Author Archives: CharmaineOng

Succineers

Nationality: Mexican/Trinidadian American
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pe Ell, WA
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

These creatures are typically females who have sold their souls to the devil in exchange for power and earthly rewards. They shed their human skins at night and fly around as balls of fire. Often, they practice various forms of black magic and are generally evil beings. However, they are not immortal, and during the day cannot be distinguished between you and me. A way to kill them would be to find their human skins late at night, and put copious amounts of salt in them. The logic in this is that the salt would burn their flesh, and since they cannot exist as balls of fire in the day, the act of putting their skins back on would cause so much pain that they’d die as a result.

                  My informant heard this from her grandmother and her mother, who were both first generation immigrants from Trinidad. According to her grandmother, their neighbor in Trinidad was one of these creatures. One time, she told my informant’s grandmother that she had red roses from the Queen of England’s garden and then proceeded to produce to two red roses. While this might not be strange by itself, roses were not native to Trinidad and could not be found anywhere during that period of time. Additionally, when my informant’s grandmother was pregnant, she saw one in her room, trying to suck on her blood. However, they could not stand people who were associated with God and spat the blood out and left.

                  There are many things that skirt the edge of belief and this is one of them. This is an example of binary opposition in more agricultural/hunting cultures that exists in those islands. Note the Christian influences in this story. As learned in class, the idea of God and the Devil spawned from the missionaries that came to the various places that they spread the word of God. The missionaries tended to place a God vs. Satan spin on most of the folklore and culture that they touched and is evident here.

僵尸 (Jiang Shi)

Nationality: Singaporean Chinese
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: March 2007
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, Hokkien, Hingwha

These are more commonly known as Chinese Zombies. Unlike the western concept of Zombies, these do not go around looking for human flesh. Instead, these are often the minions of magicians or sorcerers that do their bidding. However, like their western counterparts, they have no will of their own. Jiang shi tend not to be able to walk, but hop with their arms outstretched perpendicular from their bodies.  For cadavers to become jiang shi, the magician needs to paste a talisman with a spell on the forehead of the corpse. No one knows how these talismans are created. Supposedly, there are two ways to ‘kill’ these creatures, one of which is to destroy the talisman pasted on their foreheads, but this is excruciatingly difficult as these creature are more than twice as strong as a normal human and impervious to most weapons. The other way to destroy them is to kill their creators. It is recommended, instead, to throw glutinous rice at them. The rice is known to hurt them and therefore slow them down. It is not known why this happens but it does.

                  This creature was made known to my informant when he was growing up in China. He does not quite recall where he heard it from. However, these creatures are not just confined to China, as my informant has heard a version of these creatures when he arrived in Singapore as well. It is assumed that most countries with Chinese would have these creatures as they are made from corpses, and all you’d need to know is the talisman making ritual.

The magicians that create these are usually from the Taoist traditions. Strangely enough, there is no devil in this situation. Unlike most western and Latin American ghouls and creatures, no hint of Christianity has appeared in this particular piece of folklore. In fact, this black magic is based in the dark-side of things and the unnatural.

Chinese mythology does have demons and the devil, but they just balance each other out. A binary opposition because of the yin-yang, light-dark, everything has an opposite in nature. There are good magicians as well, but they draw on a different source of power in nature.

Singaporean Joke Acronyms

Nationality: Singaporean Chinese
Occupation: Student
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: March 2007
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien

Acronyms :

SBS

Singapore Bus Service

Side-By-Side

SDU

Social Development Unit

Single, Desperate, Ugly

MRT

Mass Rapid Transit

Mad Rush to Train

SAF

Singapore Armed Forces

Serve And Forget

PAP

People’s Action Party

Pay and Pay

PUB

Public Utilities Board

Pay Until Bankrupt

LTA

Land Transport Authority

Long Tio Ah (Crash)

 

These were a few acronyms that my informant heard from one of his ex-classmates from high school. The middle column is the correct versions of these abbreviations. While there are more than just these few, these are just the ones that he could remember off the top of his head. While this might not mean much to the average non-Singaporean, to most Singaporeans this would be rather amusing as it fits the stereotypes of the particular government function, according to my informant.

These are not meant to offend anyone, but just to poke fun at the establishment a little. If you have not noticed, all of those listed above are government owned or governmental establishments. The government in Singapore is also one of its largest employers and therefore most people are beholden to the government. Like people everywhere though, they enjoy making fun of their government and this is meant to do so.

Nationality: Singaporean Chinese
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Hinghwa, Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, English

照

Zhao

Shine

一个日本人，

yi ge ri ben ren

One Japanese Man

站在门口，

zhan zai men kou

Standing at the doorway

拿着一把刀，

na zhe yi ba dao

Holding a knife

杀了四个人。

sha le si ge ren

He kills four people

 

This was learned by my informant when she was growing up in Singapore in school, when she was about ten or eleven years of age. While she can’t quite recall who she learnt it from, she said it was rather useful for learning characters in Chinese.  It is in essence a word riddle, in which the bottom four lines would be told to the other person and the other person would try to guess what the word was.

Even though there is supposedly nothing meant by the content (morbid as it is), it is just there because it fits the word. However, when my informant was growing up during the 1950s and 60s in Singapore there was a great deal of resentment against the Japanese for WWII. The words of this riddle could originate as a subtle form of anti-Japanese rebellion or statement for the brutal acts that they performed in Singapore and most of South East and East Asia.

During World War II, it was very common for Japanese soldiers to enter houses indiscriminately and slaughter whole families for numerous trumped up charges, like being Chinese, or having a wife that the soldier found mildly attractive or even looking at them wrong. Therefore this might be a reflection of not only this anti-Japanese sentiment but also oppositional culture.

Nationality: Singaporean Chinese
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Hinghwa, Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, English

泥菩萨过江, 自身难保

Ni pu sa guo jiang, zi shen nan bao

Mud [Buddha] cross river,  self body hard protect

 When the mud Buddha crosses the river, it can’t protect itself.

My informant learnt this during her middle school years in Singapore. As every proverb has a lesson behind it, this proverb was to teach children not to try and help people while themselves are drowning because they’ll only make matters worse.

This is an example of how religious symbols integrate themselves into the culture of the Chinese. While China is a very diverse country, in contexts of food, religion and language, there is still a mainstream culture that is still prevalent and relevant to most Chinese.

Most Chinese follow the Buddhist tradition and that tradition preaches being helpful and charitable to the poor and those less fortunate than you are. However, no matter how helpful the ’Buddha’ is attempting to be, a statue made out of mud tries to go through a river, it’ll only manage to self destruct. This brings the other part of the proverb into light, as even something like if Buddha cannot protect itself, it should not try and help other people.