Author Archives: danadinh@usc.edu

Wasting rice leads to acne on your future spouse’s face

Nationality: Asian-American
Age: 18
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Honolulu, Hawaii
Performance Date: April 12, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese, Vietnamese

“I’ve heard this from some of my other friends, too, but if you have leftover rice, what my mom told my sister and I is that each grain of leftover rice is going to be acne on your future significant other’s face. When we were younger, she used to tell us that. I wasn’t sure if it was to scare us or if it was a joke, but it definitely got us to not waste rice.”

Background Information and Context:

As the informant said above, this is something that her mother would tell her to warn her against not finishing her rice. The superstition comes from China, and she has heard from other Chinese friends that their mothers have said the same thing.

Collector’s Notes:

This is an example of a superstition that is connected to a people’s way of life. In China and South East Asia, rice is a culinary and economic staple and – especially for poorer families – wasting rice is highly frowned upon. For an example of multiplicity and variation, I recall that my own Vietnamese mother always told me that a wasted grain of rice means that you’re going to hell. It is not hard to see how the same sentiment of not wasting food can be taught in a grave manner (like my mother’s warning) or a much less severe warning for young girls (like the informant’s version).

House Hunting Superstitions

Nationality: Asian-American
Age: 18
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Honolulu, Hawaii
Performance Date: April 9, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese, Vietnamese

“There’s two [superstitions] that my parents told me they look for when they’re house shopping. The front and the back doors of a house can’t align or else money will come in through the front door and just leave out the back (she loudly laughs as she finishes her sentence). When I asked my dad about this, he was like, ‘I don’t know why,’ and I asked my mom and she said, ‘whatever comes in through the front door will leave out the back door,’ and I was just like, ‘ok, mom.’ Also, the stairs can’t lead directly out the door because it’ll fall out the door, like your possessions, or your fortune, or your good luck. I think my parents believe in this because, when we were younger and were going house shopping, if the stairs were even remotely near the front door, my mom refused to look at the rest of the house. I guess these just superstitions or old wives’ tales that get passed down from your parents.”

Background Information and Context:

This is a superstition that was relevant to the informant’s parents while shopping for real estate. She believes that the superstition most likely came from Vietnam, from which her parents immigrated.

Collector’s Notes:

Growing up in a Vietnamese family, I, too, was exposed to many strange and illogical superstitions, usually from my grandmother. I am all too familiar with asking for an explanation of why something is good or bad luck and getting a reply that doesn’t clarify much, as my informant recalled in the above example. I also found it interesting how she was so quick to dismiss these superstitions, while I know from previous conversations that she is usually eager to accept certain other luck-related traditions like cleaning the house for the new year. I think a large part of accepting a tradition is feeling a personal connection to it and a positive association.

Night Marchers

Nationality: Asian-American
Age: 18
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Honolulu, Hawaii
Performance Date: April 12, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese, Vietnamese

“You shouldn’t whistle at night because you’ll get hunted down by the night marchers. I’ve never really gotten a description of what the night marchers are, but if you get hunted down by them, it’s also bad luck, and then, also, if you hear drums it’s night marchers, so go in the other direction. My sister, she’s in marching band, and one time she was whistling, and her friend just yelled at her across the field like, ‘Don’t whistle! You’re going to get hunted down by the night marchers!’ I asked her, ‘What are the night marchers?’ She just (she shrugs and shakes her head) and ‘Just don’t whistle at night.’”

Background Information and Context:

As the informant said above, she learned about this superstition from her sister, who had shared the experience of being warned about this superstition. They encountered this superstition in Hawaii, where they live.

Collector’s Notes:

It is interesting how the informant and her sister were warned not to whistle at night without ever truly understanding the background for the superstition. It makes me wonder if the person warning her sister even knew what the night marchers are, or if she was merely echoing a warning given to her by someone else. Many superstitions exist and are followed ‘just to be safe’ even though the reasons why it causes bad luck are unknown. Moreover, I was surprised that my informant never thought to look up the night marchers on the internet, because a simple Google search showed me that her bad-luck-causing night marchers were actually Hawaiian warriors whose appearance meant death.

