Tag Archives: Chinese

The Story of Mulian

Background: My informant, CL, grew up in Taiwan, and speaks Mandarin, Hakka, English, Japanese, and Cantonese. Interview conducted in English over FaceTime.

Me: Do you know why Taiwan celebrates Ghost Month?

CL: “There’s a famous story in China regarding ghost month. The story of Mulian. He sees that his mom did a lot of bad things when she was still alive. So after she died she became a starving ghost. Mulian tried to use his powers because he’s a Buddhist, just tries to bring food to his mom because she’s a starving ghost. But whatever he served to her became burning…ashes right away. There was no way for his mom to eat it. He cries out, sees that his mom is tortured, and asks for a blessing from the Buddha. Buddha told him that because his mom did bad things, she has to suffer. Buddha told him that to reduce his mom’s suffering, the only way is to do good things, which is why they started Ghost Month: to worship ghosts, pray, and hopefully they can go to heaven. And finally the mom got released from the devil because Mulian did a lot of good things.

Me: So is Ghost Month just a thing for Buddhists then?

CL: No. Most people in Taiwan are Buddhist, but the Mulian story is famous–when I was a kid, a lot of TV shows talk about it because we didn’t know why we had Ghost Month. It’s about doing good things so your ancestors won’t be punished. In the old times less people could read, most people were farmers. So using drama or live shows let people in the countryside understand the purpose of the story: to do good things so your ancestors won’t be punished.

Me: Are ancestors just for Buddhists?

CL: No, we all have ancestors. Buddhists go to the temple to pray for them, but we still respect ancestors.

Analysis: Although the Mulian story is seemingly grounded in a more institutional presence like Buddhism, from my knowledge Ghost Month is widely celebrated throughout Taiwan regardless of its religious implications, much like Christmas in the US. Ancestor worship goes back to Confucian and perhaps Daoist ideology as well, so there’s a convergence of beliefs and practices at play here. Its structure is very much the classic cautionary tale, that shapes an idea of what “good” behavior would look like, particularly conveyed in an oral retelling to illiterate villagers. It’s clear to see why the story has stuck around, because its narrative progression is logical and points to a fairly universal moral message–respect your elders and ancestors, or else face karmic retribution.

The king of ants

–Informant Info–

Nationality: Chinese American

Age: 27

Occupation: Student

Residence: Los Angeles, California

Date of Performance/Collection: 2022

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): Mandarin

(Notes-The informant will GT be referred to as and the interviewer as K)

Background info: GT is a Chinese American student who was born and raised in California. Both his parents were born and raised in a small town in China, which is where he knows this story from. He told me this story in his home during the daylight.

K: Uh…so what’s the name of the story, the uh context of the performance and uh where-or how do you know if it? Like who told you or where did you hear it?

GT: *laughter* sorry I’m like super awkward. Uh, it’s called 蚂蚁之王, which means like uh “The king of ants” in English, I think. It’s told just like an uh like a bedtime story, like a fairytale and I always heard it from my mom or grandma. Oh! Also like everyone has a pretty different version, the only real similarity is like the ants help someone out, so this is only my, uh my family’s version of the story.

K: Cool! That’s perfect actually, start whenever you want. And if you only know a word in Mandarin or whatever that’s fine I can translate later.

GT: Yeah ok so uh… it’s really simple. So there was this guy, Ho Kwan of Kuang Nan, and he was like super kind. Like Buddhist level kind. He had this big jar of silver he had been saving for like his whole life when one day a bunch of ants came in and ate part of the silver. Oh! The ants were also white, which is important. Anyways uh, the guys’ family wanted to take revenge so they found where the ants were living, and there were MILLIONS, and said they would destroy them. Ho Kwan said no and argued until his family eventually left, leaving the ants unharmed. Uh…then he had like a dream uh that night, and it was like super weird. *laughter*. So a bunch of soldiers dressed in white (emphasized word white while winking) escorted him through this like huge, magnificent, rich city to the king who was also dressed in white. The king thanked uh…Ho Kwan for sparing him and his people, and said like sorry for the other ants stealing his silver. He directed Ho Kwan to a tree and said there’s a big jar of silver uh buried there for him. So Ho Kwan woke up and meditated and dug up the dirt and realized that like there was silver there! The end *laughter*

Interpretation:
This was the first bit of Chinese folklore I had really ever heard and it was so interesting! I like the fact that there are so many versions of this same story, which isn’t surprising due to how physically large China is. I did a little bit of further research on some of the other versions of the story, and most of them were a man helping the ants in some way and later getting rewarded. Most of them included someone else trying to attack the ants and the man protecting them. I thought that especially was important to note. A lot of these stories originate from around the rise of Buddhism in China, so it makes sense that so many of these stories would include being kind to living beings that normally you wouldn’t think twice about. The reward also makes sense. Although not very Buddhist in teaching, the reward system in this story appeals to more people than a purely Buddhist reward, which one won’t see until death.

