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Yolo County Fairgrounds * Woodland, CA April 24th and 25th, 2010
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We are well into the final preparation for the 134th Sacramento Valley Scottish Highland Games and Festival.
We Are:
15 June 2009 - Chief Randy Russell, thank you and the committee again for allowing me to bring a bus load of my class of inner city geography students to visit the 2009 Scottish games and festival.
As per our discussion, I have gotten permission for you to publish (or post on the web) some sample essays written by the students. The students are first or second generation immigrants and are still learning English, so please ask your readers to forgive the multitude of minor grammar and usage errors. The essays show a range of student skill, but all three students are extremely hard working and are probably bound for college. If any of your readers have questions regarding the essays, feel free to publish my email address: jrperryman@comcast.net
John R. Perryman
Social Studies Teacher
Luther Burbank High School, Sacramento
West meets East by Mary Xiong - 9/06/09
What are the differences and similarities between a Western and Eastern culture? The culture between the traditional Hmong and the Scottish are unique and different in their own ways. Even though the traditions may be different, people still celebrate and honor their culture with pride and joy. There are varieties of differences such as: the tradition itself, games/entertainments, clothing/clans, religion, and dance. However, all of these activities also have a touch of similarities.
Based on my observations, the Scottish tradition varies from the Hmong tradition. One of the Scottish traditions is that alcohol circulates around the people. At the Scottish festival, for example, there were Coors Light stations everywhere; they even had a wine/whiskey tasting station. In addition, there is a Scottish military tradition, for there is a clan dedicated to the military. There are also places around the festival that sell real swords and weapons. Compared to the Hmong people, weapons are not even allowed at the Hmong festival. At the same time, no station booths sell alcohol. For the Hmong tradition, we perform spiritual ceremony called “Jingle Bell,” a ceremonial practice that sends the shaman to the spirit world. Another ceremony we practice is one that calls for good luck to the family and wishes all the unfortunate luck to go away. A part of the Hmong tradition is the Hmong New Year festival that is celebrated annually as well.
The religion between the Scottish and Hmong are not alike. Sixty-five percent of the population in Scotland believes Christianity and the majority of the Scottish is Presbyterian or Catholic. In general, Hmong people are usually Atheists. We believe in shamanism, a belief that we can communicate with the spirit world. This also relates to our tradition of performing “Jingle Bell.” There are no similarities between the religions of the two cultures since we do not have a religion.
Scottish and Hmong clothes are unique and different because of the patterns and decorations. Scottish men wear kilts (striped skirts), and the patterns on the kilts represent the clans that the person is in. At the festival, you could easily point out if the Scottish is from the same clan or not because of the colors and patterns of the kilts. Furthermore, they also have a Sporran, a leather pouch, around their waist. The Hmong clothing are similar because there are also patterns on the traditional clothes to differentiate the subgroups. Similar to how the Scottish has clans, the Hmong people are broken into subgroups: White Hmong, Blue or Green Hmong, Striped Hmong, Red Hmong. The colors of the White Hmong women’s skirts are white and plain, and the guys' trousers are long and black. While the patterns of the Green Hmong women skirts are “highly decorated with needle work,” the man's pants are wide and black. The men also wear a cap along as well. The Striped Hmong women wear shirts that have stripes encircling the sleeves. Unlike the Scottish traditional clothes, Hmong clothes are decorated with flower cloth needlework called, “paj ntaub,” and beads. Even though the clothing may be different, given that both of our cultures have clans, it shows a similarity between our two cultures.
In my opinion, the traditional clothes are part of the dance. Like the Scottish dance, Hmong people also wear their traditional clothes when they dance. The only difference is the style of the dance. Scottish dancing is upbeat and involves numerous times of jumping up and down on the toes, whereas, Hmong dancing is often more gentle and less dramatic. Hmong dances focus on the feet and handwork while Scottish dances mainly focus on the footwork.
The Scottish and Hmong games are extremely different from one another. At the festival, I learned how to play a 4x4 wooden block game pertaining to blocks of cylinders and rectangular prisms. The game was confusing yet interesting. They also had a super size Jenga and a game using white and black balls, which I did not get the chance to learn how to play. At Hmong New Year, there is a ball tossing game that guys and girls play—age does not matter. Also, as a child, I played an old Hmong game that involves throwing my flip-flops and trying to hit the opponent's flip-flops. There is a popular game of jumping over a long strand of tied rubber bands called “Chinese jump rope”. Moreover, an old fashion game that children used to play and still do play is topspin and in Hmong, it is called “tuj luj” (tooloo). The game is like an older version of “Beyblade;” it consists of a wooden top, a long stick, and a large, tight string.
