Tag Archives: Chinese

The Ghosts of July

Nationality: American
Primary Language: English
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 03/31/2024

Text:

“During the month of July, the gates between the afterlife and this world open, and ghosts come to the roam in our world at night. You have to close your windows and blinds, or they’ll come into your room.”

Context:

The informant heard this story from her roommate, who grew up in China. The informant was told this story one night when they were trading various cultural stories and legends, and recalls that this was a legend believes deeply in. She also recalls that her roommate felt a ghost in her room when she was a kid and didn’t close her window. The informant doesn’t necessarily believe in the story, but thinks that all ghost stories could be possible.

Analysis:

The context of this legend being from China adds a level of cultural significance as it is tied to the lunar calendar. This means that the story has been canonized in cultural lore, but continues to shift. For example, the informant was told a “quick” version of the lore, that holds deeper cultural significance, demonstrating the popularity and easy ability to spread ghost stories. This story spreads easily both as it as a ghost stories, but because families are likely to tell their kids this story in the culture out of caution and true belief in the story. I think that ghost stories are most certainly plausible, but the notion of a singular month of “ghosts” holds less plausibility for me.

Silky Black Skinned Chicken Soup

Nationality: Chinese/Vietnamese
Primary Language: English
Other language(s): Mandarin, Cheo Chow (Chinese Dialect)
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: LA, California
Performance Date: 3/12/2024

Context:

My informant, AC, is a friend of mine from my freshman year at USC from Los Angeles, California. I talked with her about food one day in second semester freshman year after getting some soup for myself while out at lunch. On that topic of food, we touched on soup, as this is what I was planning to eat. As we discussed soup at this point, all different types of it, she mentioned that at home, she would have this chicken soup with the skin of the cooked chicken still in it, but the skin was burnt black. I questioned her further about this and she said it was a natural homemade remedy and all around good soup that was apparently, as discussed with her parents, supposed to cure her asthma and other illnesses, as a sort of magic.

Text:

“So basically, this soup would help me feel better whenever I was sick or whenever I had asthma attacks or problems. I could never figure it out, but whenever I had it, my sicknesses would just seemingly disappear the next day. And with asthma, if I ever had wheezed or anything worse, I would have this soup and then my breathing issues would just dissipate. But, I don’t know how it works, though I know it does. Again, it’s pretty strange, magical almost.”

Analysis:

Well I did a bunch of research on this topic and ended up finding out that black skin chicken soup, also known as Black Bone Soup, is a popular Chinese dish which is said to have exceptional medicinal properties. Based on my research, apparently, dark meat of black chicken breeds like the Kadaknath or cooked black skin chicken provides a rich source of carnosine, which is a protein-building compound that has antioxidant properties. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, this black chicken soup recipe tonifies (balances, stabilizes, or unblocks) qi (chi)/energy in the body. It is also believed to strengthen the liver and kidneys, nourish the blood, and improve immunity and overall energy. So, in turn black chicken soup can indeed somewhat help stabilize breathing issues due to asthma and act as an aid to sickness symptoms. Apparently, black chicken has been known since the 7th century, and it is believed that eating these chickens, known in China as gu chi, ‘chicken with black bones,’ has a beneficial effect on human health. This has been a recurring theme in Chinese culture for centuries, and based on multiple human health articles I’ve read so far, its benefits are seemingly scientifically accurate. It’s extremely interesting for me to see this form of folk medicine and near magic to be used and be historically proven to work as well. I’ve dealt with my fair share of folk medicine personally, but this one, not only have I never heard of it, it blows my mind to see how beneficial it is in the field of science when dealing with its positive effects on the human immune system.

Dim Sum Birthday Celebration

Informant: N.N

Nationality: American

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): N/A

Age: 19

Occupation: Student

Residence: Burbank, CA

Performance Date: 04/26/2024

N.N is 19 years old and is from Burbank, CA. I am close friends with his brother, so N.N is an acquaintance of mine.  I asked him if there are any festivals or rituals he participates in regularly. He tells me about a life cycle celebration / birthday ritual that his family does every year for his uncle’s birthday. 

