Culture: quotes, facts and reflections - Page 3

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DriveLanguage

Hawaiian, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, came close to disappearing in the twentieth century. Families revived it by opening Hawaiian-language preschools in 1984 and winning Hawaiian-medium classes in public schools in 1987, a path that now runs from early childhood to university.

In 1896, three years after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, a law made English the language of instruction in schools, and speaking Hawaiian in class was soon discouraged, sometimes punished. By the early 1980s, by the organisers' estimate, fewer than fifty children could speak it. Parents and teachers founded the Pūnana Leo ('nest of voices') preschools, where only Hawaiian is spoken, then campaigned for classes in state schools where children learn every subject, from mathematics to science, in Hawaiian. The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo has run a doctoral programme in Hawaiian and Indigenous language and culture revitalisation since 2006, the first of its kind.

Hawaiian languageRead card

StillnessLanguage

Ainu, the language of the indigenous Ainu people of northern Japan, is critically endangered, with very few native speakers left. Community classes, teacher training, family programmes and museum courses are now creating new places where it is spoken.

The Ainu live mainly on Hokkaido and once also lived on Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, now part of Russia. After Japan formally took over Hokkaido in 1869, assimilation policies and discrimination pushed families to raise their children in Japanese. Ainu has no known relatives among the world's languages. From 1983 the Ainu activist Shigeru Kayano ran Ainu classes in his village of Nibutani, and in 1994 he became the first Ainu member of Japan's parliament, where he spoke in Ainu. Parliament recognised the Ainu as an indigenous people in 2008, a 2019 law promoted their culture, and the national Ainu museum, Upopoy, opened in 2020.

Ainu languageRead card

DriveLanguage

Kaurna, the Aboriginal language of the Adelaide Plains in South Australia, lost its last known native speaker in 1929. Since 1989, Kaurna people and linguists have been reviving it from community memory and nineteenth-century records, and it is now taught and used in public life.

In 1840 two German Lutheran missionaries, Christian Teichelmann and Clamor Schürmann, published a record of Kaurna with about 3,000 words, a short grammar and hundreds of sentences; they ran a school at Piltawodli in Adelaide. As colonisation broke up Kaurna life, the language fell out of daily use, and Ivaritji, its last known native speaker, died in 1929. From 1989 Kaurna elders and the linguist Rob Amery used the missionaries' records to rebuild pronunciation and coin words for modern life. In 2002 the elders Lewis Yerloburka O'Brien and Alitya Wallara Rigney founded, with Amery, Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi ('creating Kaurna language'). Every park in Adelaide's city parklands now has a Kaurna name, and Whitmore Square also bears the name Iparrityi, after that last speaker.

Kaurna languageRead card

WonderFood

Injera is the soft, spongy flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, made from a fermented batter, traditionally of teff flour. It is cooked on one side only, so bubbles rise and burst into a surface of tiny holes known as 'eyes'.

Teff, native to the Ethiopian highlands, is one of the smallest cereal grains in the world; injera is also made with other grains or mixtures. The batter is left to ferment for a few days, often with a little starter kept from the last batch, which makes it slightly sour and full of gas. It is then poured in a spiral onto a large clay griddle called a mitad. At the table, a large injera covers a shared tray and stews are served on top; diners tear off pieces to scoop up the food, and the injera underneath, soaked in sauce, is eaten last. Placing a morsel in a companion's mouth, called gursha, is a sign of affection and respect.

InjeraRead card

WonderFood

Chinampas, the so-called floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City, are fixed fields raised from lake mud and plant matter. Canals run between them, and rows of ahuejote willows along their edges hold the banks in place.

Farmers built chinampas by staking out a plot in a shallow lake, piling up layers of mud and rotting vegetation, and planting willows whose roots anchor the sides. Mud dredged from the canals keeps the beds fertile, and the canals double as waterways for canoes. The technique is older than the Aztec Empire, but the Aztecs expanded it greatly around their capital, Tenochtitlan, helping to feed a city of perhaps 200,000 people or more. Xochimilco's canals and chinampas became part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987; today urban growth, pollution and falling water levels threaten the farmers who still work them.

ChinampaRead card

StillnessFood

Couscous is made by rolling moistened semolina by hand into tiny grains and steaming them. Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia share it, and each region, even each family, keeps its own way of making it.

