The Cultures of Avatar: The Last Airbender

I'm Back Babyyy~

I'm so happy! Tumblr really came in clutch. I also learned how great my followers are. Thank you all for your help.

In return, I will share with you the entire story of how my blog got murdered deleted and then revived reinstated. Learn from my foolishness.

1. Context

So I've recently started training in Muay Thai to help deal with my insomnia. Last week, I had the bright idea to train immediately after working a 10-hour shift. Unsurprisingly, I was very tired when I had to wake up for work the next morning. I ended up drinking 30 ounces of Hong Kong milk tea, which is very strong.

2. The Scam

Anyways, exhaustion + caffeine high + sugar rush = paranoid out of my mind. Which made me the perfect target for this scam:

I ended up talking to a scammer on Discord who convinced me to reset my password to a "default" one, which they used to add a 2-step verification to my account, which I normally don't have. By connecting my account with their cell number, my account became inaccessible to me. The scammer would only give me my account back if I paid up, but I cut them off as I had regained my senses once my caffeine/sugar high wore off.

3. The Solution

I immediately went to: https://www.tumblr.com/support

Here is what I submitted for my ticket:

Tumblr also emails you when someone changes your password, and even shows you their IP address. So I did a screenshot of the password change email with the scammer's IP address shown. This is what I attached to my Tumblr Support ticket:

Tumblr Support sends me an email asking me to verify the IP address of the last valid password change I did:

I searched for the last password change email that I received before the scammer one and screenshot'd it for Tumblr Support's Jason.

And, in less than a week, I received this email and my account was re-instated:

Jason, if you ever see this post, I just want you to know that you're officially my favorite person on Tumblr. If you ever need a favor from me, don't hesitate to ask!

4. In Conclusion

You're never too old to be reminded...

Get good sleep

Cut back on the caffeine/sugar

Don't push yourself too hard

Don't trust strangers

In Season 2, Sokka and Katara’s clothes begin to drastically diverge from each other in appearance and cultural origin.

Looking at their outfits side by side, Sokka looks ready for summer while Katara is more autumn-appropriate. Weird.

Katara’a Book 2 dress intrigued me in how uncanny it was to her Book 1 dress. The small changes they made to it completely changed the cultural vibes I was getting. The Book 1 dress just felt innately East Asian; the cross collars, sash, column skirt with high slits, and armbands created the image of a stereotypical martial artist.

When I look at her Book 2 dress, the rounded collar and A-line skirt felt a bit European to me. The rounded collar that buttoned up at the side reminded me of a Kosovorotka (Russian Peasant Shirt), so I figured Eastern Russia (Siberia) would be a good place to start researching.

And, with a little digging, I found a pretty spot on inspiration for Book 2 Katara: Tungusic Clothing. The Tungusic people are an ethnolinguistic group formed by the speakers of Tungusic languages; these ethnic groups include the Nanai, the Oroch, and the Manchu, whose clothes are featured above. They are native to Siberia and Northeast Asia.

Both Sokka and Katara wear Japanese-style loincloth underwear known as fundoshi (褌):

Katara also gets cloth wraps, sarashi (晒), for her top and to cover her thighs:

While not entirely accurate to one culture, their robes strongly resemble Joseon-era warriors’ hanbok. Note that both Sokka and Katara’s garbs include a short-sleeved robe layered over a long-sleeve garment, a style that consistently appears in traditional warrior’s clothing in Korea. Similarly, long side slits for ease of movement and long armbands used to secure loose-fitting sleeves are present in both Water Tribe and Korean outfits.

Considering that Katara and Sokka’s original designs were streamlined for animation by Yoon Young Kim of JM Animation, it’s not surprising that their outfits draw heavily from Korean culture.

Katara’s outfit also reminds me of Hunnu Deel, Hun-Style Mongolian clothing, and Yuan Dynasty robes, the clothing of the Mongols when they ruled over China. As I dissect more of the Water Tribe’s culture, you’ll see a lot of Mongolic and Siberian influences in the clothing.

Broke: Katara and Sokka wear fabric clothing outside the tundra.

Woke: Katara and Sokka wear fish leather outside the tundra.

Pictured above: Nanai clothing set, Oroch robe & hat, Ainu robe (attush), another Nanai robe, and different shades of dyed fish leather

Traditional Inuit sewing needles are quite a bit bigger than what Katara was using in the show. It was probably advantageous, since they were were working with thick animal hides and furs. Below is a Hezhe woman describing how tough fish leather is to sew. Hezhe people, also known as Nanai people, are indigenous to Northern China and Siberia.