Overall, the differences between a Western and Eastern culture is unique and distinct. Even though the Scottish and Hmong culture are different, there are petite similarities between the activities that they entertain the crowd with. The Scottish and Hmong may be different when it comes to religions and games; nevertheless, the history of one culture can bring out similarities between them, for instance, the clans and subgroups. It is not the similarities that bring diverse cultures together, but the differences. The differences between cultures bring curiosities that attract the unfamiliar.
Are Scots and Hindu’s Similar?
by Payal Narayan - 4/30/09
Scots are lively people who care about their pride. To show their pride, they represent it in many ways. The ways they represent it can be in music, clothing, and their history. Hindus don’t have much pride for themselves and don’t show their pride like the Scotts. The Scotts and Hindu’s maybe do have some things that can be compared and some that are very different and can’t be compared with each other.
The Scots and Hindus have many different traditions that differentiate from each other. For Scotts, on holidays or just for no reasons drink alcohol as a tradition and it’s a difference between Hindus. As part of Scottish tradition is drinking wine, and whiskey. Hindu’s on the other hand drink all types of alcohol, but don’t drink when there is any type of religious celebration going on. In both cultures, there is a tradition of drinking alcohol. Scotts also have a tradition of wearing specific clothes on important occasions and it is the same for Hindus because it’s a tradition to wear Indian clothes like the way its to wear Scottish clothing. Its a tradition for Scotts to have clans to represent themselves and Hindus have the caste system that tells a Hindu which group they are in.
When Scotts represent themselves the men do it by the kilts they wear. The kilts and tartans which is the pattern on the kilt tells the Scotts what clan they are from and where to they belong. The Scottish back in history have to be covered with their head to showing no hair. Hindus don’t necessarily have to do these things. Hindus are all the same so the clothing we wear has no importance. In Scottish weddings only men have to be dressed in traditional clothes but Indians have to wear traditional clothing and the bride and groom both need to be dressed up. In funerals, Scottish men wear kilts, but in Indian funerals you don’t need to wear traditional clothing.
The languages are very different from each other because the Scotts have 18 letters and Hindi language has more than 82 letters. Both languages have accents on their vowels which is similar, but the accents on the vowels are different. There is a larger amount of Hindi speakers than Scottish language. There are 60,000 people who speak Scottish, and 487 million Hindus who speak Hindi. Both of the languages can’t be compared with each other because there is a huge difference between the two.
The food Scotts eat are mainly meats and Hindus do too, but there is a difference between the mean eaten. Scotts each buffalo, elk, and ostrich while Hindus each duck, lamb, and goat. There is also a difference that Hindus eat vegetarian food a lot too. For Scotts drinking alcohol is something important when they are eating which is normal. Hindus don’t drink alcohol when they are eating food but sometimes there are special occasions.
The common instrument found whether in funerals or weddings would be a bagpipe. The bag pipes don’t represent anything in the Scottish culture. Hindus have many different instruments. There are some that are used for weddings and some for religious ceremonies. Mainly the instruments are different but the instruments used for religious ceremonies are also used in funerals. These instruments also doesn’t represent anything in the Indian culture. The bagpipe is an important part of the Scotts and they give it importance in their culture.
In general, Hindus and Scotts seem to be very different from each other. I would say this because of the interpretations I made at the festival told me that religion wise and custom wise both of these groups of people differentiate in many different ways. There were some similarities but much more than the similarities was their differences. Their differences were between clothing, language, traditions, and more. In my conclusion to this essay Scotts and Hindus don’t have much that can be compared.
Jonathan Saephan - 2009-05-02
Each culture has its own family clans, tongues and dialects, traditional clothing, and animal helpers accustomed to the life style to the people. For the purposes of the International and Environmental Studies, two distant cultures will be juxtaposed in order to find the relativities between the two distinct yet unique cultures, the lu-Mienh (Mien) people of Southeast Asia, and the Scottish people (Scots) of Scotland.