Rolling the grains is a skill learned by watching and doing, traditionally passed from mother to daughter. The couscous is then steamed, usually two or three times, in the top half of a two-part pot, known in French as a couscoussier, while a stew of vegetables, meat or fish simmers below, so the grains take on its aroma without touching the liquid. Broths, spices and occasions vary from region to region, and in many families couscous is the Friday meal. It is usually made from wheat semolina, but also from barley or millet. UNESCO inscribed the knowledge and practices of couscous on its intangible heritage list in 2020, after a joint nomination by Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.

CouscousRead card

StillnessFood

Maple syrup was first made by Indigenous peoples of northeastern North America. Each spring they collected the sap of maple trees and concentrated it into syrup and sugar, long before Europeans arrived; settlers later learned the craft from them.

Maple sap runs for only a few weeks at the end of winter, when freezing nights alternate with days above freezing; the swings in temperature build pressure inside the tree and push the sap out. Indigenous makers cut V-shaped notches in the trunk and guided the sap along reeds or pieces of bark into birch-bark containers or clay pots. They concentrated it by boiling, and also by leaving it out on frosty nights and throwing away the layer of ice that formed on top, since the ice is almost pure water. It takes about forty litres of sap to make one litre of syrup. Quebec now produces about 70 per cent of the world's supply.

Maple syrupRead card

StillnessFood

Argan oil comes from the nuts of the argan tree, which grows naturally almost only in southwestern Morocco. Making it by hand means drying the fruit, removing the pulp, cracking the hard nuts between stones and grinding the kernels, skills passed down among rural women.

The argan tree is adapted to the dry land between the Atlas Mountains and the Atlantic, and UNESCO declared the area the Arganeraie Biosphere Reserve in 1998. The hardest-looking step is cracking the nut between two stones, but the knowledge covers the whole chain: when to gather the fruit, how long to dry it, and whether to roast the kernels. Roasted kernels give the nutty oil used in cooking and in amlou, a spread made with almonds and honey; unroasted ones give the oil used on skin and hair. Women knead the ground paste by hand with a little water until the oil separates. In 2014 UNESCO listed these practices and know-how as Intangible Cultural Heritage, and many women now work through cooperatives.

Argan oilRead card

WonderArt

Batik is an Indonesian way of patterning cloth with wax. Makers draw hot wax in lines and dots wherever the dye must not reach, dye the cloth, then repeat the waxing and dyeing for each colour before boiling the wax away.

The word batik is Javanese, and the classic tool is the canting, a small copper cup with a thin spout on a bamboo handle that lets the maker draw with melted wax like a pen. Hand-drawn cloth, called batik tulis, can take weeks or months; from the mid-nineteenth century, copper stamps called cap made repeated patterns much faster. Because each dyeing colours only what the wax leaves open, the maker has to plan the whole design in advance, usually working from light colours to dark. In Java some motifs were once reserved for the royal courts, and batik accompanies life from the sling used to carry a baby to weddings and funerals. UNESCO listed Indonesian batik as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009, and 2 October is celebrated as National Batik Day.

BatikRead card

WonderArt

Talavera is a tin-glazed pottery made by hand in the Mexican states of Puebla and Tlaxcala. Each piece goes through clay preparation, shaping, a first firing, glazing, hand-painting and a second firing, skills handed down in specialist workshops.

Spanish potters, many from Seville and Talavera de la Reina, brought the technique to Puebla in the sixteenth century, where it blended with local skills. Tin glaze, a white coating made opaque with tin oxide, gives Talavera its milky surface, and the painted colours fuse into it in the kiln. Blue became the favourite colour partly under the influence of Chinese porcelain that reached Mexico on the Manila galleons, the ships that sailed between the Philippines and Acapulco. Since 1997 a denomination of origin has protected the name: genuine pieces come from certified workshops, use only six colours made from natural pigments (blue, yellow, black, green, orange and mauve), and take three to four months to make. In 2019 UNESCO listed the craft, together with its Spanish counterparts, as Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Artisanal Talavera of Puebla and TlaxcalaRead card

WonderArt

Chinese paper cutting, called jianzhi, turns a single sheet of paper into connected patterns cut with scissors or knives. The cut-outs decorate windows and doors at the Spring Festival and carry good wishes to weddings and birthdays.

