Tag Archives: fish

Fish dreams

BACKGROUND: My informant, NN, is a student from the US. The following piece is a belief that was told to NN by her mother, who is of Jamaican descent. This belief struck NN just because of its seeming randomness.

CONTEXT: This piece is from a text conversation with my friend to discuss Jamaican beliefs.

NN: There’s a lot of weird ones. Like the whole if your mom dreams of a fish you’re pregnant.

Me: Do you have any idea if there’s a story behind that?

NN: Not really but my sister got pregnant and my mom hasn’t said anything so

THOUGHTS: This belief really strikes me because of how disconnected I perceive the two elements to be. Other cultures may associate fish with fertility so perhaps that is where the two things intersect. One thing that I’ve heard pretty consistently is that the phases of the moon affect fertility in women. In a similar vein, the phases of the moon also affect the tide and the oceans on Earth. Perhaps through the association of the moon, menstruation, water, and fish are where this belief derives.

Chinese New Year: Don’t Flip the Fish

Main Piece:

Informant: On Chinese New Year’s. We always eat fish because fish is like a lucky food but we don’t flip the fish over. Usually I feel like Asian people are pretty good about getting all of the meat like chicken and stuff because wasting is bad, but we don’t like, flip the fish that we eat on chinese new year, because that’s like bad luck. Because, I’m not super sure where it originates from, but if you – essentially the idea is like if you like, flip the fish, then the boat will flip over.

Interviewer: So you also don’t do this on boats, just in general.

Informant: Yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: So like if you want to get all the fish, you just kind of got to go through the ribs and everything and try to like dig it out from underneath.

Informant: Yeah.

Background:

My informant is a friend and fellow student at USC. She was raised in the LA area but her family is ethnically Chinese and immigrated from Vietnam so she has multiple East Asian influences in her life. Her family regularly celebrates Chinese New Year’s which is where she became aware of this tradition.

Context:

I had set up a Zoom call with my friend because she said she had some examples of folklore that she could share with me. This sample was shared during that call

Analysis:

Some quick research reveals that this is a common and well-known practice, especially in coastal regions of China for exactly the reason my informant described – it’s considered similar to turning over a fishing boat. It makes sense then that this practice originated in coastal regions of China as a greater proportion of the population would make its livelihood through fishing. 

Seeing as how my informant’s family is ethnically Chinese yet resided in Vietnam for the last couple generations it is very plausible that fish was a large part of their diet and thus they kept this tradition going all the way to America.

Flipping the Fish – An Asian Seafarer Taboo

The informant, AW, was in a position where he couldn’t call because of WiFi restrictions and of course, in quarantine we couldn’t communicate in real life. However, he had a story he wanted to tell, so he texted me the following:

As a child, we had all kinds of superstitions about things you shouldn’t do because they were bad luck

Our family is Chinese, but specifically Shanghainese, and the family business was shipping, so a lot of the superstitions were around avoiding bad luck in business kind of realms

For instance, if you had a whole steamed fish for dinner, you absolutely had to work through the fish by filleting the meat aside and then removing the bones as is, without flipping over the backbone, let alone the fish overall

This was because if you actually, heaven forbid, flipped the fish over, for shipping/fishing family, it was symbolic of a boat capsizing on the water, which was about the worst kind of catastrophe a culture like that can imagine

Were you would lose the bounty of your harvest, your business venture would not come back to port and attain fruition, and there would be loss of life along the way

And so, we were taught very early on, but you must absolutely never “flip over the fish”, and anyone who actually did that would not be invited to dinner again, and no one who was aware of that superstition, whatever continue reading or otherwise touch a fish on the dinner table that had been unwittingly flipped over by some unfortunate ignorant guest

So as to avoid the bad luck created by the flipped over fish

It’s funny, I realized in later years it’s not even a Chinese thing, since I do remember seeing other Chinese, inland, non-seafaring Chinese flip fish with no problem. So I realized over time it was a seafaring thing, and a subset of Chinese culture not something universally Chinese or even Asian

And the funny thing is, to this day I still continue to observe that tradition and superstition, and if you ask my kids whether it’s okay to “flip a fish” they’d answer unthinkingly, reflexively, “obviously not, why the hell would anyone do that??” 

 And while it may seem funny, to all of us it’s simply obvious, and not even worth a 2nd thought 🙂

Context:

This story is a family tradition. The informant, AW, is my father, and we come from a family of fishermen. We always thought it was a Chinese tradition, but it actually might not be. This story was collected over text, due to technology restrictions.

Thoughts:

Before AW wrote this story down specifically for me, I never realized it wasn’t a Chinese tradition, but rather a seafarer tradition. I think that his decision to include the sarcastic part about “you would lose income by flipping the boat, and loss of life along the way” speaks to a seafaring tradition that is not romanticized/kindly views Chinese seafaring tradition. Rather, it says rather plainly that the wealthy did not care/were exploitative of the fishermen who worked for them. Many people in the west view fishing as a gentle, kind, simple life; whereas in 20th century China in an industrial setting, it was anything but.

Fish dream

Context: I remembered my friend mentioning some superstition in regards to a fish so I asked her about it again and she explained and this conversation was recorded.

MG: What does the fish in your dreams superstition mean?

KR: “Okay… so it means someone close to you, or it could be actually you, is pregnant. Usually it’s someone close to you that you know. So say I dream it, it could mean my sister or my roommate is pregnant. Its kinda scary. Who knows if it is a coincidence or an actual thing but my mom and grandma have predicted all 4 of my sisters’ pregnancies with this fish dream thing!”

Background: Informant is from Memphis and grew up in a very superstitious family and she had recently been told that her mom had a dream of a fish so she is curious if anyone in her family is pregnant. She explained to me that this is an old wives tale that gets passed down but usually moms dream a fish and then find out their daughter is pregnant. However, this fish dream only applies to women because men do not have this dream.

Analysis: I thought the connection between fish and pregnancy was very interesting. I did try to research on the connection between pregnancy and fish but could only find concerns for eating fish while pregnant. An important connection I made was the fact that both her previous experiences involved her mom, grandmother. In many other cultures moms and especially grandmothers are seen as wise. They have that sixth sense and are able to pick up on signs. Additionally, this superstition discusses pregnancy which is a very scandalous topic and if a woman is young or unmarried she may be afraid to tell her mom or others. Dreams can reveal suspicions or even fears but sometimes they can also just be dreams without a meaning.

Vietnamese Proverb

RN is the informant, PH is myself.

PH: Do you know any legends, jokes, proverbs that you especially like?

RN: Proverb?

PH: Yeah

RN: Can it be in another language?
PH: Yes

RN: I’ll give you the English translation and you can just write [that it is a] Vietnamese proverb

PH: Do you know how to spell it?

RN: [says the proverb in Vietnamese]

PH: I’ll let you spell it.

RN: It means there’s nothing like fish and rice, there’s nothing like mother and child.

The actual proverb in Vietnamese is:

“Không có gì bằng cơm với cá, không có gì bằng má với con.”

Translations of this proverb vary, and this translation was off the top of the informant’s head. The informant speaks Vietnamese, as it is the language primarily spoken in his home, but not at an advanced level.

For another instance of this proverb, see Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong.