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.