Lon Po Po (translation: “Grandma Wolf”)

General Information about Item: 

• Verbal lore, fairytale
• Language: Chinese/ Shanghainese 
• Country of Origin: China
• Informant: Michelle Wu
• Date Collected: 11-09-19

Informant Data:

Michelle Wu is a senior, ’20, at Dartmouth. She is 21 years old from Cockeysville, Maryland. She is a double major in Economics and Spanish. 

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: This childhood fairytale is a spin on the well known “Little Red Riding Hood.” The story presents a moral of not trusting strangers and through the actions of the eldest sister, we can see that wit and intelligence is highly valued and rewarded in Chinese culture. 
• Social Context: Parents would tell their children these stories as bedtime stories or to pass time. Michelle says that she remembers her mother telling her this story, one school day afternoon, when Michelle brought up the tales that she was reading in school. Her mom told her that she was also told a similar story growing up titled Lon Po Po and that was how Michelle came to know the story. The story has been passed down to Michelle’s mom and now her. 

Item:

“Basically, in the olden days in China, there was a mom who lived with her three daughters. One day the mom, she went into the village, so she left her three daughters at home. So at night someone knocked on the door and so when the three girls went to answer. The person on the other side said, ‘It’s your grandma. Can I come in?’ So this grandma was actually a wolf so as soon as the three girls went to open the door, the wolf blew out all the candles because she said her eyesight was bad and so she couldn’t look at the light so everything was dark. So at night, they went to bed and then the oldest daughter felt (like) the wolf fur, and so she thought that something was wrong. And so she tried to trick the wolf grandma to go outside and so she told her plan to her two sisters. So they all went outside and then the children told the wolf that the tree outside had magic gingko nuts and that they were going to climb it to get some for the wolf. And so of course the wolf agreed and so the children climbed up the tree where there were a lot of these magic gingko nuts and shook the tree as hard as they could and then all the gingko nuts fell on the wolf and killed the wolf. And then the children went back into the house, they slept and then the next day the mother returned and so basically they just told the mother what had happened the previous day.”

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Interview of Michelle Wu (in Shanghainese) 

Interview of Michelle Wu (in English)

Informant’s Comments:

• Michelle also told the story in Shanghainese. 

Collector’s Comments:

• This story is very similar to the version collected by the Grimm’s brother’s titled Little Red Riding Hood. It also is representative of Propp’s model. The tale revolves around 3 characters (the daughters) as many other fairy tales do. The tale started with the mother leaving her three daughters behind which can be said to be absentation. Later the villain (the wolf) tries to trick the three daughters by disguising as the grandma to come into the house and presumably eat the three daughters. Though Michelle does not speak about an interdiction made by the mother before she leaves for the village, the daughters ends up falling for the trick by the wolf but only briefly as the eldest sister, the true hero, is smart enough to realize that it was the wolf and not the grandmother. By going outside, the sisters were able to work together (struggle) and with the help of the gingko nuts (probably the first donor function), they were able to defeat the wolf (victory). It was a happy ending as the wolf was punished and the wedding function was when the mom came home and the sisters told her about what happened to them. 

Collector’s Name: Anna D. Nguyen

Tags/Keywords: Folktale, fairytale, Lon Po Po, Propp’s model

translates to “The Wailing Woman”

General Information about Item: 

• Verbal lore, Legend, Myth, Horror
• Language: English/ originally Mexican tale.
• Country of Origin: Mexico
• Informant: Juan Quinonez Zepeda
• Date Collected: 11-09-19

Informant Data:

Juan Quinonez Zepeda is a ‘22 from Coldwater, Mississippi. Juan is currently majoring in Geography modified with Spanish and is driven by his Mexican-American roots to empower his community.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: This is the story of how the legend of La Llorona came about. Juans says that La Llorona is an important figure that comes up around the time of Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). Recently it has been popularized by pop culture and a horror movie was made based on this tale of La Llorona.
• Social Context: This story would be told by parents and children alike in hopes that the audience would be frightened by it. Juan says the tale is very ingrained into Mexico’s culture and it is very well known within the Mexican community. 

Item:

“So this a story often told around this time, the Halloween season as we call it. We call it Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico which is why I have this skull with me right now. But This is a story that actually a lot of people have taken to heart and actually it has become a culture of Mexicans, I would say because I remember this is something that I participated in as one of the characters actually on the street in a festival, as a festivity. So something that is very ingrained and so the way that La Llorona goes is the way that it has been told to me by my mother is that there was this woman once. She had two children. She loved her children and she was a beautiful woman who was always dressed in white. Her children would always follow her around everywhere. And then one day, something occurred where one of her children betrayed her and she ended up taking both of the children to a lagoon and drowned them. So she killed her own children and then later on, she killed her own self because she couldn’t live with herself. So the legend goes that every night around the same time, between twelve and three a.m. you can hear her crying on the streets, saying ‘mis niños! Mis niños! Dónde está mis niños?’ which translates to, ‘my kids, my kids! Where are my children?’ So the tale goes that every night, she goes around saying that saying and looking for her children and when she happens to find little children out on the street who aren’t behaving or they are being disobedient, she would take them and make them apart of her family and then she will drown them and do the same thing that she did to her very own children.”

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Interview of Juan Quinonez Zepeda

Informant’s Comments:

• “So this is something that I actually participated in kindergarten at this festival where we had one of our classmates, 5-6 years old, who dressed up as La Llorona, so all wearing all white, face paint, crying mascara and dripping and I played one of the children that was taken by La Llorana. At the time I didn’t know the significance of it much. My mom always told me to kinda behave but it didn’t seem scary. It just seemed like something that we did as apart of our culture so it didn’t seem terrifying. It kinda seemed entertaining and actually fun. All of our class kinda just walked around the streets and she would be like my children, my children. And we would be like, ‘yeah, like that and fun and uh.’ I have good memories of it but it was always a tale that strikes fear in young children and like my mother, since we moved here to the states, she doesn’t tell it to my siblings quite often as she did to me so maybe she just bestowed that trauma upon me and that’s why I’m such a good kid now. So yeah that’s pretty much how La Llorona goes and what I’ve been told about it.”

Collector’s Comments:

• A villian such as La Llorona is very similar to many horror folklore that I have heard of here in the states. Stories about Bloody Mary for instance also involves a paranormal figure who has ill-intentions with her subjects. The personification of La Llorona is also very typical of a ghost or villians in folk tales as she wore white. There is also something about the sound of cries lingering that it makes it a common characteristic in other forms of folktales such as foundation sacrifice where one can still hear the sounds of the buried. La Llorona can also be seen as someone who is stuck in the transition stage of the rites of passage as she died an unnatural death by suicide. Like the vampire, she cannot move on from this world and so she attempts to be reintegrated again by trying to acquire children of her own by kidnapping other kids. 

Collector’s Name: Anna D. Nguyen

Tags/Keywords: Legend, myth, La Llorona, Folklore, Childhood story