Paper was invented in China, and the oldest surviving paper cut-outs, circles of repeating patterns from about the sixth century, were found in tombs in Xinjiang, in north-west China. Every opening has to leave enough paper to hold the rest together, so a design must also work as a structure. The most familiar pieces are the red 'window flowers' pasted up for the Spring Festival and the double-happiness character cut for weddings. Styles vary by region, from bold northern folk figures to the delicate work of southern cities such as Yangzhou. Girls traditionally learned the art at home from older women, and many cutters fold the paper to cut several layers at once. UNESCO listed Chinese paper cutting as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009.

Chinese paper cuttingRead card

StillnessArt

Khachkars are Armenian memorial stones: upright slabs carved with a cross in the centre, framed by interlacing plants, geometric knots and sometimes figures. Each one is carved individually, so no two are alike.

The name joins the Armenian words khach, 'cross', and kar, 'stone'. Khachkars appear from the ninth century, and about 40,000 survive across Armenia and historic Armenian lands. They were raised to remember the dead, to mark a victory or the building of a church or bridge, or to ask for protection and salvation. Carvers work local stone, often tuff, a soft volcanic rock, or basalt, with chisels and fine points, and many set the cross above a rosette or sun disc. Some of the finest were carved around 1300 by masters such as Momik. The skills still pass from master to apprentice, and UNESCO listed khachkar art and craftsmanship as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2010.

KhachkarRead card

WonderArt

A suzani is a large embroidered cloth from Central Asia, traditionally made for a bride's dowry. The design was often drawn across several joined cotton strips, which were then separated so that female relatives could embroider them, and finally sewn back together.

The name comes from the Persian word for needle, and suzanis are linked above all with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, with famous centres in Bukhara, Samarkand and Shahrisabz. A girl's mother and female relatives began work on them while she was still young; the finished pieces hung on walls, covered beds and were presented to the groom on the wedding day. A professional draftswoman, called a kalamkesh, usually drew the flowers, vines and medallions on four to six strips of homespun cotton. Because the strips were embroidered separately, motifs often fail to meet exactly at the seams and colours shift from one strip to the next. Very few suzanis older than the late eighteenth century survive.

SuzaniRead card

WonderHistory

The geographer al-Idrisi completed the Tabula Rogeriana, a world atlas made for King Roger II of Sicily, in 1154. He spent some fifteen years comparing earlier written geography with accounts collected from travellers.

Al-Idrisi was born around 1100, probably in Ceuta, and studied in Córdoba before Roger II invited him to his court in Palermo, where Arabic, Greek and Latin learning met. The book's Arabic title, Nuzhat al-mushtaq, means roughly 'the journey of one eager to cross distant horizons'. It divides the known world into seven climate zones from south to north, each cut into ten sections, giving seventy regional maps with descriptions of roads, ports, distances and trade. As in much Islamic mapmaking of the time, south is at the top. Al-Idrisi also engraved a world map on a large silver disc, now lost. Roger II died only weeks after the work was finished.

Tabula RogerianaRead card

WonderHistory

The Kangnido, a world map made in Korea in 1402, is one of the oldest surviving East Asian maps to show Africa and Europe. It combined Chinese, Korean and Japanese maps with geographic knowledge that had reached China from the Islamic world.

The map was completed early in the Joseon dynasty by Korean scholars, among them Kwon Kun and Yi Hoe, from four sources: two fourteenth-century Chinese maps, a Korean map and a Japanese one. Its full name means roughly 'map of integrated lands and regions of historical countries and capitals'. China and Korea are drawn very large, while Africa, Arabia and Europe are squeezed into the western edge; even so, Africa already tapers to a southern tip, knowledge that probably travelled through contacts between China and Muslim geographers in the Mongol era. The 1402 original is lost. Later copies survive in Japan, the best known painted on silk and held by Ryukoku University in Kyoto.

KangnidoRead card

StillnessLanguage

The Japanese saying ichi-go ichi-e, roughly 'one time, one meeting', comes from the tea ceremony: every gathering is unique and can never be repeated exactly, even when the same people meet again.

The idea goes back to the sixteenth-century tea master Sen no Rikyū. His student Yamanoue Sōji wrote that guests should treat their host as if the meeting could happen only once in a lifetime. In 1858 Ii Naosuke, a tea master who was also the shogun's chief minister, fixed the four-character phrase in a book on tea, noting that even the same host and guests could never recreate a past gathering. Today it is used far beyond the tea room, as a reminder to value each encounter.

