Travel Devices

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I am traveling in China with a number of helpful devices. One is a special edition travel book engineered by Nora Fenn-Gilman. I will post picture of it at various sites here.

At the Embassy Suites in Portland – July 4

At the PDX airport – July 4

At NE Hotel Beijing – July 5

In Tiananmen Square – July 6

On the bus to Miao Feng Mountain – July 7

In Beijing Normal seminar room – July 8

At Host Household, Jianguo Village – July 9

At Beihai Park – July 10

The Great Wall (with Rabbit) – July 12

The Summer Palace – July 12

Mr. Her, Song Zhuang – July 13

798 Arts District – July 16

798 Arts District – July 16 – Brushes by Fenn

Beijing Temple Theatre – July 18 – Lap top with famous Peking Opera star of early to mid 20th century Mei Lafang

Beijing (High Speed) Train Station – July 20

Shanghai Yu Yuan Garden – July 21

At the People’s Park and Hiding from the Transformer – July 22

Shanghai Still Life – July 24

assignment D

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XINYAO GUAN
D. Orientation to Field Work
       I was born in a traditional Chinese family in the early 1990s. And, unfortunately, just like many other people in that period of time, our family experienced the Chinese One Child Policy. Thus, I am the only child in my family. It is so sad to admit that this One Child Policy may be really useful and helpful to the People’s Republic of China. However, it is kind of inhumane when you think about Human rights and family issues. On contrast, my oldest aunt’s family has two children (one older sister and 4 years old younger brother which I think is a perfect combination). When I was young, before the age of ten; I always ask mom to born another baby because I did not understand the policy and I did not care about it. Later, I stopped begging because I knew that if mom chooses to reproduce a baby, she will lose her job at the government-owned company for sure. I am always envious of other classmates or friends who have brothers and sisters. When I first went to the US for college, I was actually surprised that most of my classmates have brothers and sisters. Moreover, one family usually will have three or four children. Thus, I think the definition of family and family members may be a little different between Chinese families and American families.
     My family is not really interested in remember people, places or events. But, we do take photos and videos when we go travelling or when we suddenly think of it. We have several family photographs on the living room’s wall and my parents’ wedding photo at their bedroom. My parents did not like taking photos that much, but they used to love taking photos of me while I was young. They said it was very enjoyable to record their baby’s growing by taking photos. And my father really dislikes being photographed. Before the age of fifteen, I am also not interested in taking photos. However, I just changed my idea when I go to high school. I start taking photos of places I have been and people who I met and liked. The oldest photo in my family may be the photo of the family of my great grandmother. Before we got the digital camera in 2005, we usually use the simply auto-focus camera and develop the photos at the photo studio nearby. We loved to put the pictures in different albums in chronological order and sometimes write some memos at the back side of the photos. And my mom will take care of all the albums and put them together into a big iron box. We will look at the photos during the Chinese Spring Festival period. When some close friends or relatives come to visit us, we will show them some photos and tell them the stories behind each photo. In the recent years, we no longer develop our pictures because we will use the digital camera and put the photos in laptop. Sometimes I think it is pity that we lost the sometime to share the photos. However, the digital camera makes the life easier and we can simply send the photos to relatives or friends via email.