@mytly4

Fish leather can be worn directly on the skin, but it was traditionally worn as outerwear by subarctic and arctic peoples. This is due to fish skin being naturally thin, flexible, and waterproof. This makes it useful as an outer coat when you're fishing or walking through snow, as it will be effective at keeping you dry. However, on its own, it's not particularly good at retaining heat, hence the layering. But that same thinness and breathability would allow it to be good warm weather clothing. Here's a picture of some ladies wearing fish skin as summer clothing:

The coats that the Southern Water Tribe wears are commonly known in English as parkas. A parka is a a cold-weather coat that is typically hip-length or longer, stuffed with down, and possessing a fur-lined hood. Parkas are traditionally worn by various Arctic peoples, such as the Inuit/Iñupiat and Yup’ik.

The parkas that Katara and Sokka wear appear to based on traditional Yup’ik and Iñupiat coats, respectively. Note the similar silhouettes, the distinctive fur lining on the sleeve seams, the curved hems with side slits for the legs, and the fur lining around the waist of Katara’s jacket.

The parka that Gran-Gran wears appears to be based off an Akulik Amauti, a baby-carrying coat worn by the Inuit women of Nunavut. Note the extra baggy hood, the straps over the chest, and the straight hem at the bottom of the jacket. It’s an appropriate jacket for a woman who helped raise two generations of children.

Mike and Bryan have also confirmed that the overall aesthetic of the Southern Water Tribe is based off the Inuit film “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner” (2001), which is steeped in the culture of Nunavut Inuit.

When doing research for this Tumblr, I come across a lot of interesting terms and mythological figures that immediately make me think, “That could be a name in Avatar!” so I thought I’d share some resources that could spark some inspiration when naming Avatar OCs.

My general advice would be to use words that are meaningful and relatively easy for an English speaker to pronounce. I also wouldn’t worry about the name being too literal or on-the-nose, most of the names in Avatar are puns that wouldn’t actually be names in real life, anyways.

Dictionaries

Canadian Inuit

Northern Labrador Inuttut

Labrador Inuktitut

Central Arctic Inuinnaqtun

Dialect Pronunciation Guides (Choose dialect then select glossary)

Alaskan Inupiat & Yupik

1970 Inupiat Dictionary

North Slope Inupiat

Northwestern Inupiat

Kobuk Junior Dictionary

King Island Inupiat

Alaskan Yupik Dictionary

Siberian Yupik Dictionary

Greenlandic (Kalaallisut)

2018 Dictionary

Glosbe Dictionary

Inuit Spirituality & Folk Tales

Project Gutenberg

World of Tales

The Canadian Encyclopedia

Wikipedia

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The Southern Water Tribe (SWT) is more strongly inspired by Inuit cultures than the Northern Water Tribe. For SWT food, I’ll be drawing from Inuit, Inupiat, Yupik, and Greenlandic cuisine.

Roasted Ptarmigan

Ptarmigan could best be described as an arctic chicken. It is one of the few land birds in traditional Inuit cuisine. Like its cousins, the chicken and turkey, it tastes best roasted. It is eaten throughout the tundra.

Kiviak

The other land bird in Inuit cuisine, although it appears to be an exclusively Greenlandic dish. To make kiviak, 400-500 freshly killed little auk birds are sewn into a seal skin coated with oil, which then gets buried under rocks and left to ferment for up to 18 months. The little auks become kiviak and are consumed whole. The flavor is described as reminiscent of a very strong cheese.

Fermented Eider Egg

Eider, called mitiq in Greenlandic, is a species of sea duck. Their eggs are buried in the ground away from sunlight and left to ferment. Their flavor has been also described as tasting like a strong blue cheese. This dish originates from Greenland.

Tepa

Also known as “stinkheads”, this dish is composed of fermented fish heads. The heads are put in a wooden barrel and buried in the ground for at least a week. The softened heads are then mashed into a paste and eaten raw. Tepa is a way of utilizing every part of the fish and extracting the nutrients they possess without waste. This dish is of Inupiat and Yupik origin.

Smoked Salmon

Salmon is a traditional staple food in Yupik cuisine. A common way of preserving salmon is through smoking. It’s also a very popular and delicious Alaskan export.

Boiled Crab

Nothing particularly surprising here. Delicious crabs are quite abundant throughout the arctic, from snow crab to red king crab. They’re coveted primarily for their claws, legs, and eggs. Preparation and consumption is as simple as boiling and then cracking the shells open for the meat.

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Another long-scroll post ahead!

As always, I just want to say that I know very little about the technical aspects of most martial arts so take these analyses with a grain of salt. These are just surface-level comparisons I’m making based off what I’ve researched on the internet. If you practice any of these martial arts, feel free to elaborate or correct me on any details.

