Text:
“So there’s this interesting food we eat during this one special holiday, the Dragon Boat Festival. It’s a special kind of rice wrapped around some other food. Like we can put meat or sticky rice inside and then we wrap it in like a tree leaf. Then we steam it. It’s a lotus tea leaf. The food is called:
Chinese: 粽子
Phonetic: Zòngzi
Transliteration: Rice dumplings son
Translation: Zongzi, a type of rice dumpling
We don’t usually eat that food during other times of the year. It’s mostly a variation of it during other times of the year or the traditional form during the Dragon Boat Festival.”
Context:
Informant (XY) is a student aged 19 from Changsha, China. He spent a few years going to elementary school in Canada but has spent almost his entire life in China. He currently goes to USC. This piece was collected during an interview over dinner in the dining hall. He learned about this from his family. He doesn’t really see any larger meaning behind the food.
Interpretation:
This particular food demonstrates how one food specific to a particular festival can undergo variation with the growth in wealth of the lower classes. This dish was originally eaten very sparingly, but due to economic developments, it is now eaten outside of the original festival. In order to preserve its traditional meaning, versions eaten outside of the original festival must vary.
Tag Archives: food
12 Round Fruits on New Year’s Eve
Background information: My dad is My mom is a second-generation Filipino-American, meaning he was born here in the US. His parents immigrated from the Philippines when they were both relatively young, and he grew spending a good amount of time with his family and distant relatives.
Dad: Yeah, every year, before New Year’s Eve, we buy twelve round fruits and make them the center piece at the table at the start of the new year.
Me: Why do we do this? Where did you learn this from?
Dad: Growing up we did this, I think. The fruits represent abundance and help us make sure that the coming year will be hearty and happy for everyone in the household. You have to have a fruit for each month, and they all have to be round.
Me: Why should the fruits all be round?
Dad: Uh…I don’t know, probably to represent the cycle of a full year? It’s hard to find 12 round ones because that’s more than they usually have at one grocery store. We always go to the asian market to get a good variety of fruits. So we end up with ones you wouldn’t eat any other time of the year, and the table looks really nice with all the fruits there.
I remember this tradition really well, as my dad has always been adamant about making sure we start the New Year with 12 round fruits on our table. I have many memories of us going to multiple markets to find fruits that were round enough, and all different enough. I myself am not sure how much my dad believes in this tradition, or if he just feels so strongly about it because it has always been a practice for him and his family, but either way, it has made me feel strongly about it too. I think this is a good example of showing how folklore can endure many generations, because even though it is not a very popular or well-known practice, I want to keep doing it for all the years to come, and I’m sure my dad does, too.
Blessing the Rice
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.
Mom: I don’t know if this is something you and the boys have noticed all the time, but I try to use the rice spoon to bless the rice before we eat every time. I draw a cross on rice with the spoon. I think this is just something all Filipino families do.
Me: Where did you learn to do this from?
Mom: I learned it from my mom, so your grandma, and it just became like a practice to bless the rice before eating. Probably like…I still do it because of the connection to grandma, so there’s nostalgia there, and of course the gesture of like actual blessing. It’s like a comforting thing. I don’t always remember to do it, but I try to do it more now and I tell your brothers to do it when we eat too.
My family did not raise me to be very religious, but my mom does always remind me to pray and have faith in a higher power, and to stay connected to my loved ones who have passed away. For my mom, I think that her relationship to religion, and religious practices like this, are mostly connected to her upbringing and relationship to her own parents. This small custom that has become an everyday practice for my mom shows how folklore and traditions that are passed down through constant performance in childhood can have such strong emotional roots for the person practicing them many years later.
Jokes about Meat Substitutes
Text
AL – What do a dildo and tofu have in common? (Pause) They’re both meat substitutes
Context
I like to collect jokes, specifically puns, on various topics so that no matter what situation I am currently in, I can say, “Oh, I know a joke about that!” I have found that most people have a love/hate relationship with puns; they tend to love telling them and hate hearing them. I mostly tell puns to family and friends, and their anger and frustration fuels me. Though my friends groan and sigh every time they hear a pun, they will still send me any good ones that they find. I also find puns on various social media platforms, in books, and on the occasional popsicle stick. Any time that I find or am sent a pun that I like, I write it in a book that I keep specifically for this purpose. My very favorite kinds of puns are the ones that are long and drawn out, ones that are a paragraph, maybe two, and you get to the end and the last line is a clever pun that uses many elements of the story that came before it. My second favorite kinds of puns are the short rude/dirty ones, because in addition to the reaction you get for any other pun, you also get the shock reaction from the vulgarity. I save the more risqué puns for close friends, as I don’t want to offend the delicate sensibilities of people that I don’t know very well.
Analysis
This is perhaps one of the vulgar puns the informant mentioned appreciating for the shock value. The pun begins with putting together very different objects and suggesting there is a similarity. The punchline depends on word play, as most puns do. Tofu is a food substitute for eating meat. And a dildo is a sex toy that substitutes for a penis, for which “meat” is sometimes used as a euphemism. The comparison of a dildo and tofu goes no further than the words “meat substitutes” themselves because the meanings of “meat” are respectively very different. As the informant mentioned, their goal with their puns is not necessarily to get a full-out laugh, but rather an eye-roll or a face-palm. I do not know how the informant collected the joke (online, in person, from a book…but probably not a popsicle stick for this one) but they tell the story to their friends who have a similar sense of humor, as it is an inappropriate joke and could be offensive to people they do not know well enough to know their sense of humor.
Galette des Rois
FESTIVE RITUAL DESCRIPTION: Every January 6 during Epiphany her mother would cook a cake called a “galette des rois” which means a cake for the kings. Inside they would place a small ceramic figure called a “fève” and whoever cut the cake and got the piece would be named king and could order everyone around for the whole day.
INFORMANT DESCRIPTION: Female, French, 42
CONTEXT: She learned this from her family who would do this every New Years Eve. She remembers how much fun it was when she got the “fève” and how she spent the whole day as the queen. She says this would bring the whole family together and make everyone laugh and have so much fun.
THOUGHTS: I think this sounds delicious and fun. Definitely something I wish my family celebrated.
PICTURE:
