend to be isolated from their peers beyond school.  The informant often describes life in a baranggay as simple and often difficult, but the small pockets of togetherness is what characterized their childhood.

For a film that centers around patintero, check this link!

Patintero: Ang Alamat ni Meng Patalo is a film that focuses on the protagonist’s desire to get better at the game.

“Bahala ka sa buhay mo”

“Bahala ka sa buhay mo,” it essentially translates to “Whatever, it’s your life; you can handle it,” in a tone that, in a way, communicates the exact opposite to whoever is hearing it.  It shows disapproval for something that a person of lesser power, like a son or daughter, is about to do.  It is the withholding of validation that hurts the most when you hear that from someone you respect.

Background: This is a proverb/saying that anyone who has had a parent disappointed in them has heard.  It’s extremely common to hear mothers say it to their children when they are about to make a decision that is frowned upon.

Context: The informant is a 60 year-old Filipina immigrant to the United States who has children of her own.  This myth was told to me during a weekly luncheon that always follows our Sunday church services.

As the daughter of Filipino immigrants, I have also been told this a countless number of times whenever I’m having a struggle of autonomy with my parents.  My experience of Filipino culture has included a highly involved family life, which often means that parents exert heightened amounts of control over their children’s lives and decisions.  While I used to resent having them dictate the actions I should take, the idea that they are relinquishing all of the control to me and having me handle my own life knowing that they do not believe I am ready to do so is also scary.  That, I think, is the saying’s purpose.  It drives home the idea that our parents are so sure of our failure that they’re willing to watch us deal with the consequences of our actions without their help.

“Bahala Ka” by MC Einstein is a song that uses the proverb to give an “I don’t care” attitude to the listener from the singer’s point of view. The disappointment and lack of concern in the original proverb are then inserted into the song’s lyrics and message.

Golden Doll


1

Original:

我有一个金娃娃

金色的衣服金头发

第一天我到河边去打水丢了我的金娃娃

我哭我哭我哇哇地哭

第二天我到河边去洗衣服找到了我的金娃娃

我笑我笑我哈哈地笑

第三天日本鬼子来到了我的家抢了我的鸡

抢走我的鸭后给我了大嘴巴

第四天有个军叔叔来到我的家还了我的鸡

还了我的的鸭后给我朵大红花

我带着红花去学校

老师叫我擦黑板

我瞪着老师一大眼

老师叫我爷, 

老师叫我奶。。。

Translation:

I have a golden doll

Gold body, gold clothes, gold hair

On the first day, I went to the river to draw water and I lost my gold doll

I cry, I cry, I cry very strongly

On the second day, I went to the river to wash clothes and I found my gold doll

I laugh, I laugh, I laugh very strongly

On the third day, the Jap-ghosts came to my house,

Stole my chicken, stole my duck, then assaulted me. 

On the fourth day, a Red Army uncle came to my house,

Gave back my chicken, gave back my duck, then gave me a big red flower

I wore the red flower to school

My teacher told me to clean the whiteboard

But I glared at her, so

Teacher called my grandfather,

Teacher called my grandmother,

[repeats until all family members are listed].

Analysis

This is a nursery rhyme that I played pattycake to whilst attending elementary school in Northeastern China, circa ~2007. There are also some additional hand motions at various points (e.g. reaching out to slap the face of my pattycake partner during “[he] assaulted me”, and mimicking crying and laughing during the appropriate times). I learned this nursery rhyme on the playground of my preschool from the older students, who likely learned it from the even older students, and so forth. There are some variations: for example, instead of ‘chicken’ and ‘duck’, the items are now listed as ‘mobile phone’ and ‘SIM card’, clearly demonstrating the shift from widespread agriculture to an increasingly capitalist society. The term “Jap-ghost”, of which there is no English translation, is a slur for Japanese soldiers–– the atrocities at Nanking are permanently etched into collective memory. The term ‘ghost’ has two dimensions, both as the spirits of slain Chinese civilians as well as the malevolent spirit-like nature of the Japanese army. The red flower is a symbol of recognition and honor bestowed on individuals who demonstrate bravery and perseverance, and was granted to many of the survivors that lived through the commission of war crimes. The disrespect shown to the teacher is obviously prohibited, and the endless listing of relative titles signals the importance and strong ties between family members, all of whom would be involved in a young relative’s misdeed. For more information, see 张永泰’s article 台湾民间团体发起保钓游行 published by VOA Chinese, in which the author describes this phenomenon being so prevalent that some variation of it is prevalent in a significant number of proverbs.  