Watching compilations of Ty Lee’s fight scenes, it seems that her style varies depending on the opponent.

White Crane Fist

Generally, if she’s confident that she has the upper-hand, she appears to use White Crane Fist (白鶴拳). This is most apparent during her 2-against-1 fight with Katara and every fight she has with Sokka.

The most obvious indication that Ty Lee is using White Crane Fist would be the “beak hands” or gōu shǒu (钩手) she often employs when fighting. As you might have guessed, White Crane Fist seeks to imitate the movements of a crane, particularly its sharp pecks.

However, when her opponent is at a distance from her, she’ll extend her reach by using “sword fingers” instead of “beak hands”. Sword fingers are used for lightning generation and Azula often uses them for firebending as well, so it’s might have been a technique that Ty Lee picked up from the Fire Princess.

According to this website, Crane Fist emphasizes circular movements, grace, and subtlety. The style also requires strong balance, reach, agility, and speed over brute force— all qualities of Ty Lee. Finally, Crane Fist frequently targets the tender spots of the body, hence why Ty Lee often aims for the rib cage or armpits when she fights. It also explains why Ty Lee was not prepared when Sokka countered one of her strikes with his exceptionally hard head. All in all, never challenge Ty Lee to a tickle fight.

According to oral tradition, White Crane Fist was invented by a woman named Fang Qiniang (方七娘), who combined her training in Shaolin Kung Fu with the movements of the white crane to create a new martial art. This makes the style especially appropriate for Ty Lee, as Shaolin is also the fighting style of the Fire Nation. Plus, Ty Lee is a very girlish character so it fits her personality to use a style invented by a woman.

Phoenix Eye Fist

When Ty Lee is disadvantaged in a fight, usually when facing armored opponents, she switches to Phoenix Eye Fist (凤眼拳).

Depending on the source, Phoenix Eye Fist is either a separate style descended from White Crane or simply techniques within White Crane. Either way, the two styles are very similar. The most obvious difference between White Crane and Phoenix Eye are the ways the hands are held: Crane uses a “beak hand”, while Phoenix Eye uses a one knuckle punch (a fist with the fore-knuckle extended).

The advantage of the Phoenix Eye Fist is that it focuses all of your power into a single hard point, giving each blow greater strength and impact. As a result, Phoenix Eye Fist techniques often focus on strikes to the spine, in addition to the usual “soft spots” (throat, groin, etc.) targeted in White Crane.

While I’ve never practiced either style, Phoenix Eye seems a bit more vicious than White Crane, considering all the spinal attacks. It makes sense that Ty Lee usually only uses this technique when her opponent’s back is covered in armor. Nonetheless, digging your knuckle into people’s spines with all the force of a punch is really brutal. Ty Lee is easily the scariest non-bender in Avatar.

If you’d like to see a real-life demonstration of White Crane Fist and Phoenix Eye Fist, click here.

Additional Thoughts

1. Maybe Ty Lee’s gravity defying leaps are meant to emphasize her bird-like fighting style? Also, Ty Lee’s use of circular movements and tendency to get behind people in a fight does add credence to the “Ty Lee has Air Nomad ancestry” fan theory.

2. She also uses Phoenix Eye Fist hands when she fights a non-armored Suki at the Boiling Rock, though she never lands her signature spine jabs. I wonder if Ty Lee’s use of a more brutal style means that Suki was just that much of a threat or if she was fighting that way to appease Azula, who would not approve of her showing mercy during a fight.

Her variety of styles is also another indication that Ty Lee was never a very villainous antagonist, as she only ever uses as much force as necessary to take down an opponent. Jeong Jeong would very much approve of her self control.

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Right off the bat, let me just say that hypothetical calendars and alternative timekeeping is one of my favorite topics to talk about so this reply is going to be lengthy.

First off, everything we know about the calendar system in Avatar comes from the planetary calendar room in Wan Shi Tong's library.

The innermost ring indicates the number of months in a year (12), the second ring indicates number of days in a month (30), the third ring indicates the different Avatar eras (16 shown), and the outermost ring showcases all of the animals of the zodiac cycle (12). For this reply, we're only going to be focusing on the innermost and second rings.

According to the episode, the ATLAverse appears to have only 12-month years, so no leap year 13th month like the East Asian lunar calendar. There also doesn't appear to be any months with more than 30 days, judging by the number of days shown on the calendar. This means that the maximum number of possible days for an Avatar year is 360. So it's safe to say that there are probably no leap years like ours in the ATLAverse. I guess their Earth's orbit is slightly shorter and more suited for timekeeping than ours.