Ren Shan Ren Hai

AW is a 19 year old college student. She is an undergraduate computer science major and is from Los Angeles County. She is Chinese American and has lived in LA all of her life.

Context: AW is a good friend of mine, so we sat down after dinner to discuss folklore she picked up across her life.

Transcript:

AW: There is one saying that my parents say all the time. It goes:

人山人海

Translation: Ren Shan Ren Hai

English Translation: People mountain people see

Literal Translation: There are so many people here.

AW: The words don’t make sense but when you say it it just means, “woah there is a crap ton of people here”. It can vary from place to place though, like how in the US there are phrases for heavy rain and such.

Collector: Is that a phrase you use personally?

AW: Only when I’m speaking Mandarin and am with my parents and family friends.

Thoughts/Analysis: This idiom is a form of folk speech that Chinese people use to reference large crowds. It is similar to “long time no see”. It shows how folklore is directly linked to language in which the structure is similar. It also shows how language is used to connect folklore in different countries like how language is used to link India and Europe. I typically do not notice how people in America use expressions with the same structure and did not realize it was a universal thing because language changes sentence structure. I have found however that it is universal that many expressions use the natural environment as an idiom or use an idiom to express the natural environment (like rain).

For other variations of Chinese Idioms regarding mountains or seas, see:

Rapatan, N. (2013, May 14). Yu gong yi shan idiom. USC Digital Folklore Archives. Retrieved April 20, 2022, from http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/yu-gong-yi-shan-idiom/

Folk Object — Jade Necklace

Background:

Informant (W) is a 78 y/o Chinese woman living in China.

Main Piece:

(Interview is translated from Mandarin Chinese.)

I: Can you tell me more about the jade necklace you gave me when I was younger?

W: Oh, I remember that. Your cousin had one, so you were begging me to get one for you too.

I: Why do people wear it? Is there something special about the jade?

W: Jade is a very important stone in China. If you wear a piece of jade, it sucks out all of the impurities in your body (吸毒, lit. “sucking poison”). When you see a dark spot in your piece of jade, that’s the negative energy it took.

I: So it’s stored in that piece of jade forever?

W: Yes, that’s what the jade does.

Context:

This conversation took place over a phone call.

Analysis:

The jade necklace can be loosely defined as a folk object. The existence of a folk object is defined by how it’s used, which changes over time, and are generally created from natural materials. With its staggering popularity, something like a jade necklace is probably mass-produced and distributed, and most likely has a variety of uses, from purely aesthetic reasons to religious ones (many jade necklaces are Buddha carvings or have Chinese zodiac signs). However, the shape of the jade is generally a round circle or donut shape—folk objects usually are slow to change in its form. In what my informant tells me, this particular instance of a jade necklace also uses contagion magic. By contact with the skin, the jade is able to suck out impurities within the body (specifically what this entails, my informant did not specify). This act gives the jade a sacred purpose and a usage other than aesthetics.

Yeet Hay

Background:

Informant (A) is a Chinese-American student at USC.

Main Piece:

A: It’s like, I don’t even know how to explain it well, it’s like, not hot and cold, but some food just have like a hotter energy or colder energy, it’s like all of this [gestures to her lunch], but that’s yeet hay, and it’s like if you eat too much of it you break out, and bad things happen to you and you need to have a balance in your diet and literally my mom would be so horrified by how I eat.

I: Was there anything in particular that you remember? Like just any food that you remember that maybe your mom was like, oh—

A: Just like, in general, like I would be like, “Parents, I have a medical something” or “Please use Western medicine” and they’d be like, “No, you can fix your issue by not eating chips” like eat a fruit, the balance or whatever.

Context:

This conversation was recorded in-person over lunch. The concept of yeet hay was brought up as my informant noted her lunch wouldn’t be conducive with yeet hay.

Analysis:

Yeet hay (熱氣, zheng qi, lit. “hot air”) is a Chinese medicinal concept in relation to food and the body, drawing on ideas of homeopathic magic. As explained by my informant, eating foods with a certain type of energy would either raise or cool down the body’s internal energy/temperature, which in turn affects biological functions and conditions. The longstanding tradition of Chinese medicine is most likely what drives belief in the idea, as opposed to Western medicine which has sprung up only in the last couple hundred years. Of course, in my informant’s case, yeet hay seems to also be applied as a method to get children to eat healthier by using such a traditional/ancient belief as a method of persuasion.