     I choose one photo about my family’s trip to Xi’an in 2009. As I mentioned above, my father really dislike being photographed, and so do I sometimes. So, mom becomes the only model and she actually enjoyed being photographed because she loves to memorize the changes of herself and she likes sharing the photos with her sisters. It was just several days before I went to the US for college, and mom thought that we should have a family trip to somewhere in China that we have never been to before I leave my country. Thus, we booked the flight tickets in a hurry and went to Xi’an the next day. Actually, I was very busy during that time because I need to be well prepared to go to the States. However, mom thought that it is important to combine the exertion and rest. And she stressed that I should not push myself so hard and just takes it easy. I am very impressed about this trip and I really had a good time to relax. At the same time, I enjoyed the time being so closed to my parents before I leave them. Thus, whenever I saw the photos of that trip, I will be so happy and all the memories just run out of my brain. I believe that travelling is a very important thing in my family. Plus, I think mom is so pretty in this photo which I took by myself.
     As we all know that, China is a big country with a long history. Different places will have very different cuisines. Basically, people who come from the North love to eat cooked wheaten food (such steamed stuffed buns, noodles and dumplings) than rice. And they love to eat heavy flavor food compared to people who come from the South part of China. However, Si Chuan food is famous all over the world by its special spicy flavor. It is hard to say that people from different places have specific cuisines.
     Most of my relatives are Chinese people who come from the North part of China. Thus, we all love to eat cooked wheaten food. But we also ear rice a lot, almost every day. I am actually surprised that we will never be tired of eating rice every day, but not the other dishes. We eat all kinds of food, but most of time, we cook with a Northman way. However, my grandmother is Korean and I start eating Korean food at a very young age (even the Kimchi and some very spicy pickles). Sometimes, we will eat Korean food instead of traditional Chinese food. I can say that I love any Korean food and especially Korean style soap. To my family, dumpling is the most popular food, especially the dumpling stuffed with pork and celery. Normally, my family will make dumplings every weekend (when they are not busy with work). I enjoy the time we three are all in the kitchen to make the same thing. Because there are a lot of works for making dumplings, we will divide the work and same much time. Usually, dad will make the dough (put some flour into a bowl and then slowly add COLD water and then stir it). At the same time, mom and I will prepare the fillings (usually I will wash the celery and cut them into very small pieces, mom will put flavoring and mix celery with pork). And later, dad will make the dumpling wrappers (I cannot deal with it because I did not master that skill yet). Usually at this time, mom and I can rest a little bit and we may open the TV and watch some Law programs which my dad love to hear about. And later mom and dad will wrap the dumplings without my help (they thought mines are so ugly). Finally, I will cook the dumplings and pay attention to the boiling time (after the water boils, I need to put some cold water in and repeated this progress until the dumplings finally done).
     Based on Chapters 3 and 5 from the reading Visual Storytelling, and the material collected above, my story would be a video documentary that shows how Chinese people get together to make delicious dumplings. The characters can be my family members, my friends and even my American classmates. It will be very interesting that how Americans make dumplings with their own hand and later eat them up. I would like to interview one Chinese people who is skillful and can make nice dumplings. I will ask him or her to teach the details of making dumplings. And give him or her some close-up shots. This person will be interviewed in a relax atmosphere and he or she can give us a narration about the progress or what he or she think of dumplings among Chinese culture. I will make some background music with traditional Chinese instruments to stress the Chinese culture. And later, on contrast, I will interview an American, and ask his or her feeling about making dumplings and how does them taste like. And maybe I can also put some old photographs or historic video scenes to highlight the topic.

Assignment D

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Part 1. (250 words)

My family definitely uses photo to remember people, places, and events. Twenty years ago, most of Chinese families have the table that covered by thick glass to protect the wood table surface. Pictures are always put between the glass and table, because that can keep the pictures flat and it can be seen every day. Although my family does not use photo to specific remember something, when we look at the picture, it still reminds us to remember something. The oldest photo that my family has is my mum’s one-year’s old celebration picture. It is a black and white picture. My mum stand inside her bed with lovely smile. Actually it is my first time see this picture, I just talked with my mum that I think she was so cute at her early age. In my small family (mom, dad and I), mum is the person who takes pictures for the family and takes care of the photos. She always put our photos inside the top closet. Those pictures are all taken by film camera. I think since we have the digital camera, we have not printed out any pictures. All the digital pictures are keeping inside our family computer’s D disk. It seems my family does not usually look at photos. We only take out the photos when we need to use them.

Part 2. (250 words)

This photo was taken in 1990, when I was four years old. My big family went to a photo studio named Beifang to have this photo. At that time, the colorful photo was too expensive, so that we only had the black and white picture. My parents told me that was the National Day, my grandma suggested all of us went out to the professional photo studio to have a family picture. This is the first family photo that has my younger cousin and me. My grandpa is a blind person, but he has some feeling about the light. I still remember when taken the picture, the photographer hold a lamp, asked my grandpa to follow the light, so that it would look like there was nothing wrong with my grandpa. From the picture, I can tell the close relationship between the families. Every big holiday, like New Year’s Day, Chinese New Year’s Day, Labor Day, National Day, etc, my family always stay together to celebrate. My grandparents’ love with us can also be seen from the photo. They put my cousin and I onto their knees. Although I do not know what was the weight my cousin had at that time, I can tell you that I was so heavy. When taken the picture, the photographer took a long time to adjust his camera and the light, I think my grandpa at that time hold me tightly just in case I would not fallen down.

