Tag Archives: Chinese

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.

Zodiac Animal Order Origin

Context: the informant is a 21 year old USC student and the daughter of 2 Taiwanese immigrants. She told me that this was the story of how the zodiac animals were ordered the way they were, and said it was a story she learned growing up

The story goes that one day, the gods held a contest for all the animals. She was unsure exactly if the animals had been chosen beforehand or if it was for all the animals, but essentially, twelve animals were in competition with each other, and the ones that completed the race first would be earlier in the zodiac cycle. The biggest obstacle in this course was a large river. The rat, which is first, won by jumping onto the ox and waiting for it to ford the river normally; once the ox had crossed, the rat ran further ahead, which is why the rat is first and the ox is second. The tiger came next, with the rabbit following quickly after as it had to jump across logs to make it across the river. The dragon was fifth, as it had stopped to help others out on the way. The snake and horse came next; the horse was initially first, but was scared by the snake and fell behind. The monkey, rooster, and sheep followed after, having tried to help each other through. The dog came second to last, and the pig came last, as it had accidentally fallen asleep during the race. The order that the animals arrived in was the solidified zodiac order.

Analysis: this is very much a myth about the origins of the Chinese zodiac calendar, attaching stories to animals in a way similar to how ancient Greek constellations were categorized. It’s not a story that’s meant to be questioned — only to be believed. The informant and her family don’t necessarily believe in this directly but they know the story regardless, and believe that children born in different zodiac years carry different qualities. I’ve been friends with many East Asian kids growing up, and all of their parents attach different qualities to the zodiac years, much in the way that Westerners typically do with astrology. They’re aware that it acts as a sort of pseudo-science, but this does not affect their belief in it, which stands in line with the idea that myths are not questioned, only believed.

Hou Yi and Chang’e Legend

Context: The informant is a 21 year old USC student and the daughter of two Taiwanese immigrants. She told me that she was definitely missing some details, but this is the story she learned growing up about the origins of the Mid-Autumn festival. The following are her exact words.

“So, there’s a couple, right, and the guy has like superhero strength – warrior vibes. At the time, there were 10 suns in the sky, and they were so hot that they were burning everything up, so he shot 9 of them out of the sky, leaving only one behind. As a reward, some higher power gave him this magic potion to make him stronger, but in the middle of the night, the day before he was meant to take it, his enemy poisoned it. For some reason, he still wanted to take it, so before he could, his wife drank the whole thing to save him. She ended up floating up into the moon, and so during the Mid-Autumn festival, because the moon is full, people say you can still see her silhouette up there.”

After doing some research, I found out that this is known as the story of Hou Yi and Chang’e, an immortal archer and his wife, the moon goddess before the latter becomes the moon goddess; this seems as if it would count as a mythic narrative. Not only is this the origin story of the sun, but it’s also the origin of the designs present on the moon. There’s a pretty common history of humans seeing faces where there are none (tree trunks) and looking at the moon would reasonably yield the same result. It’s not a story that anyone thinks could have happened, but also not a story that one would disagree with, considering the nature of it. Interestingly, there’s multiple different versions of this story online, including ones where Hou Yi goes mad with power rather than having his elixir poisoned and instead Chang’e must protect others by acting against him. It would be interesting to see if these differences revealed anything about typical historical conflicts that a certain region might have faced or a regional variation in values that might have caused this oicotypical difference.

The Number Four 

四   死
Sì   Sǐ
Four Death 
The usage of these two words together is considered bad luck, additionally one should not use the number four during celebration if possible.

So I’m Chinese, so the number four sounds like death, Sì, and the number four, Sǐwáng, the two words sound very similar, so it’s a little taboo for the number four to appear during celebrations. For example, if I were hypothetically to get married, I would probably not pick the fourth, I wouldn’t give, I don’t know, four dollars to anyone on a celebration (laughs), you know, just avoid the number. [Will someone actively use four if they want to wish ill intent on someone, or no?] No, but my mom avoids it. She’ll just tell me not to, so if it comes up that I accidentally use it she’ll just be like “ha, ha don’t do that, boo” (laughs) [So was your mom where you first heard it?] Yeah. It doesn’t really play a role in my everyday life, it’s more so something I take into consideration if I’m trying to celebrate my heritage specifically. So that’s only something I would like keep in mind if, say, my friends and I want to go out for dinner for, say, Chinese new year, and they sit us at the number four (the number four table) it might not be very lucky. If I were to be a little nit-picky and I was in the mood to fight, (laughs) I could tell the waitress I don’t want to sit here. [Laughs] [Do you feel actively not using it will bring people good luck, or is it just preventing bad luck?] It’s preventing bad luck, and it’s not something I think about very much, it’s more of a fun way to connect to my culture but I know people who take it seriously. My parents (laughs) being the people.

-Interview with Informant

The informant’s parents are both Chinese, but the informant was born in San Fransisco, and although they live in Hong Kong, they intend to live in the states after college. Although their parents both strongly believe that the number four can bring bad luck and they were raised not to use the two words together and that four was bad luck, the informant does not hold those same beliefs. This most likely is a result of their international schooling and their everyday life requiring English instead of Cantonese. The words four and death are very different in English, so the superstitious association doesn’t exist in English. The four leaf clover is considered good luck in Ireland, England and the United States. Additionally in the United States one of the most important holidays, Independence Day, is celebrated on the Fourth of July. People often believe what their peers believe, and the informants peers are mostly US students who don’t place any stock in four being bad luck. Not only does the word association not exist in English, there are multiple instances in which the number four brings good luck or is associated with joy or celebration. With the informant pays respect to their heritage and the beliefs of their parents, they much more closely resemble their American peers when it comes to this superstition.