Tag Archives: Chinese

Fermented Rice (醪糟)

Context:
The informant is a Chinese woman in her mid-50s who was born and raised in China and currently lives in Beijing. She grew up within a traditional cultural environment where home remedies and food-based health practices were commonly passed down between women in the family.

Text:
The informant describes fermented rice (醪糟) as a common traditional food often associated with women’s health, particularly during menstruation. It is typically served warm, sometimes with eggs or sugar, and is believed in popular practice to help “warm the body” and support recovery during a woman’s period. The informant explains that in her experience, it is often recommended within family settings as a comforting food during menstruation.

Analysis:
This shows how fermented rice functions not only as a household food but also as part of a gendered system of folk health knowledge. Its association with menstruation reflects broader cultural ideas about balancing the body, warmth, and recovery through food. Within this context, the dish becomes more than nourishment—it carries symbolic meaning tied to women’s bodily experience and care. At the same time, its continued use in everyday life demonstrates how traditional beliefs about health are preserved and normalized through domestic practice. In this way, fermented rice can also be understood as a form of embodied cultural knowledge that connects food, gender, and wellbeing in everyday life.

Fan-fiction “Tropes”

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old undergraduate student studying linguistic at Cambridge. She was and still is involved in both Chinese and the English online community for fan-fictions. In the interviewee she shared a interesting characteristic of the Chinese fandom community.

Text:

The informant explains that in traditional Chinese poetry there is a concept called 词牌名 (brand of a tune), which can be understood as the name of a fixed melodic pattern. In classical poetry, lyrics (词) were written to be sung according to set tunes, meaning the 词牌名 functions like a structural template or musical framework, while the actual content of each poem could vary.

She notes that in modern Chinese fan-fiction communities, a similar concept exists. Certain recurring titles and narrative tropes are reused across different fandoms, and users themselves sometimes refer to these as 词牌名.

Examples include phrases such as:

  • “真相是假” (The Truth Is Fake)
  • “五次他……这一次他没有” (Five Times They …, and This Time They Didn’t）
  • “生长痛” (Growing Pains)
  • “花吐症” (Flower-Puking Syndrome – a fictional illness trope in fandom where a person coughs up flowers due to unrequited love)
  • “斯德哥尔摩情人” (Stockholm Lover)

The informant finds this particularly interesting because it represents a blend between traditional Chinese literary structure and contemporary youth creative writing practices.

Analysis:

This phenomenon shows how classical literary frameworks can be reinterpreted within digital fan cultures as reusable narrative templates. Similar to traditional 词牌名, these modern “titles-as-structures” function as pre-existing emotional and thematic molds that guide storytelling while allowing variation in content. Their repetition across different fandoms creates a shared expressive vocabulary, enabling writers to quickly communicate complex emotional narratives through recognizable tropes. At the same time, the adaptation of a classical term to describe internet writing practices reflects how traditional cultural concepts are continuously recontextualized by younger generations, linking historical literary forms to contemporary participatory culture.

Golden Cicadas and Good Luck

“So basically, there were cicadas, especially, like, golden cicadas.

In Chinese culture they are, like, a symbol of good luck, because cicadas, I think are silent for, like, 100 years, or something crazy.

Like, they’re silent for their entire life basically, but then during one, one specific year, they’ll chirp, but it’ll be really loud.

So it’s kind of, like, you’re biding your time, but then, when it’s your time, you can, flourish. That is the kind of vibe.

And so, I’m not sure if this is just something that, like, my parents do, but they always, like, have these little cicada statues, and they are golden.

And I have everything at college, and basically, anytime I have, like, a big test or, like, big, important, decisions or, like, things that I’m, like, waiting for, I’ll just, like, rub the top of its head for good luck.

So I remember when it was college decision time. During that time, we would, me and my sister both, like, sit with it in our lap, basically. But, yeah, we basically just rubbed its head for good luck, and, like, before I take a test, I always do that as well.

I just think that the cicadas represent good luck and, like, prosperity. I think rubbing the statue is just something that’s kind of like a physical thing that you can do to make yourself feel better.

Um, so, yeah. I don’t know if that’s like a real thing, though. She’s something that, like, we’ve always done.”