My source/interviewee for this entry is my friend K, who also grew up in China and is my age. This rhyme is so transparent in its propaganda that I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just something I made up, or that was told to me by some ‘tankie’. K confirmed to me that she had also heard of a similar rhyme at her elementary school in Shanghai, and we reminisced a bit on how crazy it was. She mentioned that Americans are shocked that in Chinese schools, we have a flag/national anthem ceremony every Monday morning, yet the Americans say the pledge and have a moment of silence every morning! That part was strange to me too, and while I stood up with my classmates during the pledge, I never said the words. We were in a Starbucks at the Village when we were talking about this, and I was worried someone would overhear it… I didn’t know which would be worse, a Chinese international student taking offense, or an American student taking offense. After my conversation with K, I asked my dad if he had heard of this, and he was surprised and asked me if I were joking. My father, who grew up in China during the seventies and eighties, is unfamiliar with this rhyme: he did not attend preschool nor elementary school due to the Cultural Revolution, during which normal school operations were ceased in order for students to train and serve in a military capacity. As such, those in his generation did not organically learn the nursery rhymes of their parents. With regards to my generation, I later learned that there was a list of state-approved children’s poems that was to be promoted in elementary schools– which is how I came to know of this particular rhyme. I believe that my father’s generation was purposefully cut off from the traditional nursery rhymes of decades past, in order to more completely institute another set of poems glorifying the new China. As I became older and immigrated to various countries in the Western world, I was shocked at the staunch propaganda implicit in the poem. As I was in a phase of desperating Americanizing myself, I denounced how evil and cunning it was to insert such explicit conditioning in a children’s song– and was disappointed in myself for not recognizing it as such. My mother, who is not Chinese, dismissed it as “typical Chinese indoctrination”, but I was very upset at how I had been conned into repeating such derogatory terms about Japanese people and praising the Red Army without knowing the context. I am now much more forgiving of myself; I was only six years old and had largely grown up in China–– I lacked critical thinking skills for two reasons: the ignorance of childhood, and the lack of outside knowledge with which to compare my reality.

Source: 张永泰. “台湾民间团体发起保钓游行.” VOA Chinese, 2012, https://www.voachinese.com/a/taiwan-boadiao/1513208.html

Reese Witherspoon Pun

Context: This was not posed as a joke, but asked in the middle of a lull in conversation. The tone of the ‘joke’ is meant to be given seriously, as if recalling a news story they had seen earlier in the day.

M.Z. : Did you hear about that actress that got stabbed? Uhh, what’s her name? Reese something. From Legally Blonde, you know who I mean? Reese—
P.Z. : Witherspoon?
M.Z. : No, with a knife.

Thoughts: The first time that I heard this joke, I was caught off guard. While it is a cringe-worthy pun, I thought that this was one of the more creative jokes that I have been told.

Boots

Context: C.O. learned about this story on a ghost tour in Old Williamsburg, Virginia.

C.O. : And then the ghost story I heard when I was, oh gosh, eleven?
P.Z. : Eleven?
C.O. : And I was in Old Williamsburg in, just outside DC.
P.Z. : Okay
C.O. : On a trip with my parents and we went on a walking ghost tour of the town, uh, at night and one of the stories they told us outside the old inn was about two sisters who I guess back in the early eighteen hundreds were staying there and it was late at night they were asleep in their beds and one of the sisters woke up because she heard something outside the window
P.Z. : Okay
C.O. : That sounded like bootprints, or footprints. Or, I can’t, footprints. Boot noises. And she went to go look at the window, pulled back the curtains and there was nothing there so she went back to bed
P.Z. : Okay
C.O. : And then she heard it again so he went back to the window, opened the window, looked outside the window, still can’t see anything, asked your sister if she heard it, she didn’t, so both of them went back to bed. And then about five minutes later she heard the, the bootstomps outside her door. And there was light but she couldn’t see any shadows, so she opens the door and nobody’s out there. So now she’s freaking out. She doesn’t know where the noise is coming from, if someone’s messing with her so she goes back to bed. And then a little whiles later, maybe about an hour, she hears the bootprints or footprints even closer. In the room. So she throws the light on, there’s nobody standing there, so she goes to sleep again, turns the light out and like not 10 seconds later she starts feeling someone pushing up on the side of her bed for her feet
P.Z. : Ohh
C.O. : Slowly pushing up. And she feels like the indentation of someone sitting like right next to her head on her bed and she freaks out turns the light on and there’s nobody there
P.Z. : No, I hate that
C.O. : And that is the last time it happens that night and that’s the end of the story. And they called it Boots. And that scared the shit out of me as a kid, I didn’t sleep for two days
P.Z. : Oh yeah I can imagine that
C.O. : But the kicker is like a week later when we got home and I was in my bedroom, going to sleep. And I felt the same thing on my bed like at the foot of my bed as if someone had sat on the edge of it and I turned the light on and there was nothing there. My cat wasn’t in the room, my pillow didn’t fall off my bed, my parents and my brother were both asleep, and it was just, and my door was closed, and it was the weirdest feeling and it was just too much of a coincidence for me.
P.Z. : I hate that
C.O. : Yeah. So that’s my one ghost story.

Thoughts: This seemed a fairly standard ghost story or legend. I’ve heard many ghost stories that similarly focus on past tragedies, colonial-era ghosts, and unexplained footsteps. I thought that the truly interesting part of this story was the personal story. As a child, I also would be terrified by these sort of stories that people told me, so I understood the concept. I thought that it was interesting to hear the first hand experience of an otherwise general story.