Tag Archives: Taiwanese

The Story of Hǔ Gū Pó

Nationality: Taiwan
Age: 51
Occupation: Businessman
Residence: Bay Area, California
Performance Date: March 21, 2014
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, Hokkien

[Translated from Mandarin Chinese]

Once upon a time, the hǔ gū pó (虎姑婆; a tiger spirit) lived atop a mountain. She wanted to become human, but the only way to do so was to eat children. From time to time she left her mountain to visit the village below, where she would sneak up on children from behind and eat them. After a while, the villagers discovered that wearing a mask on the backs of their heads would confuse the hǔ gū pó and prevent her from eating them. She was starting to look very human, but she still had a tiger’s tail to hide. With no more children to catch, the hǔ gū pó wandered down to the houses.

In one house lived a girl, her younger brother, and their parents, but the parents were out of town for the day. The tiger spirit tucked her tail within her pants and disguised herself as the children’s aunt.
“Your parents asked me to look after you today,” she said, and the children let her in.

In the middle of the night, the little girl woke up to a strange crunching sound.
“What are you eating?” she asked the hǔ gū pó.
“I am eating peanuts,” came the reply. “Would you like some?”
The hǔ gū pó handed over one of the little boy’s fingers.
Understanding that the tiger spirit had already eaten her brother, the little girl escaped from the house, pretending that she needed to use the bathroom.

The next morning the tiger spirit found the little girl hiding atop a tree.
“Come down,” the hǔ gū pó demanded, hungry.
“Fine,” the girl said. “But you should prepare a vat of boiling oil first, so I’ll taste better.”
The hǔ gū pó did just that.
“Now, hoist up the vat to me. I will cook myself and then jump into your mouth. Close your eyes and open your mouth.”
The tiger spirit did just that. The little girl poured the oil into the hǔ gū pó’s mouth and therefore killed her.

—

The story of hǔ gū pó is a well-known children’s folktale in Taiwan, and this is one of the many versions. It has been compared to the western tales of the Little Red Riding Hood, and “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats”. It has been adapted into a less violent nursery rhyme telling children to stop crying and to go to sleep. The informant (my father) had learned the story from his parents and in turn told it to me many times as a kid. 

When I first heard it, I did not think much of the plot points—upon retrospect, however, the story seemed unusually gruesome for a children’s tale. While “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats” has a similar premise, it is not as violent. The wolf deceives the goats and gobbles them up, but the youngest goat is able to cut open the wolf and save his siblings from its stomach, replacing the weight with rocks, which eventually drown the wolf. In the story of hǔ gū pó, the brother is not only eaten, but the sister receives the dismembered finger as food. She also kills the tiger spirit quite directly/actively. This may be a reflection on the differing cultural contexts of these two tales, in terms of ethics, etc.

Chinese New Year in a Taiwanese-American home

Nationality: Taiwanese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 21, 13
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese

“It’s just my nuclear family that’s here in America. So it’s my mom, my dad, sister, and me. So ‘family’ constitutes as, you know, those four and then just anyone who’s Taiwanese that we see, they’re considered family. So for Chinese New Year gatherings, we would gather together with like–probably like six other families, and we would do Chinese things.

So what we do as Taiwanese Americans… Normally you get together with every part of your family–like, mom’s, dad’s sides. But again, we’re just the four of us. So we just gather with these other families who are also just here by themselves. Um. So we all get together in one of our houses, like every year, we go to a different person’s house.

And, uh…there’s really no structure to it. Because I was a kid, so you know, you sit at the kids’ table, and then, um… So there’s food, there’s a lot of food. My family’s vegetarian…that’s–that’s the whole Buddhist part. So there’s…we go for the vegetarian option. But then the other families aren’t all Buddhist, so um…they…usually order take out. So part of it they cook, the other part is like, ‘too lazy, might as well just order.’

Um. And so, we usually just go and get food. And then the adults hang out upstairs and we hang out in the basement–like the lounge slash TV–wherever the TV is, the kids gravitate towards. So we play, like, video games.

