Author Archives: Ellen Feldman

Chinese/Taiwanese Custom of Praying at a Temple for Success in Exams

“China does not have one unified religion. The closest things we have are Buddhism and Daoism, but they tend to stick in their own temples and mountains. So unless you’re a very firm believer in it–it doesn’t trickle down to the normal population. What does happen is that Chinese gods are very practical. The general philosophy is that it doesn’t matter who you believe in, it doesn’t matter what kind of person you are, if you step in a temple, you offer your money, you pray, the gods will answer. So, the gods aren’t creators or great beings to be worshipped, they are beings with super powers that you trade with. Basically, we have what is called ‘paper money.’ You buy the paper money from the temple, and then you burn the paper, and you offer fruit, food, or whatever, to the gods, and the gods give you the good fortune that you want. So, we don’t pray at nights before we eat or before we sleep, we don’t call to God for help, but if we’re, for example, going to an exam, it’s very typical in Asia to take your sons or your daughters to a temple and pray to the gods before the exam starts to pray to the gods for a successful exam.”

Q. Have you ever done that?

A. My parents have taken me to temples when I was little.

Q. Was that a meaningful experience for you?

A. I never really believed that that would help, but since my parents took me there, I prayed. I’d say, “God, give me a good exam result.”

Q. Is the practice of taking kids to temples before exams very common?

A. Well, the temples get a burst of popularity every time final exams come around.

Q. On what other occasions do people go to the temples?

A. People also go on New Year, to have a good year, before you start a job, after you buy a new house. Also on the Day of the Dead, the day we honor our dead, a lot of people go to the temples. And some people come more than others; my family goes very rarely because we’re not very religious, so we go once every month or two.

Q. You said that you don’t believe that going to the temples actually helps. Do your parents believe in it?

A. They are agnostics. They take the Pascal’s gamble approach. If it works, it works, and we pay the money, it’s good. If it doesn’t work, well, we paid a little money, it’s not actually that much, and it’s an experience for our children, so that’s fine. They’re very busy people, and visiting the temple takes time, so we don’t do it very often.

Q. Can you talk more about what the experience of going there is like?

A. Temples are usually very noisy, very loud and crowded. Unlike Western cathedrals—I’m not very much into religion, but I love cathedrals because of the architecture—which are serene, and you walk into them and feel awed by God, in Chinese temples, it’s loud, they’re sort of a social gathering. Also, temples are markets—they’re markets with great food. Temple food is good. You know how in the New Testament, they describe Jesus as being very angry at the peddlers who were in the Temple, and he flipped their stalls? There’s a section in the New Testament where Jesus goes to the Temple and he gets very angry at the peddlers for defiling a sacred place. But this is the opposite. In the temples, you’re supposed to have that kind of people. If a temple doesn’t have peddlers, it means that it’s not very popular, and if it’s not very popular, then its gods aren’t very good. So a temple that is empty and sort of quiet and serene is a bad thing. Temples are supposed to be very loud, and there’s supposed to be smoke everywhere from the incense. That’s the Chinese temple.

There are these things, I’m not sure what they’re called, but they’re two crescent-shaped pieces of wood that are painted red. They look like slices of oranges. And you’re supposed to throw them on the ground. You’re supposed to throw a pair of them on the ground. And how they land will tell you how’s your luck. And you’ll hear those things clattering against the ground the whole time. Sometimes you’ll buy a little bag full of rice that’s supposed to be blessed, and you keep them as a sort of talisman or amulet for good luck. You can buy one for the kind of thing you wanted good luck from. So, if you want success in exams, you can buy a success in exam one, if you want success in love, you can buy a success in love one. It’s a very business-oriented thing. There are certain temples, even until now, which are very sacred and which treat money as less of an issue, like the Shaolin Temple and the Daoist temples. But your average temple—they all worship multiple gods, and it’s just whatever god’s most popular in the area. Actually, speaking of the Shaolin Temple, which is very famous for its martial artists—they are said to be the most business-oriented temple now. Shaolin martial arts have spread all over the world by virtue of them being very business-oriented. The head monk of Shaolin no longer sits in his room praying, he goes all over the world on private jets for business purposes.

Q. Does that mean converting people?

A. No, they’re not converting people to the religion. They are not encouraged, nor are they motivated to convert people to their religion. But they welcome people to come and practice Shaolin martial arts, and they get paid quite a bit of money for it.

Analysis: This tradition of praying at temples for success in exams displays a way that religion has adapted to fit people’s present-day concerns, pressures, and needs.

