Sheboygan

We went to the Kohler Art Center on our quest for Hmong culture.

–Alex

When we arrived at the Art Center, we were greeted by a wonderful lady named Lisa. She told us that 20 years ago, they had started an exhibit on Hmong art at a festival. That is what got Mr. Wagler (our teacher) interested in Hmong culture.

–Benjamin

While we walked through the Kohler Art Center we saw a shoe display. The shoe I remember the most was the shoe with the alligator head in place of the toe. When we got to the back of the Center we looked at a whole lot of Hmong objects. A Hmong lady named Paulina and her two aunts showed us her Hmong objects that we actually got to touch and hold. We held a ball that is used in the ball toss game, a picture of some people in Laos, and a thing that is used to carry babies.

–Mariah

There was a baby carrier and Paulina demonstrated how to put it on. The strap goes over the mother’s shoulders, under the baby’s arms and then supports its behind. In Laos the mothers carried their babies everywhere with them.

–Izzy S.

There was also a baby hat that is supposed to protect the baby from the sun when the parents are working out in the fields. There was a New Years hat for a baby.

–Gabby

The hats women wear have colors that are bright and have many Hmong coins hanging off the hat so it’s touching your head. When I put one on its really up to my eyes so I can’t really see.

The clothes Hmong boys wear mostly black or white. It depends what kind of Hmong you are. If you’re green Hmong, you wear green sleeves. If you’re striped, you wear striped sleeves. It goes on and on.

–Cristina

We saw an incredibly strange story cloth that had words instead of pictures. Not a picture in sight!

–Abigail

There was a story cloth that ended in “and.” I wonder why it ended in an and. Maybe so it would let you finish the story or maybe it is continued someplace else or even maybe some sort of a tradition.

–Nico

Story cloths are “quilts” that tell stories. The Hmong quilts are called paj ntaubs (pandaus). It means story cloths. Story cloths are made by hand by Hmong women. It’s very hard to make a story cloth by yourself. You need lots of help from elders.

–Mark

Storycloths were the only way of passing on stories non-orally. Because there was no Hmong alphabet. They invented one in the 1900s.

–Izzy S.

Storycloths are a piece of needlework that tell a story through characters sewed onto cloth. We saw lots of storycloths on our tour. The largest was at the Hmong American Friendship Building. At the center in Green Bay, we saw a story cloth about the Hmong and Americans fighting the Vietnamese. At the Kohler Arts Center there was a story cloth about the ball toss game.

–Dylan

The most common border on a story cloth is the mountain pattern. It can be blue or purple, and the pattern is made by forming light and dark triangles. Another word for story cloth is paj ntaub (pandau).

–Martha

The lady that was in charge of the exhibit told us that this “paj ntaub” has glittery parts because it was just a design and it was supposed to interest people. There is one that is needle worked by Black Hmong and it was a cross-stitch of a baby carriage.

–Jenny

At the end of seeing the exhibit, they led us to a long table covered with things we could touch. I quickly became attached to a bucket of thread. Not just any thread! The softest thread you ever felt!

–Abigail

It’s a shame how much culture is lost because of the war…

–Izzy S.

The first Hmong family came to Sheboygan in 1976. From a photograph [we were shown], we all figured that this was a pretty big family but nothing compared to the 6,500 Hmong there are in Sheboygan now!

–Abigail

An interesting thing we learned was about Bosnian refugees. Bosnian people are not Hmong people. They’re totally different, but they went through basically the same hardships and journeys the Hmong people went through. They were being bombed out of their homeland and didn’t come to America because they wanted to—they had to!

–Maggie

In 1982 there were problems with gang membership [among the youth in the Hmong community. They joined gangs] because a lot of young Hmong have to live in two worlds: at home (Hmong) and at school (American). The Hmong often are torn! They ended up choosing a gang as a way out.