Part 3. (250 words)

Stir-Fried Tomato:


Ingredients:

2 tomatoes (sliced)

3 eggs

1stalks of green onion

2 tablespoons cooking oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

 

Method:

  1. Beat the eggs with a pinch of salt
  2. Finely chop green onions
  3. Heat oil in a frying pan until hot, put green onions into the pan and wait until can smell the onion’s smelly.
  4. Put the green onion away, hot and pour in eggs. Fold eggs occasionally to create a scrambled look.
  5. After cooked the egg in eighty percent, put it into the bowl, and add the tomatoes inside the pan, cooked for 2-3 minutes.
  6. Put egg back to the pan, mixed egg with tomato, add salt and sugar. Continue cooking for 3-5 minutes until the tomato is soft and there is some soup there.
  7. Serve hot.

Preparation time: 8 minutes

Cooking time: 8 minutes

Stir-Fried Tomato and Egg is an easy dish that almost every Chinese family knows how to cook. I choose this to describe because this dish always recall my memory. When I was in elementary school, I lived with my grandparent. In the lunchtime, I always came back home. At that time we lived in the building named “Tong Zi Lou” which only had one restroom, and every family’s kitchen was outside the room on the corridor. At the meal time, you could see which family is cooking the meat, which had the fish. The neighborhood’s relationship was so nice. I do not know why during that time, I was so fascinate in Stir-Fried Tomato and Egg. Almost every neighbor knows that. When I came inside the building, some neighbor usually told me my grandma did the stir-fried tomato and egg again and they hope I enjoy the meal.

When my grandma preparing the food, my grandpa always sitting beside the table in the room, listening to the storytelling from the radio. I was the person who helped to set the table and bring the dishes inside the room. In my grandma’s perspective, a good meal must have rice, vegetable, meat, and soup. She believes that will serve the balance nutrition for the children. I think that is the reason why I was a big girl in my elementary school.

Part 4.

I think the story that could be subject of a video documentary is about the photo. When I took the pictures from the top closet in my apartment. I did not only find my family’s photos, but also the development of China. The characters in the documentary will be my grandparents, my parents, my cousin, and I. I will narrative the story about my family’s memory about taken photos. I will interview my grandma, my mother, and my cousin to see their attitude toward take the pictures. And I will include photographs from the black and white to digital. From this we could see the development of the technology, as well as China’s development. For the documentary, I would like to use the music. The music should be the light music. So that will accordance with the topic of recall people’s memory.

my family’s  old  albums and old picture packages

Assignment D

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Part 1-3:

My family uses photographs to help us remember people, places, and events.  My mother is usually the person who is the person who takes family photos and she is always working on a scrapbooking project where she tries to catalog the history of our family.  Some of the older photos we have are scanned copies from a cousin of ours who does genealogical research.  She doesn’t lives far away so I think it is a way for her to connect with the rest of her family as well as the rest of us can connect to her.

To some extent my family uses photos to remember things that happened in the past.  Since moving to Oregon, my family has requested photos of my ‘adventures’.  In this sense the photographs are used to share an experience instead of remembering.  Much like the photos that are on the ChinaVine website, the photos I send to my family is more informational than remembering a shared memory.

My husband and I exclusively take digital photographs (mainly because the only camera we own is digital) and for the most part they stay as files on our computer except for the odd occasion when we print a few out to fill picture frames.  The majority of the photos we take are of places we’ve been to instead of pictures of ourselves in those locations.  In terms of sharing these photos with other people, especially my parents, get a little frustrated sometimes because they also use the photos kind of as a check up.  Since they do not see us that often in reality (most of my family still lives in New York) I think they use the photographs we send also to see our image to still feel connected.

Instead of talking to my family about a photograph from my youth, I decided to discuss one with new additions to the family.  In this photo my brother and I are standing with our respective significant others (my husband, his girlfriend respectively) and it made me think about the feelings and attitudes about including an addition to your family.  These individuals start out as being different or ‘other’ and then slowly they change into being accepted and welcomed into the family group.

