Materials
food customs
ICH Materials 88
Publications(Article)
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RITUAL CULTURE AND PALOV CEREMONYPalov, a tasty rice dish that incorporates meat, onions, carrots, herbs, and spices, comes standard on Uzbek menus. Prepared throughout Uzbekistan as an everyday meal, palov also has an important presence during festive events and rituals.Year2016NationSouth Korea
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TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE CONTAINED IN KIMJANG, THE ANCIENT PRACTICE OF KIMCHI MAKINGThe tradition of storing vegetables harvested in autumn to eat throughout the winter is an ancient practice on the Korean peninsula that can be traced back to the Neolithic era when agriculture began. When buried in the ground for storage, the portions of vegetables that contain moisture would retain their freshness within even as the outer portions dried up. However, this method had the drawback of rendering large portions of the vegetable inedible. This led to the method of drying vegetables under the shade for prolonged storage. However, this method could not preserve the original flavor of the vegetables. Generations of trial and error in search for a better method of preservation led to the discovery of pickling in salt water.Year2013NationSouth Korea
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A Tale of Two Curries: Culinary Tradition as a Form of Cultural Heritage'Like this,’ the old woman says, raking her fingers through red lentils clouding a stream of bottled water. We’re crowded together in the kitchen of the guesthouse I am staying in—consisting of not much more than a single gas burner, a rice cooker, a table, and a shelf full of an array of spices—in a village on the outskirts of Kandy, Sri Lanka. While my hostess demonstrates how she makes the dahl, she feeds hungry travelers, and her daughter marinates chicken for a second curry. The way the pair dance through their routine tells me they’ve done this many times before, I imagine both in the presence of foreign guests as well as in the comfortable silence of private company.\n\nThe cooking lesson my hostess gave me years ago has evidently stuck with me in memory, and in practice, as I try my hand at the recipes, I was taught. The preparation of food, after all, is not just a duty performed by people out of necessity but also a ritual cherished across cultures. It can unite the members of a household, each individual playing a role in the making of a meal, from sourcing ingredients to cooking the dishes to laying the table. Though their responsibilities might differ from culture to culture, the collaborative element of preparing to eat together is one that can bind the women and the men, the young and the old, the past and the present.\n\nRecipes themselves are more often passed between generations hand to hand rather than neatly written on recipe cards, as grandmothers and grandfathers teach their young ones to simmer and season a dish to perfection. It’s a part oral tradition and, part ritual, and in this manner, tradition can be maintained, not just the combinations of ingredients that come together in proper proportions, but the act of making something together, whether as a family, community, or patchwork group of temporary visitors.\n\nThat tradition can then become characteristic of an entire region or country, as can any cultural craft. But culinary customs have exceptional quality, as the tradition can be intimately experienced by family members and foreigners alike. Anyone who participates in local cuisine is invited to taste the past and present of a people in a single bite. As traditional meals feed the bellies and satiate the souls of entire nations and their visitors, tradition is kept alive not only in the art of making the meal but in those it substantiates in both body and spirit. This is how heritage is kept alive; when it continues to nourish people.\n\nHeritage is also invited to take a seat at modern tables when the keepers of local traditions share the customs they’ve inherited. When foreigners, for instance, take the initiative to learn the ingredients, recipes, etiquette, and conversation that circulate the kitchen in a culture that is not their own and they are permitted to do so, they are offered a glimpse at so much more than just local cuisine. They are personally introduced to a custom that has preceded even grandmothers’ generations, one that remains alive thanks to the conscious dedication to tradition and its maintenance. In this process, which we may be privileged to take part in as we travel, intangible elements of cultural heritage are shared, rehearsed, and solidified. A magical merger can happen between local and foreign, and between ancestors and today is made possible.\n\nSo it’s no wonder that something more potent than curry spice lingers at the table in Sri Lanka after we have prepared dinner and sat together to eat. The simple act of cooking and sharing a meal carries far more weight than I then realized, although I could feel it; a sense of being tied together with not only the people in the room but with those who built this tradition so long ago. This invisible connection remains uncompromised by the limited language and experiences people of different walks of life are expected to have in common. And it’s a sentiment I encourage travelers to seek to experience anywhere they go, no matter how different and far-flung those corners of the globe might be. When we explore culinary traditions and local teachings, we approach the vast and various nuances that characterize culture and ultimately participating in the preservation of tradition.\n\nMore of Issabella’s work is available at museandwander.co.uk\n\nPhoto : Split Red Lentil Seeds Ready for Curry CC BY-SA 4.0 Sanjay AcharyaYear2020NationSri Lanka