“Oh, so in my family, we have this tradition that’s all about celebrating my Uncle B.’s birthday. It all started back when I was around 10. My mom offered we do this for Uncle B. and we just kept doing it. Every year we all get together and head out for dim sum around the afternoon. Honestly, it’s less about the birthday cake and more about stuffing ourselves with all kinds of dumplings. For me, it’s just a great excuse to eat good food and catch up with everyone.”

I think that this tradition of them getting together for dim sum is really about connecting with their Chinese heritage through a simple yet meaningful ritual. It’s also lets them bond over food and celebrate someone’s birthday together which is always a meaningful way to appreciate the simple joys of being with your family. Uncle B., from my knowledge, always played a big part in raising his nephews like N.N, and now that he has his own kids too, the family would want to show appreciation for him through this birthday ritual.

Chinese New Year Festival Foods

Context: AT is a 22 year old student at USC. Her family is Taiwanese, and they celebrate Chinese New Year by cooking a variety of specific foods. AT listed these for me, along with the reasons behind why.

Text: “For one, we eat fish, because in Chinese, there’s a lot of words that sound the same and fish sounds the same as wealth. There’s a saying that every year you get more fish, you get more wealth. We also make this like fortune? cake? Or prosperity cake? It’s called fa gao, you can look it up. We make it because the word for fortune sounds like the word for rise, like bread rising. It’s really good! There’s also sweet rice cake, because it’s sticky, and the word for sticky sounds the same as the word for year. Oh, and of course, dumplings, because they look like the old fashioned coins or like ingots of gold they used to use. Let me think… oranges too, because one of the ways to say the fruit orange sounds like the way to say good luck”

Analysis: AT gave me a list of foods, all that are made and eaten due to a perceived relationship with something they sound or look like. The choice of food seems very sympathetic-magic based, specifically homeopathic magic based. Since the word for the item of food sounds like the word for another preferred item or outcome, engaging with that imitation is thought to produce said item/outcome, in this case, producing fortune in the form of money or in the form of luck. Making a food that either sounds or looks like luck/fortune is equated to making luck/fortune for oneself.

Lunar New Year Origins

Context: the informant is a 21 year old USC student with two Taiwanese immigrant parents. She told me that this was the story behind Lunar New Year. I was unable to record her exact words, but I was given permission to paraphrase.

The story goes like this: a long long time ago, there was a village that was attacked on the same day every year by a monster named Nian, which is the Chinese word for year. Year after year, people would die and they couldn’t do anything about it. Somehow, the people found out that Nian was afraid of fire, and so before he came to attack the village that year, they hung up red lanterns, tapestries, and banners outside their doors, hoping the monster would mistake the red color for fire and leave them alone. That year, when Nian came, he saw the decorations and was frightened away; that was the first year that nobody died. Every year after that, on that specific day, they would put up red decorations, hang red lanterns outside the walls, and set off firecrackers at night to make sure that the monster would never come back. During the day, children would also be given red envelopes to put under their pillows for protection. After that first year Nian was driven away, he never came back, too scared of the red colors that he thought were fire. Now for Chinese New Year, everyone wears red and puts up red decorations as a tradition, but this is the way it started.

Analysis: From the definitions we work off of in class, this would be classified as a legend because, while it’s an origin story, it’s an origin story for a tradition rather than a people or a land. It’s clearly set in our world and isn’t necessarily sacred, so if anything, it would be a legend, considering its veracity cannot be verified and it seems like something that, though supernatural, has the potential to be true.

Considering the red is supposed to mimic fire, it seems in theory very similar to some points that Francisco Vaz da Silva made about chromatic symbolism. He argues that the use of the black/white/red tricolor symbolism was “part of a general encoding of cultural values in sensory based categories” and while his argument was in relation to womanhood, I would say that some of might still apply. Red, in his example, was more of a sign of blood or maturation in Europe, but he goes on to reference a paper on African color symbolism that considers red as associated with activity or life-giving, much in the same way that blood might function.

Here, it represents similar concepts — red is a marker of life-giving in the way that it is a symbol of protection and its presence means the continued existence of life. Fire, and by extension, red, are both connected to the idea of life, resulting in an association of fire with vitality. Fire also brings light, driving away darkness and fear, creating another association with life-giving and continued success/safety.

Fire is also among one of the first things children are taught about (usually in the context of safety) and considering few things in nature are that color, I wonder if there’s more association of red with fire rather than blood for children who grow up hearing this story.