Author Archives: Emma Clarke

Don’t go to bed with your hair wet

“My mom used to tell me, growing up, to never go to bed with my hair wet. Because that is the cause of you getting sick. But I’ve never gotten sick after going to bed with wet hair. In fact, I do it a lot.”

 

My informant immigrated from Shanghai with her mother when she was five years old. The idea that going to bed with your hair wet could make you sick seems to be a common one among immigrants, as most children of especially Asian immigrants that I interviewed told me the same thing.

Many Asians still rely on traditional medicines, and so it makes sense that they would have traditional folk beliefs about getting sick to accompany this reliance. Especially before industrialization, a cold could turn deadly; any methods of prevention were likely taken, even if they didn’t necessarily make sense. The belief that wet hair makes you sick is likely a holdover from those days; the belief has been passed down through the generations so that, even though we now know that wet hair is unlikely to make one sick, it is still a persistent belief in many cultures.

Eagle Scout ceremony

“I never became an Eagle Scout, so the whole ceremony of it all was really magical to me. So they get the rank already, but this is the official ceremony where the mom gives the rank to the Eagle Scout. She’s the one who pinned on the thing. Because she’s the one that drove him to the troop meetings and made lunches and everything. So the mom gets the honor of putting it on.

So there’d be a…what is it called. A toast? Kind of like a toast. Because the Eagle Scout wouldn’t actually do much. But then it would be his friend–like his best man–would be the emcee, and call people up to give keynote speeches about what this person did and why they were so great and why they deserved to become an Eagle Scout.

And there would be representatives. Like the governor would come down, and you would get a letter from the president. Saying congratulations. And then there was one ceremony where the governor came in and recognized this Eagle Scout, and then he was like, ‘So I formally declare today ‘Michael’s Day.’’ Like the day becomes the Eagle Scout’s day on the calendar. That’s how great they were. It’s a lot of hooplah.

Because they spent the majority of their childhood working towards this rank. And there’s a community service project they have to plan and coordinate to get there. So, I believe it’s worth it. But not a lot of Eagle Scouts I see…like, “oh, you’re an Eagle Scout.” They should be just…a good citizen. Someone who sticks up for the little guy and also, like, is there to work hard for the betterment of your country. And just. I don’t know, just good people.”

My informant was a Boy Scout for ten years. Although he never achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, he attended many ceremonies and therefore was able to give me this description of a typical Eagle Scout ceremony on Long Island, NY where he grew up.
The mystery and ceremony surrounding the presentation of the Eagle Scout award clearly made a huge impression on him; he spoke of those who had achieved the rank with a certain level of awe, although as he makes clear, many of those he saw receive the rank were not worthy of it in his mind. This level of disillusionment seems only natural in an organization that prides itself on an honor code; not everyone can live up to it.
The ceremony itself seems fairly typical for this sort of organization. The parents, who raised the child and helped nurture the young man, are present, and the mother gets the honor of pinning the award on her son. The amount of “hooplah” likely varies from troop to troop, but it was big enough in my informant’s hometown to leave a lasting impression. It makes sense that we, as a society, would want to honor those who choose to live by a certain moral code and give back to the community, and so the involvement of the governor, while a great honor for the boy involved, is not too surprising.

Journey to the West

“So there’s this monkey, that–okay. There’s a rock on a mountain. It’s a spherical rock on top of a really high mountain. And I don’t know if lightning strikes it or what, but somehow it splits open, and there’s a monkey inside.

So the monkey–he doesn’t have a family. He literally came from a rock. So he tries to get along with the other monkeys down on the bottom of the mountain. I don’t think he gets along with them very well, because he’s an outsider. And then…some kind of coming of age story.

And then, turns out he has superpowers. So he has a lot of superpowers. So he can–he’s really mischievous. So he’s really like–how you would imagine a monkey to be. He throws poop. He’s the kinda guy who would throw his own poop. That’s the kind of hero this guy is.

So obviously, little boys would look up to this guy. Not as much little girls.

So one of his superpowers that I know pretty well, he can pluck one of his hairs and blow it, and it will turn into him. Like multiple copies of him. And that obviously makes his pranks a lot better. Because he can be anywhere at any time.

Oh and he can transform into things. So he can shapeshift into any person. Well, that obviously makes pranks a lot of fun.

He’s super strong, he has a tail–because he’s a monkey. And all that good stuff.

So he’s a prankster. And then, he’s like–really bold, and ambitious and egotistical. So he gets…his pranks get bigger and more grandiose. And he goes all the way to, like, mess with the gods. Of–of the…the multi–polytheist gods of China.

And then…there’s this forbidden tree kind of deal, with peaches. And the fruit can grant immortality, I think. And it’s like, up in the mountains where the gods live. And somehow he finds his way over there, and he’s just hanging out, and he grabs a peach. And eats it. And he’s immortal after that.