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CHILDBIRTH IN INDIA AND THE ASSOCIATED FOOD AND SONG CULTUREThe birth of a child is considered auspicious and sacred in every culture. India, being multicultural in its beliefs and customs, has diverse traditions of local cuisines at all occasions, be it childbirth, or even death. Although the recipes have grown in number as a result of shared practices in modern times, traditional food items and their variants are still popular and can be found in almost all mandatory rituals.Year2019NationSouth Korea
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6. Traditional cuisineTraditional Kyrgyz cusine has been evolving for centuries and adapting to new conditions. Traditional recipes, ways of cooking and storing food are intrinsically linked to lifestyles change, many customs and traditions remain unchanged in local communities.YearNationKyrgyzstan
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Wishing Abundance to the Goddess of Wind: Jeju Chilmeoridang YeongdeunggutIn traditional society, Jeju has blossomed an original and attractive culture based on its natural feature of being a volcanic island located between the Korean Peninsula and the South Sea. Every year in February of the lunar calendar, “Gut,” one of Korea’s seasonal customs, is held throughout Jeju to pray for the peace, good harvest, and good catch of the sea. Haenyeo (local female divers) and shipowners prepare food offering for the gods, and shamans serve as a bridge between gods and people, offering ancestral rites to the spirits of nature, such as the wind goddess, sea god, and mountain god. “Jeju Chilmeoridang Yeongdeunggut” is Jeju’s representative intangible cultural heritage that captures what the sea meant to the lives of the former islanders.\n\nJeju Chilmeoridang Yeongdeunggut is based on the myth of Yeongdeung God, the goddess of wind (otherwise called the “yeongdeung halmang,” meaning Grandmother Yeongdeung), along with various guardian deities of the village, the dragon king and ancestrial gods. Yeongdeung God is a foreign goddess that appears in a myth in Jeju. She returns on the first day of the second lunar month and controls the weather while staying in Jeju, she sprays seeds of grain to be harvested the next year on the ground and seeds of seaweed and seafood on the sea. The goddess is also a threat to people’s lives by stirring the sea, but also a god of abundance that helps seaweed grow well by circulating seawater. This myth reflects the islanders’ perception of the sea, which is both a source of life and a dangerous place.\n\nRecords of Jeju Chilmeoridang Yeongdeunggut can be found in “Shinjeung Dongguk Yeoji Seungram”, “Tamraji”, and “Dongguk Sesigi”. Above all, however, the reason Yeongdeunggut could be transmitted for a long time was that the residents were the true owners of the heritage. While preparing food for rituals with marine resources collected from the sea, which is part of their lives, haenyeo and shipowners inherited the tradition as a subject of Jeju Chilmeoridang Yeongdeunggut along with a shaman leading the gut. The ritual was passed down in the lives of Jeju residents for a long time. Shaman Ahn Sa-in was designated as the ICH holder in 1980, allowing more people to learn the value and importance of the heritage.\n\nJeju Chilmeoridang Yeongdeunggut is a unique tradition that can only be seen in Jeju Island, where rituals for mountain gods and rituals for Yeongdeung are combined with one shamanic ritual called Yeongdeunggut. On every February 1st of the lunar calendar, Chilmeoridang in the village, where Yeongdeung-gut is held, welcomes Yeongdeungsin with a welcoming festival. The villagers offer offerings to the god of Yeongdeung, the guardian deity of the village, and the sea god to pray for the abundant year and the well-being of the village, and on February 14, they hold a farewell ceremony to send back various gods safely. Jeju Chilmeoridang Yeongdeunggut, which has been handed down as a folk ritual that reflects the natural view and belief of Jeju people over many years, has been recognized for its academic value as the only haenyeo-gut in Korea that shows a unique combination of haenyeo beliefs and folk beliefs. In 2009, it was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.\n\nDespite the development of negative views on folk beliefs due to modernization, Chilmeoridang Yeongdeunggut has become an important cultural festival that fosters unity and bond among community members and a ritual that captures the lives of ancestors who shared the flow of nature. Surrounded by the sea on all sides and in the wind blowing rapidly, Jeju Islanders did not simply fear and fight the winds, but recognized them as beings that brought the blessing of abundant resources. As the voices about the environment are increasing, it is believed that this view of nature of Jeju Islanders can be a guide to living a “sustainable life” in a modern society.\n\nphoto : Jeju Island shamanic ritual to Yeongdeung, god of wind, which became a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. © Korea Open Government License Type 1, SourceYear2022NationSouth Korea
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Pamir: Mountains Giving Food and Energy in Tajikistan“A man in Pamir, from birth to death, is accompa- nied by all sorts of family and everyday rites and customs. In many traditions, including the prepa- ration and use of food, traces of deep geographical and climatic isolation are clearly visible.The Pamir highlanders who lived in closeness with their nature had a great culture, rich in traditions, cults, customs which created humane framework of actions in relation to wildlife. Cultural values and practices re- lated to caring for nature at the same time supported the life of the mountain peoples. This culture has become the main priority for the effective,reasonable and rational use of wildlife resources.Such behavior not only contributed to the survival of the mountain population in the most severe climatic conditions, but also became the main factor in the conservation of wild fauna and flora.Year2020NationTajikistan