Story about Confucius

Folklore Item: “Supposedly, Confucius taught that if you are a teacher, and if a student comes to you and can’t pay, if they give you a token of appreciation, then you have to teach them.”

Background and Context:

“Confucius had a book of sayings that his disciples wrote for him. We don’t actually know if he said all of them, or how authentic it is. But, when you talk about Confucianism, it is treated as canon. It’s just a collection of sayings that he supposedly said and what Confucianism is all about. It’s a bit like the New Testament, but since Confucius isn’t taken as God, it’s a bit different. He’s a philosopher, he is not a religious figure. That [the book of sayings] is something that our parents would make us memorize—they would recite them to us and make us recite them back, even before we could read. It was the official philosophy some two thousand years ago, and always has been until recent years. Confucianism was endorsed in the same way that Christianity was endorsed in the late Roman Empire.

“Basically, the philosophy of Confucius is that you’re supposed to be a gentleman, which is defined slightly differently from the Western gentleman definition. You’re supposed to be kind, to be forgiving, to be polite, to be prudent or frugal, and to allow others before yourself. And I was taught all the sayings as a child, but I can’t remember them anymore.

“We know that he was supposed to be a teacher who took in students for the price of a beef jerky. Dried beef wasn’t a unit of exchange, it was a symbol of exchange in ancient China. That was supposed to be the teaching philosophy of all teachers in China in all time: if a student comes and he wants to learn and he can pay for it, even if it’s just with a beef jerky, you’re supposed to take him in and teach him with all your heart. My mother happens to be a teacher. So, when she was teaching and there were students who could only pay half of the fee, I think every semester she took about three or four people just for free if they really couldn’t pay for it. She treated the Confucian philosophy as her personal philosophy. She told us that if you teach somebody and they can’t pay, if they can give a token of appreciation, you have to teach them. It was important that we learned from Confucius and treated Confucius with respect.”

Q. How do we know that Confucius taught students for free?

A. It’s been recorded in words—there have been books upon books written about Confucius, at his time and after his time. And people will say it’s true. Do we actually have archeological evidence? I don’t think so. I mean, it’s really hard to gather evidence for something as minute as what he took. But it really fits in with the Confucian philosophy, so even if it’s not true, we’re taught that it is. But it’s a good thing to do anyways—on principle, it’s true. If you’re going to teach, it means that you really want other people to know what you know.

Analysis: Confucius appears to have become a folklorized historical figure in China, since stories such as this anecdote are widely accepted, even though we do not know for sure whether they are entirely factual. This story also reveals the widespread influence of Confucian philosophy in China and Taiwan today—people such as the informant’s mother are deeply committed to living in accordance with Confucius’ philosophy, as well as raising their children within this philosophy.

The Afikomen: A Passover Tradition

“On a Passover seder, the adults hide the afikomen—a special piece of matzah [unleavened bread]—and the kids have to find it. (Usually, the adults hide it in really dumb places, like under a book.)  Our family, though, does this the other way around: the kids hide it, and the adults have to find it. I think this tradition comes from my Grandpa Ned’s side of the family.

“We always plan out our hiding places in advance, and try to make them good enough that the adults won’t be able to find the afikomen. Once, we opened up an old computer, put the afikomen inside, put the computer back together, and turned the computer on. My favorite hiding spot, however, was one I thought of last year: my friends and I opened up the smoke detector, took out all of the electrical equipment (so that the afikomen would fit in it), and put the afikomen there; meanwhile, we hid the electrical equipment somewhere else.

“When the adults were searching, one of them actually suggested looking inside the smoke detector. My dad, though, said that ‘there’s no way it could fit in there with all of the electrical equipment,’ because he didn’t think that we would take it out. Finally, when the adults gave up, I showed them the smoke detector electrical components to give them a hint. My dad had no idea what the equipment was, so I told him to hook it up to a battery. He said, ‘What is this? Am I going to get a secret coded message telling me where the afikomen is?’ When he connected a battery, the equipment made the sound of the smoke alarm, so he finally figured out where the afikomen was hidden.”

This tradition of hiding the afikomen has long been a part of the Jewish holiday of Passover, an eight-day festival that celebrates redemption from slavery in Egypt. The seder (a Hebrew word meaning ‘order’) is a ritual feast that families carry out in their homes at the start of Passover. Since a seder cannot end until the afikomen is eaten, hiding the afikomen has almost become a ritualized prank.

My informant feels that the afikomen tradition makes the holiday of Passover more meaningful and memorable for him personally, as it is one of the main reasons that he looks forward to Passover each year. He definitely intends to pass this tradition along to his children, stating that “I would definitely want them to come up with creative hiding places.”