This particular photo was taken when my brother and his girlfriend came to visit.  My brother and I are pretty close and I think that is somewhat clear in the photograph.

Food:

Both sets of my grandparents grew up on farms so it is interesting to hear their stories about what they ate and how tied it was to the items they grew or raised themselves.  My one grandmother was young during the Great Depression where someone broke into their root cellar when they kept all of their canned fruits and vegetables and after the incident they had to install a lock on the door.  My great-grandfathers on my mother’s side we immigrants to the United States (from Germany and Wales/UK respectively) and quite a few dishes that my grandmother cooked were from those ethnic cuisines.  Instead of including my grandmother’s recipe for sauerkraut I want to share one that became a tradition starting with my generation.

My grandmother has a collection of community cookbooks, mostly from her church, which she has acquired over the years.  A lot of these recipes are of meal items that really came about in the 1950s using packaged items together to create something new.  Our recipe for Watergate salad although not created in the 1950s, is in a similar vein.  On holidays, my grandmother would serve this with the regular meal even though it’s more of a dessert item.  Whenever she we discussed what would be on the menu for the next holiday my cousins would always request that someone make the salad, and so the tradition was born.  This Thanksgiving I spent with my fellow AADers at a potluck style meal.  Even though I was responsible for the turkey, I had to bring the Watergate salad because to me, it wouldn’t be a holiday without it.

Watergate Salad:

  • 1 (8 oz) can crushed pineapple
  • 1 (3.4 oz) package pistachio pudding mix
  • 1 cup walnuts
  • 1 (12 oz) container whipped topping
  • 1 cup mini marshmallows

Fold whipped topping into pistachio pudding mix.  Combine the rest of the ingredients with the mixture.  Chill for one hour.  Serve.

When my family sits down for a meal there isn’t a set number of people who should be there.  My Father in particular often works during dinner time so growing up it was usually my Mother, Brother, and I.  As my Brother and I got older, we both worked in high school so family meals were a rarity.  When From a young age that whoever makes the meal doesn’t have to do the dishes.  Because I really dislike doing the dishes, I quickly became the family chef, preparing at least the weekly dinners.

My husband and I both enjoy cooking and like to try new cuisines.  We also like to cook together which means occupying our small kitchen together.  It usually works out without too much injury.  While we try to eat dinner at the dining room table, lately we’ve been watching the entire collection of Top Gear on Netflix while eating in the living room.

Part 4:

A story I found through this process that could be the subject of a video documentary would be could involve be about how my brother and my significant others have joined our family.  The character would be my brother, his girlfriend, my husband, myself, and my extended family (parents, grandparents, aunt, and cousins).  The documentary could tell the story how my husband and my brother’s girlfriend became members of our family, their reactions as well as those of my other family members.

To enhance this documentary, I would include photos as well as interviews with members of my family.  In interviewing my extended family, I could ask questions pertaining how they felt when they first started dating.  While this approach might be a bit broad, it would give a deeper meaning into our own culture.  Like the chapters suggest, doing an autobiographical documentary offers a unique way to tell a familiar story as well as allow me a more critical look at my family’s culture.

Assignment D

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Part 1.
I will describe both my current family (me and my husband who I have lived with for five years) and my family that I grew up with (myself and my grandmother). Me and my husband are photographers and we end up taking a lot of artistic photos and photos of ourselves while we are traveling. These photos are digital and we also use film cameras. Like many people, a lot of our digital photos sit in computer files and we only look at the every so often. The photos we take that get developed or are Polaroid photos end up getting put on the wall. I am usually the one that makes scrapbooks out of the photos and my husband is the one who will tape them on to the wall. Most often we look through the digital photos while we are looking for a specific photo in the digital files. Then we might start looking at images and remembering vacations. The photos we had when I was growing up were usually put away in the attic and my grandmother look care of those. Usually the photos were only accessed when I was purposefully looking through them for something specific (like the digital photos). The oldest photos I can remember is from the 1940s but there could be some that are much older. Me and my grandmother might only look at photos when we are in the attic for some other reason. So in both situations (digital and film) I only end up looking for photos when there is some other reason I would be going through them, like looking for something in a box or looking for a specific image for a project. Typically, in my family growing up we would only remember people and events in the context of a certain event. So while having a holiday dinner we might remember something that happened at a previous holiday dinner. Thinking back I’m not sure we connected stories or events to specific objects or had many photos up around the house.
Part 2.