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The Safeguarding and Diffusion of Native Traditional Foods of Baja California, MexicoTraditional food systems of native peoples around the world are critical to cultural identity and customs as well as to the continuation of biological genetic diversity. However, such traditional cuisines are becoming increasingly vulnerable due to the advent of global food systems, agroindustry, and changing lifestyles as well as to shifting preferences and ignorance of original ingredients. Furthermore, territorial transformations and distancing from ancestral lands have led to the loss of knowledge regarding the benefits of diverse ecosystems and their natural resources.Year2019NationSouth Korea
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SINGAPO人—Discovering Chinese Singaporean Culture through Food, Festivals, and LanguageSingapore is a tiny Southeast Asian nation-state located in a region with many ethnic groups, of which the Chinese comprise only a small percentage of the overall population. Yet, the Chinese form the majority in Singapore, living alongside a significant proportion of non-Chinese. Over many years, this has led to a Chinese Singaporean identity that is complex and ever-changing.\n\nIn 2020, the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre launched a permanent exhibition to encourage greater appreciation of the distinctiveness of Chinese culture in Singapore through examples of food, festivals, and languages. For the exhibition title to reflect Singapore’s linguistic diversity, the curators invented a word by combining English and Mandarin—the two most widely spoken languages in Singapore. The first element of the title “Singapo” is drawn from the country’s English name while the “人” element is the Chinese character for “person” (pronounced as “ren” in Mandarin). Hence, by reading the two elements together, the exhibition title “ SINGAPO人” sounds like “Singaporean!”\n\nTo provide the context, the exhibition begins with an examination of five key historical socio-geographical aspects about Singapore that led the local Chinese community to develop differently. They comprised the legacy of 150 years of British colonial rule, its location in tropical Southeast Asia, heritage of early Chinese migrants who were mostly from the southern coastal provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, the co-existence of a relatively large proportion of non-Chinese minorities, and Singapore’s reliance on global trade and connectivity for its economic survival.\n\nThese five aspects may be summarized into three basic driving forces that have shaped and continue to shape the Chinese culture in Singapore today. Firstly, there is Chinese heritage, which the early migrants brought to Singapore. These include their values (as reflected in festivals and practices), belief systems, language, customs, and food dishes that originated from China. Secondly, there are the cultural interactions among the different southern Chinese sub-groups (dialect groups) and between the Chinese community and the other ethnic groups in Singapore. These interactions ranged from the casual, such as attending to daily chores, to deeper levels of engagement, such as inter-marriage. These led to changes and adaptations to the way of life of the local Chinese. Thirdly, the Chinese community was also affected by how Singapore was governed. Whether during the colonial period or post-independence, all governments seek to shape society to achieve certain objectives. Hence, the impact of public policies and laws on cultural development is significant.\n\nIn other words, these are the three underlying key ingredients that give the Chinese Singaporean ‘recipe’ its distinct flavor. For instance, this is reflected in the way Chinese New Year is celebrated in Singapore. Firstly, the festival is a tradition that originated in China, and as such, is part of Chinese heritage (first ingredient). Although Chinese New Year does not coincide with the new year of the Gregorian calendar used in Singapore, it is nevertheless a public holiday and held in high regard by the local Chinese because it is a festival that emphasizes family togetherness and filial piety. Secondly, Singaporeans love to eat pineapple tarts and love letters during Chinese New Year. However, these snacks did not originate from China. Rather, they were made popular by the Peranakan (local-born) Chinese who often adopted Western techniques like the baking oven, and Western ingredients such as butter in their cuisine. This type of hybrid food is an example of cultural interaction (second ingredient) at work. Thirdly, during Chinese New Year, Singaporeans enjoy attending local festive events like Chingay and River Hongbao. These are large-scale public events organized by the state or state-sponsored organizations. This is an example of public policies (third ingredient) shaping the way in which Chinese New Year is celebrated in Singapore.\n\nHence, these three ingredients, found in many overseas Chinese communities, were present in the past and continue to exist in Singapore today. The influence of each ingredient varies with time, creating complex outcomes that shape Chinese Singaporean culture.\n\nFor more information about the exhibition SINGAPO 人, please refer to the SCCC website at: https://singaporeccc.org.sg/permanent-exhibition/\n\nPhotos 1~4 : The exhibition uses both physical and digital media content to engage visitors. © Low Sze WeeYear2021NationSingapore