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I really liked reading this chapter because the traditions were so entertaining! I loved the idea of the baby's one month/year birthday celebration and the activity they did with it. It's kind of like fortune telling for the baby! Also the Chinese wedding ceremonies are always my favorite! Whenever my family or relatives get married they would go to a professional wedding studio and dress up in both traditional and western dresses and take photos in beautiful backdrops or sceneries. I love looking at the traditional dresses and the head pieces! My favorite tradition for weddings would be the banter! My family does something similar but it's called 'gate keeping' where the bridesmaids make up difficult tasks for the groom and his groomsmen to do. If he fails to complete it then he wont be able to see his bride. But thankfully the bridesmaids are keen to bribes (red envelopes).

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Reading chapter one I gained a new insight on Chinese traditions and the culture. I read about the influences and religions that shape the culture. I really enjoyed learning about the different holidays and marriage rituals the culture par take in. A person’s name is an very important part of what makes you. It was interesting to read about how in the Chinese culture they use different genders to distinguish names. I really enjoyed this chapter and can not wait for the next!

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I knew that Chinese culture was full of celebratory events but I had no clue it was as extensive as this chapter showed me. Not only that, but they're not just meaningless celebrations. All of them carry a lot of respect and importance to them. It's also really interesting to see that all these celebrations are important to Chinese culture as a whole and not certain regions. It's quite wonderful to see a culture that has every reason to celebrate life as often as possible. I'm curious as to how such a scripted society such as the one in the United States affects these celebrations for those who move here to make a home out of this country.

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I found it really beautiful the emphasis that Chinese culture places on animals. The meaning they place on the Tortoise, the Pheonix, the Dragon, and the Kylin really resonated with me and I wonder if they have influenced other cultures views of these animals. Also I found it interesting that they associate the year one was born to animals. I found out that I am the year of the dog meaning I am sincere, reliable, considerate, understanding, and patient. Also I found the festivals that include animals very interesting. I think that connection and sensitivity to nature is very important and feel that Chinese culture includes that.

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This chapter was very eye opening from the use of surnames first to celebrating the seasons China seems to be one of a kind.The most interesting part about this chapter to me was the importance of dates and the seasons. Their different festivals seem to often revolve a lot around the seasons. However my favorite part of the chapter was the wedding celebration. The tradition of the bridal sedan seems so joyful and fun. I believe that that is a custom that would be most fun to be a part of. I also thought the story of the origins of The dragon boat festival was interesting to read about. I also liked how many animals were used to show significance and luck. It was surprising that they used  a lion to symbolize luck in the lion dance. I am excited to continue learning more of the Chinese culture.

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While reading this chapter of the Chinese culture, I was really surprised to know how many festivals there are in China. I did know a few festivals because Korea do have similar festivals. However, I did not know about the Dragon Boat Festival. It was fascinating to know that people would throw food to the fish to avoid from the corpse being eaten. I was also fascinated me because I realized that Korea and China are quite similar. For example, when "we" introduce ourselves, you would say your last name then your first name. As well as how important the zodiac animals are in China and Korea, because when somebody asked what year I was born on, which I answered "1996" so they replied with "Ooh a rat, that's one of the best zodiacs, you are very lucky."

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I really enjoyed this chapter it discusses the many festivals that occur in Chinese culture and how they originated, which was very interesting. The different videos gave me a more of an understanding on how they celebrate these festivals, because it's more of an experience being able to see it rather than just by reading about it. It was interesting comparing the culture differences between the Chinese and how we celebrate here in the United States. The way that the names are given in China is significantly different than the way we come up names is completely different. For example my whole name has come from my family members. I'm George Preston Nowlin IV, which would never happen. That is because they don't name their kids after relatives which I am. This was very interesting read and can't wait to learn more about the culture in China and how it compares to others around the world.

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This chapter was very insightful and has made me even more excited to learn about Chinese culture. It is interesting to see the differences in naming systems and significance of the name. It was also interesting to read about the different celebrations and in the videos see people celebrating. I have see the lion dance before but now I know where it comes from. The different seasons and new year from western to eastern is fascinating. The way they divide their year up by seasons makes sense with nature; while our calendar system is more of a man made plan. I can't wait to learn more about Chinese culture.

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I liked this new chapter because I felt like I learned the very basics of Chinese culture, which is a great start to the rest of the class! I found the name section to be one of the most interesting, specifically how many different origin surnames you can have, and how there is no exact statistic on how many surnames there are in China. I was surprised to read that in modern day China, people do not pay as much attention to naming compared to the folk of ancient time. I had always heard about and seen pictures of the twelve symbolic animals, but I didn't really know anything about them at all. That sections was also interesting for me because I learned so many different things about each animal.