And then there’s the transition after dinner, like when most people are done eating. Then we take turns, family by family, where you sit–the mom and dad on chairs, like in the lounge. And then you have the kids kind of sit and bow in front of them, and they kind of like–this is where you, like, ask for the red envelope. Where you have to earn it.

Which is–so, in Chinese New Year culture, you have the parents–I don’t know why we do this–the parents give a gift of monetary value in the form of a red envelope to the children. Um. Oh God, I don’t even know why. It’s probably–it’s a sense of good luck, and fortune. It means–it’s a metaphor for something. I don’t know what it is. I’m sure there’s a whole ritual for it, in China or Taiwan, but it’s like distilled down into, like: ‘Okay, the parents sit here. Okay, uh, ask for your red envelopes. In Chinese! In the broken Chinese that you have.’

And so you do that. And then there’s some hugging. And then, like…Asian families are a lot less vocal, about their emotions. It’s like, the love is just insinuated, like, “Oh yeah, I make food for you every night. I love you.” But here, it’s like, kinda awkward. You kinda wanna say it, but then it’s like… So. That happens. It’s, like, awkward. And, like…yeah.

So then each family does that. Oh, and when we were really young? They had us perform before that. So, like, there’d be a violin performance, and then another violin performance. And I think that’s about all we did. And then as we got older, it was just–go straight for it. Everyone just got too lazy.

And then after that, we would go back to eating and playing video games. And then cake. Because we would meet, like, once a month. So it was like, ‘Okay, all the–the January birthdays!’ and there would be a giant cake with candles on it. And you’d blow that out, and then we’d eat cake. And then play video games until our parents told us we had to go.

And that was Chinese New Year.

And all the other holidays seemed to be the same basic structure. Video games, some awkward ceremony…and cake.”

My informant moved to the US when he was five years old. He belongs to a Taiwanese-American Buddhist family, and he was very adamant about the fact that they were neither Taiwanese nor American, but a combination of the two. Because of this, he seemed unsure if the way that his family celebrates the Chinese New Year was “traditional” or bore any resemblance to the way other families celebrate the holiday.
The combination of the traditional (the red envelope ceremony – red for luck) and the modern (the kids all playing video games) seems to be the norm for many immigrant families. In my informant’s description of his Chinese New Year, it is evident that, as he explained, his family is both Taiwanese and American.
I found his aside about the way that his family shows love very interesting. They are tight-knit and obviously love each other, but as he describes it, it is much more demonstrative than stated outright. After all, what can be more loving than feeding your kids every day?

Rice and Pimples

Nationality: Taiwanese American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/10/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese

Click here for video.
“So when I was little, I was really bad about finishing the food that I ate. […] My mother used to try to convince me to finish my food by telling me that for each grain of rice that I didn’t finish and left in my bowl, I would later on get a pimple and hopefully that’s not true.”

My informant’s mother is from Taiwan. Interestingly, I’ve heard the exact same thing from my own mom, who is also from Taiwan. Its possible that this way of getting kids to finish their rice may have originated somewhere in Taiwan. The country has had a history of food shortages among the lower classes, especially during the Japanese occupation. This piece of folklore may have originated as a way for the older generation who have suffered through food shortages to convince their youngsters (who haven’t experienced famine and don’t understand the importance of eating) by appealing to their vanity.

“Gook” and “Tianmu” Origination Legend/Starcraft and Koreans.

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Room 4203B, 920 W. 37th PL. Los Angelos, California 90007
Performance Date: 4/22/2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My informant is a third generation Chinese American male student. He grew up in Irvine, California. During dinner in a shopping center, he mentioned the following origination legend of the word “gook” (He was eating Korean food, which prompted his anecdote):

“Informant: Ok, so, why are Koreans called gooks?

Collector: Why?