A family clan, or clan in general, is a group of people united by descent, in this sense the lu-Mienh last names are like a clan. There are twelve last names that the lu-Mienh has: Phan, Chao, Teurn, Fong, Lee, Do, Chin, Yaangh, Liew, Law, Tang, and Vang. Each name, according to an old myth, came from the 12 children of P’an Hu, a dragon-dog that agreed to kill an opposing emporer of King Ping, in exchange for the hand at marriage with one of King Ping’s daughter. However, in the Scottish culture there is no myth about who started a clan, but rather facts. At Scottish festivals there are booths chalk full of information on clan history, who originated the clan, and family pedigrees that display descendants and ancestors of the clan. This is mainly due to the fact that the Scots developed a system of written records long before the Mien did, giving the Scogts a boost in factual support. However, the fact for both is that family is first, both present and past.
Though both the Scots and Mien have one distinct language, both races are scattered all over their own continent in places such as mountains, forests, and cities and are disconnected from each other. This disconnection due to separation greatly caused their speech or dialect to take on many forms, influencing accents, pronounciations, and diction or word choice, causing people of the same race to have slight trouble or misunderstanding of a word. An example of this would be, in Asia, there is what is known as Mountain Mien, and Valley Mien dialect. As stated before, due to the separation of a nation, or culture, the Miens could not meet each other in such ways that one dialect would be naturally established, this is a similarity between the Scots and the Mien.
Dissimilarity between the Scots and Mien are their traditional attire or clothes. For the Mien people, traditional attire consist of large baggy black shirts and pants, with decorative designs sewn mainly on the front and around the hems. For a woman, the similar big baggy shirts are worn, except a red boa is sewed around the neck, loads of silver bells hang around all the shirts, and instead of pants, females wear dresses. The reason behind the attire being baggy is because the Mien ancestors were very poor, and in an effort to save money, they created clothes that are too big for their child, so that the child may still wear it as a teen or even later in life. Patterns are not mainly used to represent a family caln, though some are, patterns are simply the physical embodiment of a mother’s creativity. With the Scots, however, patterns do represent clans. Tartans, consisting of criss-crossed horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colors, are usually worn on kilts, caps, and ribbons. Kilts are referred to as skirts, in mockery, but have brave symbolic meaning, because they are worn to identify that the people of a clan (used to) serve a king and are ready for treacherous war. Does not matter if sewn on designs are woven patterns, clothing reveals our ancestors’ life stories.
No culture would survive harsh conditions if it weren’t for their animal help. Animal helpers are animals natural to the environment that a culture resides in. Along the with the place being their inhabitance, people grow and train the animals to assist the people in every day lives. The Mien for example, raise chickens, a popular source of protein and are great help in the fertility of crops. Mien farmers would take a portion of their farm and allow the chickens to flourish, feeding them only grain or corn. The rest of the farm he or she would grow vegetables, such as corn and cabbage, or even rice. After harvest season is over, and the crops had died, the farmer would convert to pen, where the chickens laid, and turn that portion of lands into fields for crops, since the chicken’s waste would only consist of grain and corn, it would enhance the soil. The farmer again would take a portion of the land and convert it into a pen, and the cycle would continue. The Scottish help are amazing and extravagant, compared to the chickens of the Mien people. The Scots raise, breed and trained dogs intensively, to herd sheep and lamb, win pageants, and other activities. Some dogs are as small as a hand bag, like the well known Scottish terrior, while other dogs are like the Scottish Deerhound, who are trained to hunt deers, are as big as wolves. Another animal help in Scotland is the breed of horses. Enormous horses, well above six feet, were purbreed in the old days to carry massive armours as well as passengers. Now a days, these horses are mainly breed for show, but can still handle heavy equipment. Hawks are yet another fascinating animals used by the Scots in the sport of falconry. In falconry, the owners train hawks, and other birds to go out and catch prey, simply put it in the bird with the biggest prey wins. In the end, no matter the animal nor the race, animal helpers play a great role in the survival of the culture.
I find the more things change the more they stay the same. Even though at first glance there seems to be no relativity between the Scots and the Mien, if you were to take the time and look closer you will see that both races have similar qualities and core values: having respectable family traditions, wanting to preserve their language, wanting to express their individuality to the world, and having the basic instincts of survival. In the end, by comparing two cultures across the globe, we find important aspects in life that proves no matter who you are, or your background, we are all the same.