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This chapter was very informative, but my favorite part though short was about the Lion Dance! I used to participate in them when I practiced kung fu in high school. We would often be hired for events on Chinese New Year, and on some throughout the year for other festivals and community events. The Lion is very heavy, and it takes a lot of coordination between the Head and the Tail to do a proper Lion Dance. But when executed by seasoned veterans, it's an incredible display, and a good lion is always a little funny AND a little scary! If you have a chance this Chinese New Year, go and try to find one and see it for yourself!

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I found this chapter super enjoyable to read! It was nice for the first chapter especially since I didn't know much about all the festivals and celebrations. I was in China during the Dragon Boat Festival and I remember all the restaurants that day served us zongzi. Very tasty. I had no idea a wedding process had to go through so many steps! Reading about their traditional weddings was my favorite part of this whole chapter. I never realized how different they are from American weddings. The only difference I knew before reading this chapter was that the bride's wedding dress was red. Usually when I think of weddings, it's just between two people, however, in a Chinese traditional wedding many others are involved for the marriage.

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This chapter is quite fascinating because it talks about many different festivals, cultures that Chinese people have. Even myself, having a Chinese background in my family and there is still a couple of traditions that I have never heard before, such as Folk Temple Fair and The 24 Seasonal Division Points. It's pretty interesting that we are all humans and it depends on where we live we could have such different customs, traditions. In today class I'd like to know more about a couple events that I don't know about.

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This chapter was very interesting and I learned a lot of different things about the Chinese culture that I was not aware of. I really enjoyed learning about Chinese names. It is interesting how much thought is put into choosing a child's name compared to here in the U.S. I also enjoyed learning about the traditions of the weddings in China and how much different they are compared to western cultures. One of my favorite things to read about in this chapter was the one-month-old feast and the zhuazhou. While I was reading this, I wanted to know more about the predictions that the family makes for the child based on the item they pick. Do the parents try to steer the child in the direction of the career that they predict the child will pursue in the future based on the item that they chose as a baby? Also in the article it states that in recent years, the custom of the one-month-old ceremony has gradually been abandoned, especially young couples, but that the ceremony is still a memorable and happy moment for every family. I was wondering if a certain part of this ceremony has become gradually abandoned, or is it the whole ceremony altogether that is not typically celebrated anymore, and why?

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I really enjoyed the chapter. The things that I found most interesting about the readings were the baby customs, the marriage customs, and the naming. I think it is very interesting that future interests and career predictions can be made from which item the baby chooses. I would love to see if the predictions actually line up with the child's adult life or not. I also would love to know what my Chinese name would be. I never knew that the system of naming in China was so different than in the United States. I couldn't imagine not having my middle name, much less having an entire different name in another country. I can tell that the culture of China is very rich just by reading this chapter, and I am looking forward to learning it.

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One of the aspects I found most interesting about Chinese Culture was the traditions and folklore. One of the most interesting traditions I read about in this article is the tradition of the "zhuazhou." I was wondering if the child is told later on in life which items they picked? Or if their parents take their choice of item to heart and try to put them on a path toward that item/life or if it was just a tradition that didn't really have that much meaning? Another thing that I found interesting in the article was the explanation of the chinese zodiac animals. I had always known that the Chinese had a zodiac calendar that corresponded to animals, but I had never known why or what the animals meant! It was interesting to find out that the children born in the year of a certain animal were supposed to have the qualities associated with that animal.

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Since I was born in China, I consider myself as a person who knows a good amount of info of Chinese culture. Like about the name that my parents gave me was inspired by a beautiful rock kicked by my dad by accident. Ya, which spelled as "雅" in Chinese, means elegant and beautiful. And Xuan, which is "璇" means rock. He wished that I could be someone who is elegant and strong as a rock in my life,
Although I did not have any memory about the Zhuazhou, I have been to many one-month-old feasts, the kids were dressed up and eveyone will give the best greetings, which was pretty similar to what was described in the article.
I have to say that my family do a lot with the pure brightness festival. Back at the time when I was in China, going back to hometown and meet my dead grandpa was a yearly thing that everyone in the family must attend. I realized that Christian don't do this here because of their faith and related creed.

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As I was reading about the Chinese Culture, this reminded me of the Korean culture as well. For example, in Korean culture we also follow the twelve animals for each year. My year of the born is the dog year. Also when I was little Korean culture did the same thing what the Chinese culture did like picking out the item when you are one year old. Lion dance was one of the questionable thing I had because I see almost every Chinese event that I go there is always a lion dance and it is because its a traditional sports in China. Now I thought of this is that Korean culture and Chinese culture are very similar because we celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival in korean it is called 추석.