–Erika

Another man taught us how to play tub lub. It is a game that Hmong people play, often at New Years. You have a stick with a small rope on it; you wind a top up in the small rope. Then you hold the top in one hand and the stick in the other and whip the top onto the ground. Then you pull back on the string and the top will spin. Other people will try to knock your top off. They let us spin the tops in the hall, it was super fun!

–Dylan

Then we went to play Tub Lub. Everybody went to play but me because I thought I’d do bad, but when I saw other people playing and making mistakes [so I thought I would try]. I went up to the line when it was my turn, I made a mistake but it started to get fun so I went again and the second time, I did it! It stood up and spun! I am not lying but I couldn’t try again because we had to leave.

–Christina

The top game was made for girls because this man had three daughters and no sons and wanted a son, so he invented the top game and said whoever beats one of his daughters can marry her and play tub lub with the dad. This way the dad would have a son in law and not be lonely any more.

–Jenny

At the end of our visit the Hmong man gave us some paper with Hmong designs on them that you can color. I am coloring my designs for Christmas presents!

–Mariah

The Hmong people said they let the other refugees work there because they feel they had to go through the same difficulties as the Hmong.

–Sara

I walked into the Oriental Market and smelled fresh food and rice. I’m telling you they fit more things in that store than in Sentry. There were: drinks, soda, beer, milk, tortillas, Dulian fruit, mustard greens, tofu, bean sprouts, coconut, fish, fish sauce, other kinds of sauces, like soy sauce, bamboo, dried mushrooms, rice (lots 25 kinds), drainers, monster pot (5 times as wide as me), flowers on a stick, brooms and Ramen (57 kinds), movies, books, candy, pots and pans, dolls, bell, decorations and chocolate.

–Emma

Vue has a book printed in Hmong letters about religions. If you fail school, you can’t go to school any more. If you pass school, you can keep on going through all the grades.

–Pakou

It (Union Oriental Market) is mostly for Asian people, but other people come there, too. There is one place with tons of rice, one place with tons of hot sauce and one place with tons of Ramen noodles.

–Sara

When I first walked in the door of the Union Oriental Market, I thought, “Oriental?” It looked like a normal grocery store to me. Especially when we passed the first food stands, stands with snacks like peanut butter crackers. Then, milk and frozen fruit. Still normal. But a closer look at the frozen fruit showed things not sold at an average store. For example, Durian fruit. You don’t often see that in a store, or maybe it is just me.

–Tim

Vue says the big pot is for your community and I can even fit in the pot. Vue said when he was a little boy he didn’t have a metal lunch box so he had to use a wooden lunch box that was made with a kind of stick.

–Jenny

His store has everything from baby bananas to Durian fruit, to mustard greens (no fat!), to frozen foods (whole fish included), to Thai foods. Why, even dishes and at least 50 different kinds of Ramen noodles!

I saw some of the most interesting pots and things I have ever seen there. Some pots were made of wood and we saw a HUGE metal pot (about 1/2 a door), and Mr. Yang told us it was for special occasions, and for village meals (definitely not for house use!).

–Abigail

Vue is a big collector of books. He has a huge amount of books about distinctive Hmong culture, from the written language to marriage.

Vue Yang is a very, very nice man who owns an import store that has a lot of the tastes that we don’t have in this country, like a lot of different Ramens, a lot of sodas that we don’t have. But the highlight of his shop is Asian foods, like rice, spring roll sheets, meats and mustard greens.

–Thomas

They have to go to Chicago to get some of the food. But they got some frozen fish from Thailand and Asia. There are kind of bamboo baskets that they use kind of like lunchboxes to carry rice and chicken and other foods.

There is also a steamer and I think it is made out of bamboo and you put a pot of hot water under it and let the steam come up because the stuff is already cooked so you don’t need water. There is also a crusher which is a bowl with a thing that looks like a pounder to crush the things. It is made out of wood.

There are lots of rice bags and one of them weighs 100 pounds and I don’t know how they carry them out.