Context: The informant is a Chinese-Vietnamese-American female USC student whose mother is Buddhist. Although she grew up in the U.S., her family maintains cultural traditions, including keeping small golden cicada statues that symbolize luck and prosperity. Now she has brought a golden cicada to college to continue the tradition.

Analysis: This is an example of folk belief combined with a personal ritual and material culture. The cicada statue itself is a physical object that carries symbolic meaning, representing patience and eventual success in Chinese tradition. The act of rubbing the statue becomes a small, repeated behavior for good luck. Even though she’s unsure if it’s a formal tradition, it still holds meaning for her, showing how folklore can be adapted and maintained across generations.

Black Milk Tea

Text: Below is a performance describing the consumption of black milk tea family ritual.

The Interviewee was asked to recount any folklore or superstitions he remembered.

Interviewee: Another, I guess, family tradition or superstition we have, you can also call it a superstition, like, uh, my Grandpa on my Dad’s side of the family always, he would always make black milk tea, brew, almost boil, these black tea leaves, concentrate it super, super hard, and then, like, add evaporated milk to it, and would alway add two cubes of sugar to it. That was just like his tradition.

Interviewer: And what was that supposed to bring, or, what is the purpose of that?

Interviewee: So, actually, like my Grandpa, and especially, like, my Dad’s side of the family, like, they, uh, suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution in China. I’m not going to go through that, but there’s, like, a whole thing you can look at it. Um, it was also even hard to get black tea leaves during the Cultural Revolution during that time, so like for them, those black tea leaves that they had was, like, almost like sacred to them. Even though now it’s like fifty years later, and, like, that chaotic time is now passed, even I still, like, brew black tea leaves the way my Grandpa used. So, it’s like, I guess it’s like a tradition that, like, I’ve held on to even though he’s passed it on.

Context:

This excerpt is from a conversation with a grad student studying Biology after a MMA (mixed-martial arts) practice. The student was raised in Walnut, California, and has parents that are Chinese immigrants. Currently, the ritual consumption of black milk tea is performed by his father and grandfather whenever they want to bring about good luck, but historically, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it was performed rarely, only every once in a while, when they could find black tea leaves, living in extreme poverty.

Analysis:

This example illustrates how tradition can endure as context and place change. The original habit of consuming black milk tea was informed by extreme poverty, where the consumption of the tea’s ingredients could only happen rarely due to the circumstances of famine. Now, the tradition endures as a ritual consumption of the black milk teas, to recall that time in the past, and signify the surviving that took place. The original creation of this black milk tea could only happen when interviewee’s father and grandfather were lucky enough to find the ingredients, so now, even though the ingredients now take no luck to find, the tradition has held on to that feeling, as it now conveys good luck and fortune.

“Keep your door open slightly” Minor Genre

Text: Here’s a performance describing the folk proverb “Keep your door open slightly.”

Interviewer: Are there any family sayings that have been passed down or that you’ve heard?

Interviewee: Yeah, so my parents would always say growing up 门开紧, in Shanghainese that roughly translates into “Keep your door open only slightly” or “Only open your door just a little bit” and I think the closest equivalent to that in English is, like, “Keep a tight circle” or, like, “People don’t have to know everything about, like, your life.”

Context:

This excerpt is from a conversation with a college student studying Biology after a MMA (mixed-martial arts) practice. The student was raised in Walnut, California and has parents that are both Chinese immigrants. According to the interviewee, the proverb was used when his family was trying to communicate to him growing up that “you [should] keep to yourself and, um, like ‘Mind your own business’. It’s almost like you’ll stay on the straight path and people, like, can’t really like mess your life up.”

Analysis:

This proverb exemplifies family in-group and out-group wisdom. The folk speech effectively communicates that amongst people that are not within the family, you should not share too much personal information. This protects the family unit, and solidifies that unit in contrast to relationships with those outside of it. Also, when the interviewee tried to describe the saying, and express it in English, the interviewee used many folk expressions to try to relay the meaning, such as “stay on the straight path” and “mind your own business”. This explanation is interesting in that folk speech holds vernacular authority, so in order to translate the vernacular authority of a folk expression, the use of another folk expression is extremely useful. This pairing also illustrates how the same piece of wisdom is shared across American and Chinese cultures, even if they are worded differently.