I posted four photos. One is a photo of me and my husband when we got married at the Oregon coast and a landscape photo from the same day. The second set of photos is from a road trip we took to explore central Oregon and northern California. The picture was taken on a hike by a waterfall outside of Bend, Oregon and I included a photo of the waterfall the photo was taken in front of as well. When I was examining the photos we have I found that since it was just the two of us together a lot of the time when we were taking photos, most of the photos are of landscapes or just one of us. These were one of only a few photos I could find of the two of us together. Both of us remembered the photos being taken at different times during the course of each of the events. I thought the photo of us on our wedding day was taken before the ceremony and he thought it was taken afterward. Even though this is just a small difference in time, it does seem to represent that photos will recall events differently for people who have set up the time-line for an event differently in their mind even though we sometimes think of photos as fixed images. The same is true of the photograph by the waterfall which I thought took place at the start of the road trip, but Adam was able to demonstrate with the time stamp on the image that it took place at the end of the road trip thus demonstrating one of the benefits of digital.
Part 3.
Grandma Grunthaner’s Peanut Butter Cookies
Sift: ½ cup brown sugar and ½ cup granulated sugar
beat until soft: ½ cup butter
Add in the sugar gradually and blend these ingredients until they are creamy.
Beat in: 1 egg, 1 cup peanut butter*, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp baking soda
sift before measuring: 1 ½ cups bread flour (I just use all purpose)
add the flour to the batter and: ½ tsp vanilla
Roll the dough into small balls. Place them on a greased (I use ungreased) tin. Press them flat with a fork. Bake them in a moderate oven, 375 degrees, for about 15 minutes.
*Do not use the natural peanut butter that is good for you. THE COOKIES WON’T TASTE RIGHT. Skippy Crunchy works best. The easiest way to measure the peanut butter is to put, say ½ cup of water in a Pyrex measuring cup and then add peanut butter until the water reaches the marker for the amount of peanut butter PLUS ½ cup. Pour out the water before you add the peanut butter!!

This is a recipe from my great-grandmother. My aunt sent it out at the holidays with a letter about the recipe. One part of her letter read “Also, while you may be wondering why I am passing this recipe on to you, it is because it is the only Worland family recipe worth passing on.” She goes on to comment on recipes made with cold hotdogs and Velveeta cheese etc. I personally never got to experience any of the recipes with Velveeta and grew up eating a very different type of diet since my grandmother I lived with cooked differently and when my father would cook he was very health conscious. After I got this letter in the mail I made a batch of the cookies and shared them with co-workers. I also sent the aunt that sent me the recipe a Polaroid of the finished product. I don’t have much interaction with this aunt who lives in Virginia so it was a way to communicate with her about a family recipe which she thought I would be interested in because I bake quite a bit. When I am cooking with my husband, especially for larger holidays, he always cooks the main course and side dishes and I make the dessert. We usually are alternating who is in the kitchen working on the different parts of the meal. Typically whenever I have been in a living situation where we cook a lot I am responsible for the dessert and so I am in the kitchen by myself either before, during or after the main preparations and eating of the meal getting that ready. Before thinking about this exercise I had never really noticed that before, but there is usually a large group of people involved in the preparations for the main meal while I am engaged in a different routine preparing the dessert.

Part 4.
I would be interested in making a documentary about the recipe I shared above that my aunt sent out to several family members including me. I would look in to exactly how many people she sent it out to and choose maybe ten of them to follow in their process of making the cookies. The characters would be these ten people in an extended family living in all different parts of the United States and possibly elsewhere depending on how far out in the family her mailings extended. I would show all the steps each person would take gathering the materials, baking and then sharing this family recipe in the respective places they were living. This would highlight not just the individual differences but the differences in the process of making the same recipe in all the different regions the people were living in. I might also interview at least two family members that remember eating Grandma Grunthaner’s cookies. During what situations did they eat the cookies, when did she usually make them and who did she share them with and what did the people I was interviewing like most about the cookies or those events? Most likely I would not interview the people actually making the cookies but rather I would let the process of baking the cookies speak for itself. I would focus on using minimal music and narration. I would think that I would focus on the different tools used in the baking process when filming the baking shots. I would also try and get some outdoor shots of the places the people making the cookies were living to enhance the context. Since the cookie recipe was taken from the 1943 version of The Joy of Cooking I might include some historical background and information about that book and the role it played in shaping the tradition and history of cooking in America.