Ichi-go ichi-eRead card

StillnessCulture

Inemuri, often translated as 'sleeping while present', is the Japanese custom of dozing in a meeting or other social or work setting while still counting as part of it. It is not simply any sleep in public: the sleeper is expected to stay ready to rejoin the situation.

The word is written 居眠り, from 'i', to be present, and 'nemuri', sleep. Brigitte Steger, a Cambridge scholar of Japanese society who has written widely about sleep in Japan, describes it as governed by unwritten rules. The higher someone's status, the more acceptable it is: a senior manager or a member of parliament nodding off in a long session can even be read as a sign of dedication, of someone who has worked to exhaustion, while a junior employee has far less licence. The sleeper should keep a proper posture and stay socially 'present', ready to respond if addressed. It is common on crowded commuter trains, but it is a tolerated custom, not an official workplace virtue.

InemuriRead card

StillnessMind

Forest kindergartens are early-years programmes, usually for children aged three to six, that use woodland or other natural settings as the main classroom. The children often spend most of the day outside, in almost any weather.

The idea is usually traced to Ella Flatau in Denmark, who in the early 1950s began spending her days with children in the woods near her home; neighbours' interest turned it into a regular kindergarten. Germany had informal nature kindergartens from 1968, but it officially recognised forest kindergartens as a form of daycare only in 1993, which opened the way to state funding. Their number grew from about 450 in 2005 to more than 1,500 by 2017. The model has since spread to Sweden, the UK, the US and beyond, sometimes under the name 'forest school'. Most keep a hut or shelter for the worst weather, but the day is built around outdoor play, with adults supporting it rather than directing it.

Forest kindergartenRead card

StillnessMind

Japanese railway staff point at signals, gauges and doors and call out what they see, a checking routine called shisa kanko, or 'pointing and calling'. In a 1994 test by Japan's Railway Technical Research Institute, it cut mistakes on a simple task by almost 85 per cent.

The habit began on Japanese steam locomotives in the early 1900s, when drivers and firemen called out signals to each other; pointing was added a few decades later. The idea is that a routine check done by eye alone can slip past unnoticed, while pointing and speaking make the brain register it. The often quoted figure comes from a controlled task run by Japan's Railway Technical Research Institute, not from accident statistics across the network. The practice has spread beyond Japan: the New York City Subway adopted a version in 1996 after incidents in which train doors were opened too early, and Toronto's transit systems use it too. Pilots rely on a related habit, reading instructions back aloud.

Shisa kankoRead card

WonderHistory

Ise Grand Shrine, the holiest site of Shinto, Japan's native religion, takes down its main sanctuaries every 20 years and rebuilds them exactly on the plot next door. The custom began in 690 and, despite some long interruptions, continues today; the next rebuilding is due in 2033.

The rebuilding is called Shikinen Sengū. Along with the buildings, the shrine's furnishings and sacred objects are made anew, and the wooden Uji Bridge at the entrance is rebuilt too. The timber is hinoki, a Japanese cypress. Power tools are not allowed within the shrine grounds, so the work falls to miyadaiku, carpenters trained in traditional shrine building; less experienced carpenters usually learn on the bridge before they work on the sanctuaries. Shinto calls the idea tokowaka, 'ever young': renewing a sacred building keeps it fresh and passes the skills from one generation to the next. The present buildings, from 2013, are the 62nd set. Wars have delayed the cycle more than once, most notably for over a century during Japan's civil wars of the 15th and 16th centuries.

Ise Shikinen SenguRead card

WonderHistory

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, she had spent twelve years in the NAACP, America's leading civil-rights group. She had investigated racial violence, worked on voter registration and attended a desegregation workshop. Her refusal came from an experienced organiser who knew the risks.

Parks joined the Montgomery branch of the NAACP in December 1943 and became its secretary. In 1944 she investigated the case of Recy Taylor, a Black woman assaulted by a group of white men, and she later advised the branch's Youth Council. In the summer of 1955 she attended a workshop on desegregation at Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, a training centre for activists. Her arrest that December helped start the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott, which ended after the Supreme Court's Browder v. Gayle ruling against bus segregation. She lost her department-store job, moved to Detroit in 1957 and worked for Congressman John Conyers from 1965 to 1988. In 2005 she became the first woman to lie in honour in the U.S. Capitol.

Rosa Parks Papers, Library of CongressRead card