–Gabby

It was a long ride from Sheboygan to Green Bay. When we all got into the Union Oriental Market there was fresh food everywhere.

Then he pulled out these books that were in Hmong. There was an ABC alphabet in Hmong.

–Mark

One fruit that was there was a Dorian fruit. It has some sweet flavor to it. There were some “Hmong” vegetables. One of them was called Thai eggplant.

He has handmade brooms used for sweeping the dirt floor back in Laos. The brush part of the broom has hard, non-ground wheat like bristles.

Hmong also like rice. Vue has a selection of rice, but the favorite is one that is medium size rice.

–Jeremy

Vue also talked about Hmong marriages and funerals. Vue has a book about dating and marriage. In Hmong culture it’s not just two people. It’s two families, two villages and two clans. In Hmong culture when a woman gets married she loses her clan name and gains her husbands clan name. (unless she wishes to have both).

Now Vue will talk a little about Hmong funerals: Hmong funerals last much longer than American funerals because the Hmong use rituals to send the spirits to the after life which take days to perform.

–Nate

Frozen fruit from Thailand that had big spikes all around them. All kinds of sausages. I wonder how they tasted.

When you get married if you get divorced you are rejected and you have to go through lots and lots of ceremonies to get divorced.

When we left Vue gave each child a free Ramen. He had a basket full of treats for each kid to choose from and last of all some Botan Rice candy as we walked out the door.

–Nico

Vue told us that two people of the same clan cannot marry each other.

–Dylan

When we arrived I saw from the bus window what looked like a very friendly man. He was a friendly man! His name was Vue Yang. Now this name is actually pronounced Vu Ya but that’s NOT what I’m here to talk about.

Someone always had to teach you the Hmong language until they wrote it down on paper. It took a long time but they did it.

–Erika

There were some things that you wouldn’t see in every grocery store in Madison like a lunch box made of bamboo. “My mom used to throw some rice in there and some chicken and that was my lunch,” Vue said. There was other stuff made from bamboo, such as a rice steamer. “If you steam the rice in a bamboo steamer, it makes it taste better,” commented Vue.

–Izzy S

After the tour Vue talked to us about books and his love of reading. he also explained that the Hmong had no written language until the war.

–Benjamin

The Union Oriental Market is just like a market but it has culture mixed together so people can meet each other. That way you don’t have to be lonely.

–Cristina

One food that I saw there that grossed me out was when I was the white and blue bag of lion head in one of the fridge things with lots of meat and other foods that have to be kept cool or even frozen.

While we took notes at the Oriental Market, some kids stood but that was too hard for me so I sat on a BIG bag of rice. It felt like, almost sitting on my sofa in the living room at home while watching my favorite video.

–Mariah

There were objects too. There was a woven bamboo basket that said “Laos” across it in different colors. Vue said that when he had gone to school those were to put your lunch in. His mom had put rice in it mostly, but occasionally she would put a chicken leg in.

There was a thing like a mortar and pestle, used for grinding chili pepper and papayas. There was also an enormous pot, used to cook noodles in for big community gatherings.

Vue talked to us about how he plays the qeej at Christian church services. He believes it shouldn’t just be played at funerals and things because it is a happy instrument. He talked about how the Hmong sing. Each different kind of Hmong (Blue Hmong, Black Hmong etc.) has a different way of singing. Hmong call their singing Kwv Txhiaj.

–Izzy L.

There are many different kinds of fish, tiny bananas, a small kind of root, Hmong style baskets, Ramen noodles, ginger root and many, many, many, many other things.

–Maggie

Vue had nineteen years of school work. The school that he went to was somewhere in France.

The Hmong traditional wedding, you’ll have an umbrella, pigs, cows, chicken, and rice. If the girl marries a guy, the girl has to go to the grooms house. To open the umbrella, you’ll have to wait until the wedding is over.

–Pao