As for what each month would be called in the ATLAverse, there's a couple of options. One option is to simply call the months by order: First month, second month, third month, etc. This actually ties back to Avatar's primary cultural influence of China, as that's literally how months are named in Mandarin. This is straightforward, practical, and doesn't require any complex etymology or extensive worldbuilding.

However, I also think it would be fun to weave motifs into the calendar. Since there's so much emphasis on balance and cycles, why not divide the twelve months between the four elements? I imagine these months would be referred to as:

The 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Water Month

The 1st, 2nd & 3rd Earth Month

The 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Fire Month

The 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Air Month

For example, a person might say "I was born in the first water month, in the year of the rabbit." Naturally, there would be plenty of superstitions and horoscopes related to the combination of birth month and birth year.

The show also canonically mentions weeks passing by, although they never specify the number of days in their weeks. In a previous post, I mentioned that government officials during the Qin & Han Dynasty were given a day off every five days to bathe themselves. I think this would be a good basis for a week in the ATLAverse, four days of work and one day of rest. Each working day would be named after a cardinal direction (East-day, North-day, West-day, South-day) and the resting day would be called "Center-day", paralleling a compass.

In short, an ATLA month would be comprised of 6 five-day weeks and a year would be made up of 12 thirty-day months; the days would be themed around the cardinal directions and the months would be themed around the four elements. I think this would be a good way of adding texture to the world of Avatar, without weighing the setting down with too much worldbuilding or cultural baggage.

...And that would just be the default "world" calendar that magical libraries and travelers and international organizations would use. I think each nation would probably have their own unique calendar tailored to suit their own cultural and seasonal needs.

As promised, the Air Nomad cultural analysis that won the survey. Get comfortable, because it’s a rather lengthy post.

We’re all familiar with that iconic Avatar opening: Four masters bending their respective element in front of two Chinese characters. The characters used to represent the “culture” of air are “气和”, with “气” meaning “air” and “和” meaning “harmonious”. Literally telling the audience, “Air is Harmonious”. This is all very appropriate, as the Air Nomads were pacifists.

However, I’d like to focus on the specific character “气”, because it carries so much more metaphysical weight in Chinese culture than simply being another word for “oxygen” or “gas”. “气” is pronounced “chi”. And yes, this is the same chi we hear mentioned constantly throughout Avatar. Chi does literally mean “air”, but that conception of air also encompasses breath, life energy, and spirit.

This is why the Air Nomads were portrayed as deeply spiritual and universally benders. A lifestyle dedicated to understanding the spirit is synonymous with understanding the qualities of air. Because, in this world based heavily in traditional Chinese culture, your spirit is interconnected with the air and energy around you; which ties in nicely with the Avatar State and just about everything Guru Pathik tells Aang.

This also helps to explain why Aang mastered energybending so quickly. The energy in energybending likely refers to the same “气” that also encompasses air. So while I do take some issues with how airbending was handled in Legend of Korra, I will say that the spiritual projection that Jinora does actually makes some sense when you consider that “气” can mean both air and spirit.

Was clicking on random Avatar clips on YouTube— as you do— and stumbled across this clip from Episode 1 where Iroh literally explains the concept of 气 / Chi to Zuko:

“Power in firebending comes from the breath, not the muscles. The breath becomes energy in the body. The energy extends past your limbs and becomes: fire!”

Air=Breath=Energy. All facets of 气 / Chi!

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The “Cultural Fashion” posts that no one asked for! ^_^

The Earth King’s design is inspired by the dress of Qing Dynasty emperors (1636–1912) in their royal portraits. Starting from the top: The hat worn is called a cháoguān (朝冠) in Mandarin, meaning “court hat”, and a mahala (ᠮᠠᡥᠠᠯᠠ ) in Manchu, meaning “morning crown”. This hat was only allowed to be worn by Qing emperors and members of the imperial family. The chaoguan came in two styles: one for cold weather (what the Earth King wears) and one for warm weather (pictured here).

Moving on to the neck, the little collar-cape is called a pī lǐng (披领), meaning “detachable collar”. This collar was worn by members of the imperial family, nobility, and court officials for formal occasions. The necklace is called a cháozhū (朝珠), meaning “court beads”. Traditionally, chaozhu were only allowed to be worn by Qing dynasty emperors, members of the imperial family, 1st through 5th rank imperial civil officials, and military officials above the 4th rank. The chaozhu of an emperor was typically composed of multiple valuable materials such as pearl, coral, amber, jade, and other precious stones. For animation purposes, the Earth King’s simplified chaozhu is composed exclusively of jade beads.

Fun Fact: Chaozhu were actually inspired by Tibetan prayer beads! However, they lost their religious connotation once they became adopted as court dress.

In Part 2, we’ll cover Earth King Kuei’s clothing and shoes.

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