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I learned so much after reading the information on Chinese Folk Culture. When I read about Chinese names, I found it interesting reading on the differences of female's and male's names. Males' names are associated with power and for female, beauty and gentleness. Also learning about short names from the video allowed me to ask my friend, who is Chinese, what her's was. It was amusing to hear her response.                              Reading about traditions the Chinese do for their babies made me contrast what my family does. Based on my family, we only have a celebration for a baby's first birthday. When I read about the Chinese's ceremony for the baby turning one, I didn't know that there was a ceremony for a baby to choose an item to predict their future. Not only that, but there is a celebration for a baby turning one month old.

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Being a student in global education, I love learning about festivals and holidays that other countries cultures have. Particularly, China. China has such a rich history and I love how it has been preserved over time.  I have attended mid-autumn festival here at VCU with  the international students and participated in games, food, and dancing. Mid-autumn festival is in celebration of the harvest moon. I enjoyed reading about some of the other festivals that are celebrated in China like Brightness day. I thought it was interesting and paralleled to Mexico's "Day of the Dead". However, I liked learning that it is seen as a "bright" and happy experience to pay respect to people who are deceased in your family. I think in Western culture, death and mourning are seen as very dark and dismal. Where as death is not necessarily celebrated, but is accepted.

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Since I don't really know much about Chinese culture, this chapter was very informing and interesting to read about. I had no clue that Chinese names had meanings behind them! I was particularly drawn to Zhuazhou and the Four Deities in Ancient times. I think it's cool how they let the baby freely pick an item in front of them and then make predictions on what they will be interested in or do later in their life. For the Four Deities I never knew that the Chinese were the ones who originally created the phoenix and the dragon. I never would've thought that the phoenix is incorporated into what the bride wears. Also, I never realized that the dragon was created by combining different types of animals together. After reading this chapter I've realized how much Americans don't have many customs like the Chinese do.

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Since I was raised in a Chinese family, I am well aware of a lot of the Chinese customs talked about in this chapter. It was very interesting to figure out that the nickname that my grandma gave me at birth was called xiao ming. A lot of my family members and close relative would call me by my little name instead of my real name.
I did not personally experience all the things talked about in this chapter. For example, a lot of the Chinese weddings that I went to were not as elaborate as the chapter described it. However, the weddings that I would see in Chinese movies were more traditional. Also, since I lived in an area that does not really celebrate Chinese New Year, a lot of the times it was just a dinner with red envelope exchanges. My parents would tell me that it was so much livelier in China where the celebration would last for days. Also, they talked about all the relatives that they would visit and all the different foods they had. A lot of the festivals like the Pure Brightness Day and the Dragon Boat Festival, I have seen in movies but I have never actually participated in them.

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With the first assignment for this class, we read about Chinese traditions, particularly relating to holidays and seasons. I found some things familiar, and others surprising.

I was surprised to learn that many Chinese family names come from the matriarch of a clan many hundreds or thousands of years ago. As a male-dominated society, I would have expected that Chinese names would have derived primarily from a patriarchal lineage.

The 12 symbolic animals representing each year was something I had learned about as a kid. I think I was born in the year of the pig (1995), which is coming up again in 2019.

The 60 combinations of Heavenly Stems and Earthly branches also reminded me of a recurring theme of dichotomies in Chinese culture. Gottfried Leibniz rediscovered binary numbering systems in the 17th century, and attributed the original concept to Chinese Hexagrams, which could illustrate abstract concepts using binary figures of solid, unbroken lines (Yang) and short, broken lines (Yin). The presence of binary in Chinese culture is also apparent in the dichotomy between heaven and earth, and has influenced other cultures in Asia, such as Korea, where the Korean flag (or Taegukgi/태극기) contains 4 Chinese trigrams, representing different celestials such as heaven, the sun, the moon, and the earth, as well as seasons, cardinal directions, virtues, family members, natural elements, and abstract concepts like justice, fruition, wisdom, and vitality.

Chinese holidays and seasonal divisions also demonstrate this binarism. Each Season is broken into beginning and end, sunlight broken into longest and shortest days, light and heavy rain, slight and great cold.

Other traditions from Chinese culture are seen in countries like Korea and Thailand, as well. The Chinese 1-month ceremony for babies is a 100-day ceremony known in Korea as baek-il/백일 (or, "100 days"). In Thailand, a traditional wedding consists of a bride-fetching ceremony like in China.