Assignment C

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Question for Gerald:

1. From “Art” Gerald states that westerners came to believe that only them have the ability to produce “the only truly inspirational art.” Whether other culture’s works can be called as art need to through western elite’s judgment. My question is it has been passed decades since Gerald write this paper, is that situation changed？If the superiority complex that came from colonizlization of “primitive” lands has already been replaced by other elements? If so, who has the right to determine what art work it is right now?

2.At the end of the paper, Gerald says although art can be explained by skill, it is still has broad content. “Others” such as folk are still deemed as art. That’s because if we narrow down the limits, it will cause “dislocation of our own postmodern malaise.” My question is is that folk still be called as art only because if not it will dislocate our history. Are there other reasons for folk to be called as “art?”

Question for Hufford:

1. In Hufford’s Context, he says “Orientations and evaluations guide interpretation, enhancing the distinction between events while highlighting their interrelations and orchestrating participation in the narrative event.” My question is although the orientations and evaluations could provide the context for the narrative and narrated events, is that sometimes too subjective? Labeling the narrative event a first, the author will direct the audience’s attention, so that audience will only follow the path that the author paves.

2.In the paper Hufford stats that “the challenge for folklore is to amplify its “stylistic and ideological polyphony” in ways that shatter the unreceptive surface of dominant discourse.” My question is when we are doing the field work in Beijing, what is the best way to demonstrate the art form? How to provide context information for the art? providing history background or letting people talking about, which method is suitable for our work?

Question for Barron:

1. From Barron’s paper, “folklore involves intervention in the lives and institutions of a community, with an inevitable impact upon the traditions that are documented and presented.” My question is when we are doing the document for ChinaVine project, what is the intervention? By analyzing the page visit rate for the Chinavine.org, and other social media’s followers we can easily “calculate” the impact of Chinavine project for American. However, the effect for Chinese artists is unclear. I want to know what’s the beneficial did the Chinese artists get.

2.Another question is as Barron says objectification in the course of studying or presenting another culture can be both good and bad. If using objectification a good way to represent art works that we will document in Chinavine’s fieldwork? I think it is more complicate for Chinavine to interpret and demonstrate the art works, because there is language issue there.

 

Assignment D: Orientation to Field Work

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The easiest form of keeping memories in my family is definitely photos. My family documents our lives, the places we’ve visited, and things that intrigue us by taking lots of photos. I think many things in my house has a story connected to it. Just like the main idea in our article, “Art” in the Journal of American Folklore, culture is connected to art. All the paintings and jewelry were mainly brought over from China or passed down from generation to generation. My family’s culture and and beliefs were connected to those objects. My parents lost a lot of their pictures when they immigrated from China so we only have a few pictures of when they were young. The oldest photo our family still has is probably when my dad was a teenager swimming in a lake with his friends. Usually on family vacations, I’m the one that takes the pictures because I’m the only one in the family that understands how to work with the many confusing technological devices. However, my mom is the one that organizes the pictures after they have been developed. We keep them in photo albums in a cupboard in our garage. It’s sad because everyone is just so busy and no one ever has time to look at those memories. I’ve probably looked at those photo albums once or twice a year and now that I’m in college, it’s even harder to look at them. If I just had the time, I would go through all of the photo albums and have my mom tell me the story that comes with each picture.