And then… Prank, prank, prank, prank, prank. And then one of the gods is like, ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ So he condemns him to–oh, he goes to complain to Buddha. Who, you know, he’s not a god, but in fairy tales he’s a god.

So he’s like, ‘Yeah, Buddha, there’s this monkey. And he’s really–you should do something about it.’ And Buddha’s like, ‘Oh…okay, fine. I have to deal with this.’ So the Buddha goes and he’s like, ‘Yo, Monkey King, stop doing what you’re doing. It’s really annoying.’ And he’s like, ‘No.’ And then…Monkey King challenges Buddha’s power. And Buddha’s like, ‘I bet I could race you from here to the edge of the universe. And I will win.’ So the Monkey King is like, ‘Sure, I could do that. I could beat you. You’re old.’

So he jumps on this cloud, that he can fly on–he has a cloud that flies–and he flies to the edge of the universe. And he’s in outer space or something. And there’s nothing there. So he thinks he’s won. So he’s like, ‘You know, I–I need to pee.’ So he goes and pees on one of the pillars at the edge of the universe. And then he–I think he writes his name out with his pee. And then he flies back.

And the Buddha’s there. And Monkey King’s like, ‘Yo, you didn’t even try, what’re you doing?’ and Buddha’s like, ‘No. I got there before you did.’ And he shows him his hand. And in one of the crevasses is his pee. Because apparently the pillar he peed on is Buddha’s hand.

So the Buddha wins. And I think they had a bet before hand. So the Buddha’s like, ‘For your crimes of mischievousness prankery, I condemn you to a life under this mountain.’ So Buddha throws a mountain on the Monkey King and he has to hang out there for a really long time.

But. So this is the origin story. There’s more.

So out of nowhere, like after five hundred years, because the Monkey King is immortal, uh, a priest–a Buddhist monk–that’s traveling from China to India to get the original Sanskrit texts for Buddhism, he’s on his way, and he passes the mountain. And the Monkey King is there, and he’s like, ‘Psst! Hey! Get me out of this!’ And the monk somehow makes a deal with Buddha, like ‘Okay, I will guide and mentor this monkey if you let him come with me on my journey to India to protect me.’ So Buddha says yes.

And then he turns the mountain that was on the Monkey King into this headband, and so that’s what the headband is on the Monkey King. The headband is kind of like his chains, his shackles. And I think it constricts sometimes to give him pain when he’s bad.

So the Buddhist monk and the Monkey King go to India to get the Buddhist scriptures. And along the way they have a lot of adventures and stuff.”

Here, my informant tells me a traditional Chinese tale about the Monkey King, focusing on the way he came to be. The Monkey King is very popular, and, as my informant told me, it is often used as a bedtime story for children. His implication was that there are many different adventures that can be told about the Monkey King, and so it is an ideal tale.
The story is about a prankster hero, so it’s clear why it would be popular among children – especially, as my informant points out, among little boys versus little girls. The story itself is fairly basic, and calls to mind Greek and Roman mythology. It seems that each culture has its own version of a prankster challenging the gods, just to be put in his place. It’s not difficult to understand why – this teaches humility and the idea that humans are inferior to the gods that they worship. In addition, although my informant focused on the origin story of the Monkey King, the larger story is clearly based around a journey, which is another popular trope in early folktales.
The story itself was interesting, but what I found most fascinating was the way in which my informant told me the story. Although he was telling a traditional Chinese story, the words, phrases, and intonation that he used made it clear that I was getting a solidly American retelling.
(May also be read in the novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en)

Saint Nicholas’ Day

“One of the things that I think is starting to die out, because I’m hearing less and less of it, but that was always big in my family, is Saint Nicholas’ Day. On, uh…December sixth, or December fifth…see, I’m starting to lose it. But it’s, uh… So every Saint Nicholas’ Day, we would, uh, all of us kids would take our shoes and put them out right inside the front door. And the next morning, we would find them filled with candy and sometimes action figures, and all kinds of stuff like that. I think, uh, when I was about fifteen, my parents put oranges, so that kinda killed the tradition. But, that was always a holiday we celebrated.

I’m pretty sure it’s Eastern European. My grandma is really deeply Hungarian, so she did that with my dad.”

 

My informant describes a traditional European holiday. It seems to be prevalent throughout Europe, not just in Eastern Europe, like he thought. Holidays where children are given presents other than just on Christmas Day used to be fairly common in many Christian countries, but, as he notes, they seem to be dying out (at least in America). Although he says that the gift of oranges ruined the holiday for him, oranges are a traditional Christmas and yuletide present, especially for those of the older generation. The fact that the children put out shoes is interesting; they serve as a kind of precursor to the perhaps more common practice of hanging one’s stocking on Christmas Eve.