• Genre: Material Lore – food, Customary Lore – celebration, superstition
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: China/Myanmar
• Informant: S.C.
• Date Collected: November 7, 2020

Informant Data:

• S.C. was born in Yangon, Myanmar in 1964 where he grew up with her parents, and 4 siblings. His parents owned a shop that sells tarps. While S.C. is Burmese, his parents were originally from the Fuzhou region of China, so he experienced ample amounts of both Chinese and Burmese culture. In terms of religion, his family follows Theravada Buddhism, which is the predominant religion in Myanmar. Both in Yangon and in New York, where he currently lives with his wife and kids, S.C. would celebrate Chinese New Year with his family.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: Noodles are a very common food both in Chinese and Burmese culture. In both cultures, they can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Also, they can be made of many different ingredients, such as rice, flour, egg, etc, and can come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
• Social Context: Red is a very lucky color in Chinese culture. During Chinese New Year, those who celebrate should wear red and a common practice is adults handing out red envelops containing money to the kids. 

Item:

• Foo Chow Mee Sua Noodles is a Chinese New Year dish with much significance. The dish is composed of “long life” noodles, chicken, soup, hard boiled egg and mushroom. When preparing the soup, a red paste is added to make the broth a deep red color. The broth color is so deep that the eggs added become the same color as the broth. As implied with the name, the reason for eating these noodles for Chinese New Year is so you can enjoy a long life. On top of the noodles, the red color broth also displays significance as red brings good fortune. 

Audio Clip:

Transcript: 

C.C. (collector): So growing up in Yangon, Myanmar, but being of Chinese descent, what is one type of Chinese New Year food that really stands out?

S.C. (informant): So for every Chinese New Year, when we celebrate, we have to eat this long life noodles, which is sort of like a kind of rice noodles, but they call is long life. And noodle is with the soup, which is made of chicken, but we use a red coloring paste, so to make to soup become red color, and you put some boiled egg, and the egg, the outer color with become red. And you put the long life noodles in the red colored soup with egg. So what’s the significance of that, well noodle is long life, so that means good health and the red color, the reason why the Chinese like the red color is the red color means it will give you happiness, health, prosperity, anything with the good fortune, good luck, associated with red. Black means, you know, we use it in funerals, so people don’t like to wear black on joyous occasions. Another thing is at the new year, as a kid we are very excited in the evening when my father would give us red envelop with money in it that will give you prosperity for the new year. So that’s why this soup is so important for us to have on this Chinese New Year.

C.C.: OK, thank you.

Informant’s Comments:

• Usually, red wine is used to make the soup red, but since my family doesn’t drink alcohol and never has wine stashed at home, we use a red paste as a substitute. This still gives the bright red color.

Collector’s Comments:

• These noodles seem to display homeopathic magic in two forms: through color and through the noodles themselves. By consuming the red-colored soup, which is associated with good luck and fortunate, these attributes will be attained. Similarly, by eating the “long life” noodles, a prosperous life is said to be granted. In both cases, eating something that is associated with certain attributes will give the person said attributes.

Collector’s Name: Chris Chao

Tags/Keywords:

• Chinese New Year
• Material Lore
• Customary Lore
• Food
• Entrée

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