 

My sister is disabled and so we had to teach her many things when I was young. I found a few pictures of me learning sign language with her and this picture shows us eating noodles with chopsticks. There isn’t really a story to this photo but it represents a lot of things. We had to learn how to use chopsticks because that is the Asian culture. My parents weren’t hard on me for learning like my other friends. It came naturally to me and I use chopsticks to eat food all the time. It was harder for my sister to learn how to use chopsticks because she had a much slower learning process. My mom tells me she’s very lenient on many things because of my sister. Since it’s much harder and takes much longer for my sister to learn, my family has to spend a lot of time helping her. For my sister, she doesn’t understand our culture or values, she doesn’t comprehend those ideas. However, for me, I learned about my culture when I was young and I still portray the values and culture I was taught. Religion was a different subject. They believed in Buddah and praying to the ancestors but my parents never pushed any religion on me. They sent me to a Christian private school when I was younger and then I went to a Catholic high school. I always considered myself as a Christian, but when I went into high school, I found I didn’t really believe in anyone anymore. The only thing my parents were hard on me was about praying to the ancestors. It was more of the respect aspect and I only had to do it on special occasions. In the picture the table and chairs in the background is an old traditional Chinese table. My mom’s family used to have it in China and she told me that it was a very expensive piece of art. The painting in the background is, in mandarin, called shanshui (山水) which used to be placed in wealthier peoples houses in older dynasties. My parents said those are there just because of the Chinese tradition.

My parents cook the same foods as what my grandparents cooked them. We eat Chinese food almost everyday, but once in a while my family will make spaghetti or order pizza. Our dinners usually consist of soup, steamed rice, stir-fried vegetables with sliced meat that can be chicken, pork, or beef. Once in a while when my mom has time or when I come home from college, my mom will cook me her most special foods and my most favorite foods. Her specials are vegetable spring rolls, potstisckers, and hot and sour soup and my most favorite dish of hers is taro with pork.

Taro with pork recipe:

Ingredients:

2 lbs taro, peel skin and cut it to approx. 2″ long and 1″ wide
Pork (with skin) 1 1/2 lbs
1 tbls soy sauce
1 tbls oyster sauce
1 tbls seafood sauce
2 tsp corn starch
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp cooking wine
1/4 tsp white and black pepper powder
1 square of FUYU(soil been tofu cheese)
1/4 cup water

Steps:
Put all ingredients into a big bowl and mix them. Put pork and taro into the sauce. Make sure each one has the sauce on it.
Layer them by order: (Taro)(Pork)(Taro)(Pork)(etc.) into a plate to steam 1 1/2 hours. Test to see if the taro is soft enough or not before serving. If not, steam until the taro is soft. Serve and enjoy!

I’m usually not in the house when food is being made because I work until 7. From what I remember of when I was younger, my dad would start preparing dinner at around 6 or so and my mom would be helping him. My dad does the cooking mostly on the weekdays and on Friday and during the weekends, my mom does the cooking. My sister and I would set the table up when they are cooking and my mom would let us know when dinner is ready. My mom usually does the dishes after dinner and sometimes I will do the dishes when she is too tired or when I don’t have much homework. What makes it a good meal is when everyone in the family is sitting at the table. It’s always nice to eat with your family and for us, dinner is the only time when my whole family is together. It’s when we have time to all come together at night and talk about our day. I was always brought up that way, that during dinner, we have to eat at the dinner table. When I was younger, my friends would always talk about how they would be able to watch tv when they were eating or bring their food into their own room and I was ALWAYS jealous. However, now that I think about it, I’m glad I was raised this way.

My story would probably be about the culture of my family and how I was brought up. Chapter 3 of our reading Visual Storytelling tells us to choose a broad theme. Culture can be a pretty broad theme. The characters in the documentary would be me, my mom, dad, sister, and my grandparents. I would film a day of each of our lives but cut it into parts and put them together to show how similar and different we all are. I would probably interview my parents and grandparents by asking them how they were brought up. I think I would definitely include some photographs of memories because there shouldn’t be talking the whole movie. There also should be old videos with the pictures of probably childhood memories. I don’t think there should be much narration but maybe on some old videos describing something that is unclear. I would definitely include some music because I think music is what brings out feelings in a lot of documentaries. I would play some traditional Chinese music, but definitely instrumentals depending on the mood and feeling in the clips and scenes.

