“Whenever I’m having like family dinner, like when I was a kid, and we’d have rice, regardless of whether or not we were hungry, we’d have to take two scoops of rice, not one.  Like, even if you only wanted one scoop’s worth of rice, you’d have to get that amount of rice in two smaller scoops, because you have to take two scoops no matter what.  It’s about having the ability to have two scoops of rice and appreciating that certain sense of prosperity.  My dad put this practice into my family, and he got it from his parents who were from China, where this practice is a broader cultural thing.”

ANALYSIS:

This piece of folklore is super interesting because of it’s strong connection to Chinese heritage despite the informant having never even been to China.  Culture and cultural practices get passed on from generation to generation and are often a way for the people inheriting the culture to get in touch with their heritage, and I think this is a perfect example of this.  And even though the furthest line the informant can draw back to this practice ends with his grandparents, it’s almost certain that the grandparents inherited it from their grandparents, and so on and so forth.  It’s uplifting to know that such a gracious cultural practice and the meaning behind it has survived for so long and across continents.