The Kleenex Box Guitar is Part of My Culture

The tissue box guitar- with rubber bands and an old paper towel tube. Image source.

When I was a little kid, I remember making this craft: you stretch some rubber bands over an empty kleenex box, and it makes a guitar because the rubber bands are right over the hole. Very cool when you're 8 years old!

I'm American, and I made this kind of kleenex box guitar in the US. Now I live in China, and here's something fascinating: You can't really do this craft in China. Because kleenexes don't come in cardboard packaging. In China, they're in plastic.

Like this:

Package of tissues in plastic. Image source.

So when you use up all the kleenexes, you're just left with a plastic wrapper. You can't make a guitar out of that.

I'm writing about this because it's about culture. The best definition I've heard for "culture" is this: "Culture" is the things that you think of as normal, but they might not be normal for someone else. This little tiny mundane detail- that in the US, tissues are typically sold in cardboard boxes, but in China they're in plastic- and because of that, this kids' craft project has arisen where you make a guitar out of the empty box, but you can't do that in China. 

(And yes, I'm aware that my use of the word "kleenex" also says something about the culture I come from. The "correct" word is "tissue" but I grew up calling them kleenexes. Good luck having anyone in China understand what you're saying if you use the word "kleenex" though. When they learn English, they learn "tissue"- or they just translate from Chinese directly and call it "paper.")

Of course, Chinese culture has other things instead. Off the top of my head, here's one: I started learning to crochet, and I saw this cool crochet project in a WeChat post. (WeChat is the social media app we all use in China.) Here are some photos:

A toy chicken, crocheted out of different colors of yarn. The whole chicken is very triangle-shaped and the side of the body has a really colorful large flower pattern.

Cute! I need to learn how to make these!

I showed them to my husband, and he immediately said, "That looks like a zongzi."

What is a zongzi, you ask?

3 zongzi in a steaming basket. Image source.

These are 粽子 [zòng zi], a food made by taking sticky rice and some kind of filling like meat or red beans, wrapping it all up in leaves in a tetrahedron shape, tying it up with string, and then steaming it. They are the traditional food for Dragon Boat Festival, a holiday in June.

So I scrolled up on the crochet chicken post, and sure enough, the page title says this is a guide to crocheting "粽子鸡", zongzi chickens. 

I know what zongzi are, but I hadn't noticed that these chickens look like zongzi. My husband noticed right away because he's Chinese.

This is culture. The little everyday objects, which people can creatively reimagine as something else- but it shakes out different depending on what "everyday objects" you have.

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Related:

I Didn't Know I Had a Culture Until I Lost It

Tipping, Fruit, and Jesus 

Chinese Jokes Make Me Think About God

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