Author Archives: Kelly Covey

Peeling an Apple in Front of a Mirror

“If you peel an apple at 12 midnight in front of a mirror with a candle in one continuous shave without breaking the skin, the face of your future spouse will appear in the mirror.”

My mother tells me that she had heard this from several of her friends when she attended middle school in Hong Kong.  Many of her friends had tried this to see their future spouses, but my mother never believed that it would work.  She does not recall if her friends had seen their spouses and was unable to validate the belief.  The age that my mother had first heard this folklore is significant because it was during budding adolescence—a time when young tweens begin to think about the opposite sex, fantasize about their future soul mates, and grow increasingly curious about their sexuality.  Additionally, this phenomenon can only occur, supposedly, at 12 midnight, the moment of not quite being yesterday and still not really today.  The ambiguity of spatial time shrouds the belief in mystery—anything can happen at midnight.  However, I am not quite certain as to why the peeling of the apple is relevant to the revelation of a person’s spouse.  The only connection I can infer is that an apple is often symbolic of the Adam and Eve myth; and since Adam and Eve were the first couple, it then follows reason to explain why the apple is used to reveal the identity of a person’s soul mate.

Overall, this belief hardly seems like something that could only be confined to a particular culture or place.  Since most school children around the age of adolescence wonder about their destined soul mates or future loved ones, it seems like this folklore could be spread and shared over a large area of nations, cultures and beliefs.

Waking Up In Front of a Mirror

“You can’t have a mirror in front of your bed because if you wake up and you see your reflection, the mirror will steal your soul.”

My informant heard this from her Chinese mother when trying to orient the furniture in her room.  Though my informant does not really believe that you will lose your soul to the mirror—as if in some Twilight Zone death-trap—she thinks even just waking up to your own reflection first thing in the morning is scary enough.  She did not know the reason that this is believed to happen in Chinese culture, but my own personal suspicion is that when a person first wakes up—often drowsy and not fully awake—he or she is drifting between states of consciousness and unconsciousness.  This is the liminal space around which the folk belief is based.  Should someone wake up and not be fully conscious, the mirror, which will have a duplicate image of a person, a seeming entrance way into a parallel universe, will have the ability to steal your soul during this period of a person’s vulnerable moments where the soul is between dream-state and real world-state.

Giving Watches to Elders

“You can never give someone older than you a watch of some sort because it symbolizes that they should be watching out for time because it’s like telling them that they are going to die soon.”

My informant heard this from an ex-boyfriend, and she later confirmed it with her Chinese mother.  Since hearing it, she has tried to practice this because she sees it as a way to respect her elders by not giving them reminders of their imminent deaths.  She also is now wary of giving watches out as presents because she wants to respect people who also believe that they are being told to watch out for time.  I find it interesting that there is a pun in the English version of the belief: giving of a physical watch and to watch out for time.  However, I doubt that this exists in the Chinese version of the folk belief.  The fact that there is a precaution against giving an elder something as simple as a watch goes to show the focus on the older Chinese generations.  The focus is on respecting the elders—and the culture is so serious about the respect that even the gift of a watch could offend, so it is better to just avoid the situation entirely.

Red Envelopes to Cast Out Spirits

“You know those red Chinese envelopes?  Like, my mom would, like, hang them upside-down, like when we moved into the house, we, like, put money inside and put it in all the rooms, like, to, like, I don’t know, so the spirits will just, like, take the money and just not haunt the house.  And then my dad would be like, “Someone left money!”  And took it all down, and my mom was like, “Fucking asshole!”  And she put it all back up.”

With parents from different parts of the world—her father from Puerto Rico and her mother from China—my informant has been raised with a mix of customs.  This one in particular is a Chinese custom meant to cast out any bad spirits in a new house.  She tells me that this is done as soon as you move in so the spirits do not dwell where you live.  The hanging of the red, money-filled envelopes serves as an offering to the spirits—a bargain, if you will—that pays the spirits to leave the home alone.  The envelopes are red because red is the color of good luck in Chinese culture, and the reason the envelopes are hung upside-down is because it is acting in part of the tradition of hanging the Chinese character 福 (fu) which mean “luck” or “fortune” upside-down as a play on words.  To say, 福到了(fu dao le) means that the good luck or good fortune has arrived.  But 倒 (dao) means to “fall down,” and since it is a pun on the word for “arrive” (到), the Chinese play on the word so that the character 福 hung upside-down is symbolically saying that the luck has already arrived.  So everything about the casting out spirits from the house has to do with luck in one form or the other, implying that the family hopes that by living in this house, good luck will come to them.

I also find the side note my informant had tacked on the end—the part concerning her Puerto Rican father taking down the red envelopes because he saw money inside.  I think the distinction between cultures and what different cultures presume to be “lucky” is made very obvious in this example.  Since my informant’s parents are not from the same cultural backgrounds, there is a culture barrier of sorts.  Though my informant’s father was focusing on the money, my informant’s mother got worked up enough to scold him for disturbing the ritual she was trying to do to bring good luck to the house.  It is clear that my informant’s father did not practice the same custom, so it meant little to him; but the completion of the ritual was important enough to my informant’s mother that she stuffed the red envelopes again and hung them back up.

Split Around a Pole

“So, basically, if two people are walking in a pair and next to each other, you can’t separate and walk around a pole on two different sides, like, both people have to walk around on the same side.”

Q: “Is it bad luck if you’re split up?”

A: “Yeah, it’s supposed to be some bad luck superstition.  I don’t know, I don’t really believe in it.”

Q: “But someone you know does?”

A: “Yeah, Stanisha like is so serious about it.  If we’re walking, I’ll go out of my way to walk on the other side of poles and stuff, and she’ll just run back and go out of her way to go around the thing.  There was this one time we split to walk around a man, and she ran all the way back just to go around him on the same side I did.”

Q: “Has her luck improved do you think?”

A: “Well, I mean, she wins everything.  She’s always entering into raffles, and legit, she always wins.  She’s won an iPad, a PSP, gift cards—it’s cray.”

Q: “So you first heard about this pole thing from Stanisha?”

A: “Yeah, but there’s this other older woman I used to work with, and she believed in it, too.  She told me about it and said that it was a thing, and if you split around a pole you’ll have bad luck.”

My informant is my co-worker, and Stanisha is one of our friends.  They are both African-American and raised in the United States.  My informant grew up in Santa Rosa, California, and Stanisha is from Georgia.  Though my informant claims to not believe in this folk belief, he is still an active participant in it because he knows that Stanisha is very superstitious about it.  I think the fact that he is participating in the belief and claims to see the good fortune of its results is an indicator that maybe my informant believes the folk belief to a certain degree—maybe he is not fully bought into it, but he acknowledges that Stanisha has had nothing but good luck.

Personally, I had never heard of this folk belief before consulting with my informant.  It seems strange that there is an association with good luck and the separation of people when walking.  After consulting with my informant, I asked him who the good luck with affect: both people in the group or just one of the people at random?  He said that he did not know, but perhaps it had something to do with affecting only those who believe, since he has not noted any significant changes in his mediocre luck.  This brings to attention the idea of believing—are folk beliefs constructed so that they only affect those who truly believe in them?  Or do they only produce a placebo effect on those who believe, so one will think that their luck has improved simply because he/she believes that it will?  It is hard to say for sure.  But I do find it interesting that my informant, though he has seen Stanisha’s positive results, still claims to not believe.  What causes a person to believe in superstitions?  Is seeing not truly believing?