The afikomen custom also reflects this holiday’s focus upon the younger generation. Seders customarily involve rituals in which children ask adults questions about the holiday; the Haggadah, a text that Jews read on Passover, even advises adults upon how to answer different sorts of questions from children. The afikomen ritual fits naturally into the seder, as it serves to keep children actively engaged with the holiday in the face of a long series of prayers.

Chinese Superstition about Rice

“When you eat rice—when you eat a bowl of rice—you’re not supposed to leave any bits of rice left in the bowl when you’re finished. So, if you leave one, it’s said that your future wife or future husband would have pimples on his face, or on her face.

“You can have leftover fish, in fact it’s good manners to have leftover fish or meat. It indicates that you have enough to eat. During Chinese New Year, one thing that we will do is eat fish, and leave some on the plate. And that will be a good sign that we’re going to have more for next year.”

Q. Why do you think that this superstition exists?

A. Rice is like a very basic farmer’s food, I guess. It’s something that everybody eats. And for somebody to not finish their rice—you’re wasting sort of a staple food product. That’s bad.

If you can eat meat—if you can eat fish—that means that to begin with, your family is very wealthy, or if you’re not wealthy, it has to be a special occasion, and you want to honor the rituals more than you bother about the fish. But rice is a daily thing, and prudence is something that we are taught.

Q. If you’re eating rice now, will you eat all of it?

A. If I’m eating rice, I will eat all of it. I no longer believe in it, but it’s a habit that got passed on when I was a kid. So, when I was a kid, my mother would stand over me and say, “You have to finish your rice.” Did I really believe that my wife would have pimples? I don’t know, I can’t remember. But I know that since my mother was watching over me, I ate my rice properly. And to this day, when I’m eating out anywhere, in the cafeteria, I still make an effort to finish all the rice. I try to finish my food all the time, but rice is special.

Analysis: This superstition illumines the dependence of the Chinese diet upon rice, while also reflecting that the majority of China’s population did not historically possess much wealth. The belief seems geared toward teaching children—if you fail to finish your rice, then your future husband or wife will have pimples. Thus, the superstition seems intended to teach children not to waste food, an important value in a society in which most people own little.

Joke about Jewish Mothers

Cultural background:

My informant was born in 1915 in New York City, to immigrant parents—her mother was an Austrian-Jewish immigrant, and her father was a Russian-Jewish immigrant. Describing her childhood, she states that “at that time, New York City had a density that was closer—or more—than that of China. There were so many people jammed together in these old tenement houses—you had a whole floor of people in your apartment, who shared one bathroom. None of them even had windows, except on skylights, or looking out on someone else’s tenement window. So, it was just a very crowded condition. For the most part, people got along very well because they all came more or less from the same place, they were all poor, but, you know, though you didn’t have much, you didn’t think of yourself as poor. . . . Life was spent on the street because the apartments were crowded, dark, and very uninviting. So, we used to spend our time on the street playing hopscotch, jump rope. The little boys were always playing ball in the street. Everything was street-oriented. . . .

“I remember going to school. At that time, I only spoke Yiddish at home, and my mother took me to the teacher, and the teacher said, when did she come from Europe? And my mother said very indignantly, ‘she was born here!’ I’m a citizen! And, I was speaking only Yiddish at home, but I did not struggle with English; I caught onto it very quickly. The classrooms were so crowded that they didn’t have enough seats for everybody. But everybody there was hungry to get educated, and at that time, of course, the emphasis on higher education was only for the boys. Everybody wanted their sons to be doctors or accountants or lawyers. But the girls would wind up being in the factories at sewing machines. The highest honor was to be a teacher. In two years you could become a teacher, and then you would be one of the elite.”

Joke about Jewish Mothers:

“There was a baby carriage with two boys in it. And somebody says, ‘Oh, how wonderful these boys are! What’s their ages?’ And their mother said, ‘The two year old is the doctor and the three year old is the teacher.”

When I asked my informant what it means, she replied, “She had it mapped out, what they were going to be. It’s a joke about Jewish mothers.”

Indeed, Jewish parents are stereotypically overprotective of their children. While this quality is certainly not unique to Jewish culture, Jewish culture does place strong importance upon family values. Parents usually plan carefully for their children, hoping that their children will one day be more successful than they have been. This joke certainly reflects concern for the future; most parents do not map out their toddlers’ career trajectories. Perhaps, Jewish culture is, in part, so oriented toward children because Jews lived as minorities for centuries, preserving their traditions only by teaching younger generations.