Text:
“So well the game itself was from like a tv show. It’s uh–its uh basically a stupid party game that a host ask the other guests ‘who’s gonna die?’ and whoever talks first got shot because of the idiom ‘the gun shoots the bird that goes in the front.’ So I think thats like–I dont know–thats like one of those Chinese phrases that originated probably thousand or hundred years ago because of a story that got condensed into like four simple words or four to six simple words. The phrase itself is:
Chinese: 枪打出头鸟
Phonetic: Qiāng dǎchū tóu niǎo
Transliteration: Gun beat out head bird
Translation: The gun strikes the bird which sticks its head out.
which means literally again the gun strikes like the first bird and I think this is pretty funny because there is another proverb that conflicts with this one.”
Context:
Informant (ZZ) is a student aged 19 from Shanghai, China. He attended high school in the U.S. and currently goes to USC. This piece was collected during an interview over dinner in the dining hall. He learned the riddle from a tv show, and the proverb he learned from the tv show. He doesn’t really care much for its meaning.
Interpretation:
The riddle demonstrates how proverbs can be incorporated into other folk genres. The proverb itself demonstrates a desire within culture to conform rather than stick out.
Early Bird Gets the Worm
Text:
“As I say before, there is a proverb that conflicts with the one about the bird getting shot, and that is:
Chinese: 早起的鸟儿有虫吃
Phonetic: Zǎoqǐ de niǎo ér yǒu chóng chī
Transliteration: Early bird gets worm.
Translation: The early bird gets the worm.
which means early bird gets the worm. I don’t know I just think it’s interesting how they are contradictory. But also, these phrases come from, like, some dude from four thousand year ago, who was probably super racist or something.”
Context:
Informant (ZZ) is a student aged 19 from Shanghai, China. He attended high school in the U.S. and currently goes to USC. This piece was collected during an interview over dinner in the dining hall. He learned this proverb in school from a school book containing old Chinese proverbs. He doesn’t really care much for its meaning.
Interpretation:
This proverb demonstrates how wisdom can change within a culture over time. As (ZZ) mentions, this proverb conflicts with another proverb previously mentioned. Proverbs and wisdom can change within a culture and can vary significantly.
The Garden Shed Behind School
Background information: My brother is currently a sophomore in high school in Alameda, CA. He can still recall folklore he heard as an elementary school student at the school we grew up going to.
Brother: Behind our elementary school, there was a shed like right on the grass after the playground. It’s like a gardening shed, but I remember hearing a lot of different things about what people thought might be in there. Kids made up a lot of things – um, some said there might be a monster or some kind of evil creature, and other people said there was like a killer guy living in the shed, and that’s why you could sometimes see chainsaws in there. I don’t think there were actual chainsaws, it was more like leaf-blowers and gardening tools. I remember hearing different things from lots of different kids though, in all the different grades too.
Me: Did you ever go near the shed?
Brother: Yeah, I looked in one time and thought I saw like…a glowing red light? Like, I thought for a second that it might be an eye but it was probably just something reflecting or something like that. And other than that I just saw gardening stuff. I don’t really know what’s in there.
Hearing my brother talk about this garden shed was somewhat shocking, as I was surprised at how well I remembered what kids would tell me about the shed, and how eerie it seemed to me when I was a child. Folklore like this, one that is so widespread and widely talked about within your own community, can become so salient that, even years later, I could recall how scary the garden shed seemed to me and my friends – so much so that children rarely ever went near it.
Tahoe Tessie
Background information: My mom is a second-generation Filipino-American, meaning she was born here in the US. Her parents immigrated from the Philippines when they were both relatively young, and my mom’s family grew up with a lot of relatives in San Francisco, CA. However, later in her childhood, she moved with her parents and sister to Lake Tahoe, CA.
Mom: There’s like a little Loch Ness Monster type thing that people talk about in Tahoe called “Tahoe Tessie”. I’ve never really seen anything, but you know when you really stare out at the water, your eyes might play tricks on you. Sometimes though, I really have felt like I couldn’t identify what something was, and I think, no one really knows what could be in the lake – no one has ever gotten all the way to the bottom! It’s a hella deep lake, and who knows, maybe there is some kind of freshwater serpentine thing. No one would know because it’s not like they ever mess with anyone or anything on the shore.
Me: Where did you learn about Tahoe Tessie?
Mom: I think it’s just the kind of thing you hear about as a kid, I remember my friends asking me if I had heard about Tahoe Tessie, or being at the lake and hearing people talk about seeing it. But it’s well-known for people who live there.
This legend is interesting because it is so specific to an area/region – I don’t think very many people outside of Lake Tahoe know about Tahoe Tessie, and I have never heard of anyone who has had an actual sighting. However, my mom mentioned a lot about the idea of the “unknown” since no one has ever actually seen the entirety of Lake Tahoe, and I think that this is where a lot of legendary creatures like Tahoe Tessie come from.
Stepping on the High School Emblem
Background information: My younger brother is currently a high school sophomore in Alameda, CA. He knows a lot about the school’s culture now that classes are in person.
Brother: Do you know about this one? Do you know, like the, school emblem thing on the floor in front of the office at school?
Me: No, I’ve never heard this one.
Brother: Oh, you know how there’s like an emblem thing for our school on the floor right outside of the office…well you’re not supposed to step on it because it gives you bad luck or something if you do. If you step on it, you might not graduate or something like that. I heard about it because my friends would remind me not to step on it when we would walk by. I’m scared now so I never do. I though everyone knew about it, but if you don’t maybe it’s a new thing or not that many people actually do it. Maybe people are making up new things since we’re back at school, and it’s kinda fun to spread stuff like that.
Initially, I was shocked that my brother knew about a folklore practice at school that I had never heard of. I wondered if this rumor had re-emerged more for his year since I’ve graduated, or if I had just never been told about it. I think that this speaks to the fact that, because folklore like this is unspoken, everyone who is part of the group it is related to assumes that everyone else in that group knows about it.