 

Assignment D

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I have two families which is a big one and a small one. There are a lot of family members in the big family and three members in the small family. It is well known that Chinese would like to pay more attention to the relationship of relatives. The relationship of Relatives in Chinese family are very special and amiable for us because most of Chinese believe a truth which is “Blood is thicker than water, the blood refers to relatives and warter are friends.” It means the relatives in Chinese’s mind are much more important than others.  I have six uncles, five aunts and seven cousins, then two grandmas and two grandpas which are totally twenty two peope in the big family. Certainly, the small one which has three people who are my father, my mother and I. It is very common for Chinese to visit the relatives all most everyday, weekends or some vacation. This is a good point to represent kindness and hospitality between most Chinese and their relatives. We Chinese relatives always have a close association to communicate emotions and this also can be a seated culture in China. It especially reflected in people always like to coming back to their parents’ home to have a small talk, eating or doing anything they want to share which can totally attribute this point to family meeting. It will be better if several small families get together to have a trip or picnic because it is all good way to exchange feelings and transmit thoughts. Usually, the relatives in China will use a tool to express and store the true feelings which can be said a Splendid instantaneous, permanent memory-take a photo.  Photo should be the best way to record happy moment of events and memerize the unforgettable time in our life whatever for the birthday, family meeting and travelling. There are many albums in my big family and small family which will be put into a easy carring palce that is cabinet or a box because Chinese are very pleased to give friends or visitor their family picture for appreciating. Then, the larger size family picture always hang at the wall for display which means the harmounious and happiness in the family.This is also a good way to give a specific introduction of family to friends and visitor. Totally, the family photos in China are very important and meaningful for Chinese.

                            (This is my two photoes )

This is my two photoes I post. I think it is easier to find what moment we want to record. Certainly, the photos showed are my mother’s birthday and the left one is birthday cake. The left photo is the newest birthday recording in recent two years. Actually, there are a lot of pictures recorded for the annual birthday in my family because we think it is the valuable moment to memory and taking photoes are the best way to remain the eternity.  From the left photo, two people stand behind the small seat are seperately my father and myself.  The flowers held by my father is the beginning gift for my mother’s birthday. It is very interesting the size of flower is very big and no package. My father said “The flowers are piked from forest by himself” !(Just a joke)The beautiful women seated front of us is my mother. My mother like dressing up and this is the special day for her to dress up well and take photos to record. We took a lot of photos that day and the left is just one of all of it. After that, we went to restaurant to celebrate my mother’s birthday and lots of relatives come here to wish because birthday is once whole year after all. It is easier to find a big photos hang at the wall, this can be a small culture for my family. For that day, my mother also make a frame and expand the size for her bithday photos, then hang at the wall. In fact, there is a wall specifically for display different kinds of photoes in my family which makes me feel warm because it has a lot of happy moment.

Food: In my family, my mother is a good chef who can be described as a genius for cooking because she can memorize the innovative food so quickly and make it deliciouly. Usually, the food cooked in my family are very healthy because my mother will learn how to make a good combination between different dishes and different dessert or wine. This is very important for people to eat in a healthy style because it is well know some food mixed with each other will produce quickly toxicity or slower one. A good cooking family should focus on the bigger issue of the food safety. Usually, my mother will cook four dishes and a soup as the normal meal. The meat and vegetable dishes should be make a suitable combination for lunch and dinner. Certainly, the breakfast play the key role for the whole day to transmit the nutrient to human being’s body. For this time, my mother will prepare some cereal grains food as the healthy begin in the morning. It can be said coarse grain food such as those nuts, corn and cereals and other food are rich in complex carbohydrates cellulose. And also Coarse grain also rich in calcium, magnesium, selenium and other trace elements and a variety of vitamins, can promote the metabolism, increase body and aging.

now I can introduce the cooking method of a coarse grain food-Eight tresured Congee. There are three steps totally which are choosing materials, soaking and mixing with firing cook. we need to choose eight incredient which are rice,  glutinous rice, millet, soya bean, ormosia, ,lotus seed and longan. Then wash them and wipe off the hard outside. Put them all together and cook it with sugar. It will be done after 30 minutes.

I would choose my family as a good documentary. The culture is different for every different family group. Certianly , the kids educated from different envrionment is also own variety. I will recorded how my parents manage our family, educate kid, deal the relationship with relatives and create our own family cultures.  I think photo, video, sound record are the best way to explore the history of a family because it is the most important and real record for memorizing the crucial moment. Certainly, making a interview with relatives and ask a question are also a good way to memory the history of a family. I think the most important thing for documentary is the truth of the all events. So all the materials should be reliable and convinced.