Chinese traditions seem to be primarily concerned with the natural and supernatural world. Festivals celebrate elements and seasons, like the beginning of spring and the harvest moon. In the mid-autumn festival, Chinese people celebrate the moon by making mooncakes. This festival also coincides with the end of the growing season: harvest time. With some traditions having their roots in sacrificial offerings, supernatural elements are celebrated/worshipped, such as the heavens and one's ancestors. During the pure brightness day, Chinese tend to their ancestor's graves by cleaning them and offering food and money to show remembrance, and during the Dragon Boat festival, people celebrate the famous patriot and poet, Qu Yuan, by eating a kind of food which was fed to the fish after his death to prevent his corpse from being eaten.

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Chinese Folk Customs - Michelle Dominado

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Chinese Folk Customs - Michelle Dominado

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I thought the section about Chinese names was interesting. After reading about the meaning behind the names, I was curious what my name could be in Chinese. It would be difficult to change my name into Chinese characters, so I looked up the meaning behind my name first. "Michelle" means gift from God, according to Google. So I typed in "gift from God" in Google translate to Chinese, and it came up with

上帝的礼物.

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I didn't think that there was an actual ceremony for watching a one year old essentially choose the object that catches its eye and making a prediction about the child's future. My family make similar predictions all the time about new babies in the family, we just don't have a ceremony for it. For instance, if the baby has a particularly very loud scream/cry we predict that the baby will probably become a singer or could be a great singer because of their strong lungs. I wonder if there are other things we may do normally/unintentionally that might be special in China?

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There were a lot of things from this chapter that I was already familiar with, like the zodiac animals, dieties, names and most of the festivals since my family celebrates them. But what I found most interesting was the section about Chinese weddings, because it was interesting to see how much they differed from Western and Christian weddings. I also found it interesting how seasons were divided into so many specific categories and I wonder if this is still done in modern China.

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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this chapter. I always love to hear how certain things occur within other cultures. The one that stuck out to me the most within this chapter were the weddings. I was especially drawn towards the custom associated with bowing to the heavens and the earth in order for the two to be considered a couple. Taking that in the perspective of an "American" or Christian wedding, would this be equal or share some common ground to the statement said by the officiant that allows the groom to kiss the bride?

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What I found that was most interesting about this chapter is "Pure Brightness Day". I know in many other Asian cultues they have a similar practice to this. Like in Japan they also visit their ancestors graves to clean and wash it.

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I found this chapter very interesting to read. I liked the section about chinese names because I had no idea there was so much culture to be found in something as simple as a name. I have never heard of another culture that puts so much thought into naming their children. I also thought it was very intriguing that girls names are described with words like "flower" and "graceful" and boys names are "tiger" and "magnificent".

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Chinese Folk Customs - Bonnie Qinyue Xue

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Chinese Folk Customs - Bonnie Qinyue Xue

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In China, there is a saying that when you marry someone, you are also marrying his or hers whole family. It is very interesting how the parents from China treats their children's marriages so differently from here in the states. Recently there is a reality show in China host by Xing Jin, called “中国式相亲“ （Chinese－styled match making）, that really shows how marriage are beeing looked at in China. Would y'all think that the idea of marriage is not just about the two individuals is good for making marriage last longer or just create more unnecessary drama?

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very interesting chapter with a lot of details about Chinese culture that I never knew. from this chapter i learned that traditional Chinese wedding is very different from the western marriage. there are many steps such as match maker, bringing gifts, birthday matching etc. one of the steps is called birthday matching. before boy and girl can get married their take their exact birthday date to  to see if they are a good match for each other and to get heavens approval. Is that something common that Chinese people still do before getting married ?

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Chinese Culture: The Lantern and Mid-autumn festival - Uyen Tran

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Chinese Culture: The Lantern and Mid-autumn festival - Uyen Tran

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My Vietnamese culture is actually heavily influenced by Chinese culture. It is true Asian cultures are very much alike, and each country has their own twist on it. Vietnamese people combine the Lantern and Mid-autumn festival together and celebrate on the 15th day of 8th lunar month. Similar to Chinese tradition, we always have mooncakes and often give them as gifts to the elders. The only difference is the lantern festival is not a huge thing, only for kids, really hope I could visit in time for lantern festival in China.

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Everything in this chapter is really interesting, and one thing that caught my eye especially is the Twelve Symbolic Animals. I am into Zodiac signs myself, and i remember learning about the Chinese Zodiac when i was in grade school. They have Twelve animals to represent the years as they go by, and people born within a year are imagined to have characteristics of the animal that guards their year. They say that the Chinese people now number the years by the  Gregorian calendar, but still use the symbolic animals.

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Very interesting Chapter! I specifically admired how the Chinese put so much faith in their children, with respect to the Children turning 1 month and 1 years old. As far as prearranged marriages are concerned, does this still exist, even if they're in different countries, such as living and working in the U.S.?