Informant: Well, during the Korean War, the South Korean troops would applaud the American soldiers when they came walking through the fields to liberate them and they’ll cry out, “Megook! Megook!”, which means “America” in Korean. However, the American soldiers, in all their wisdom, felt that the Korean soldiers were identifying themselves as gook, “me gook”; hence they started calling them gooks. So the Koreans are called me “gook!”, me “gook!”. “Oh, you call yourself gook! I get it, you guys are all gooks!”

Collector: Ok, so where did you hear this?

Informant: I heard it from my Korean friends.

Collector: Do you know where he heard it from?

Informant: He’s Korean [laughter]. He was probably born knowing this story, kind of like how he was born knowing how to play Starcraft, and born knowing that they created the sundial.

Collector: [laughter] Well, what do you think is the importance of that little tidbit of history?

Informant: The term “gook” is often used to apply to Southeast Asian populations, as well as Koreans. This kind of says that Koreans are indeed number 1.”

This legend is set during the Korean War from 1950 – 1953 and explains the origination of the racial slur “gook”. My informant’s tone of voice implies that the Americans are, as he says, liberators (“the good guys”) but nonetheless foolish. The foolishness of the American soldiers lies in their assumption that everyone speaks English and in their misunderstanding of the Korean that the Koreans are speaking. The legend suggests that the American soldiers hold a sort of bigoted assumption that everyone naturally speaks English.

Interestingly, I, myself, have heard a variation of this legend in 2005 from a cram school math teacher in Tianmu, Taipei, Taiwan. Here’s a bit of background on me: I’m a third generation Chinese Taiwanese male student who was born in Taipei, Taiwan. I speak English and Chinese. I lived in Taipei for two years before moving to New Jersey, where I lived for seven years. After that, I returned to Taipei where I finished high school.

My cram school math teacher performed this legend as a joke item in between math tests.

For more information on Tien-mu, click this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianmu,_Shilin_District.

As I remember, the story goes:

“Do you know where the name Tianmu comes from? Back in the 1960s, when American Soldiers occupied Tianmu, they would come into the fields and ask the Taiwanese farmers, “Where are we?” But, the Taiwanese farmers, unable to understand English, said, “Tee-yah-buo?” (‘Tee-yah-buo’ means ‘I don’t understand’ in Taiwanese), “Tee-yah-buo?”. The American Soldiers misunderstanding the farmers said, “Oh! Tian-mu! Tian-mu. Ok. OK.” Hence, Tianmu is called Tianmu.”

*My cram school math teacher performed the legend in Chinese; however, it’s been too long for me to remember the exact way he performed it.*

Both my informant and my legend deal with post-world war affairs in East Asian. While the “gook ” legend originated during or after the Korean War, the “Tianmu” legend originated during or after the American occupation of Taiwan in the 1950s, when the U.S was still fighting the Pacific front. However, the story could have also possibly originated in the 1960s when U.S soldiers stayed in Tianmu to help the reconstruction of Taipei’s economy. The legends both show a cultural remembrance in how the U.S shaped East Asia in the 1950s to 1960s post world war II and overall, portray the Americans as a positive influence yet foolish in their approach. Moreover, the tone both the legends were performed do suggest a sort of respect for the work the American soldiers did in Korea and Taiwan.

Another interesting thing my informant mentioned in his performance of the “gook” legend was:

“kind of like how he was born knowing how to play Starcraft, and born knowing that they created the sundial.”

There seems to be a widespread belief on the internet and in online gaming folk culture that Koreans are really good at Starcraft, a online real time strategy game. A simple Google search on “koreans are good at starcraft” yields 2,770,000 results.  More information can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_II:_Wings_of_Liberty.

Also, there seems to be a widespread belief that  Koreans think they invented everything, hence my informant mentions that his Korean friend was born knowing that his country created the sundial, which is not a widespread belief. A quick Google search on “koreans invented everything” yields 2,670,000 results. This is possibly a result of widespread rumors of legal claims that Korea has made to the World Heritage Foundation on several cultural artifacts, which are generally considered Chinese cultural items, such as Confucius, soybean milk and the Dragonboat festival…etc.