For more information about the Night Marchers, see “Friday Frights: The Legend of Hawai‘i’s Night Marchers” in Honolulu Magazine

A Typical Friday for a Young Adult in Argentina

Nationality: Argentine-American
Age: 44
Occupation: Director of Residential Services at local health center
Residence: Claremont, CA
Performance Date: April 21, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

9:00 a.m. – go to work, usually at a family boutique or bakery

Noon – close store for a few hours (if you didn’t get your bread at noon, it’s too late because everything is closed), have lunch with family, and take a nap.

3 p.m – go back to work

7 pm. – close the store and go home

10 p.m. – serve dinner

11:30 p.m. – get ready for your night out if you’re young (“Sometimes we’d pile into a bus after a couple of hours at a club and head to another club an hour and a half away.”)

6:00 a.m. – stay out until then and have breakfast before going home to sleep

Background Information and Context:

While talking about how the lifestyle in Argentina is completely different from that in America, I noted that we usually have dinner at 8 or even 9 p.m. whenever I’m at her house – much later than most American families – and remembered that she had told me, the first time I had dinner with her family, that “everything goes late in Argentine.” To get a better idea of this, I asked her to outline a normal day in Argentine. What she gave me was based on her experience when she went back to Argentina at age 18 and the lifestyle of her cousins back then.

Collector’s Notes:

The informant summed it up well when she explained that Argentine people live by the motto “You’ve got to work to live, not live to work.” Whereas most Americans maximize their 9-to-5 work day, barely taking time for breaks and lunch, Argentines make time for a hearty lunch, family time, and a nap. Night life for young people in Argentina seems extreme compared to even the more adventurous students at USC.

Drinking Mate

Nationality: Argentine-American
Age: 44
Occupation: Director of Residential Services at local health center
Residence: Claremont, CA
Performance Date: April 21, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Everybody drinks mate. As long as I can remember, since I was a kid, my mom and her friends used to drink mate. I think it’s made out of coconut or something. Everybody drinks it out of these cups made out of wood that basically look like coconuts. They put tea leaves in it, and drink out of a strange straw made of metal. The straw lets the liquid through without letting the tea leaves through. Basically, whoever is serving the mate has a bowl of yerva, which is the herbs, and they put it in the mate, and once you have all the tea in, you pour in hot water and sugar. The person serving drinks first because it’s usually very bitter but gets sweeter. You pass it around, adding more sugar and hot water, and everybody gets the mate out of the same container and straw.”

Background Information and Context:

According to the informant, her parents drank mate every morning and throughout the day, and her cousin drinks it by himself by the river, but the particular ritual she described is meant for a social gathering. She’s not sure if any of this is symbolic. “People will share with complete strangers. It’s really strange,” she remarked, “My cousin will be down at the beach and meet some strangers, and they’ll drink mate together.” In Argentina, kids drink it too, but with warm milk and lots of sugar. She remembers drinking it as a kid all the time, and remarked that shMare was sad that she didn’t make it for her kids when they were little.

Collector’s Notes:

Traditions reveal a lot about social relations within a culture. Based on this tradition of sharing mate, one can see that hospitality – moreover a deference for one’s guests – is an important aspect of Argentine culture and that being friendly and welcoming, even to strangers, is expected. The first time I came to the informant’s house, I was so confused by the extent to which she’d welcomed me into her home and wanted me to make myself comfortable because it was such a different experience from my own more conservative Vietnamese upbringing. A good way to see the differences between these two cultures would be to compare this mate tradition to what I’d consider a typical Vietnamese social interaction, like greeting each elder individually and bowing, a representation of the strong sense of hierarchy in Vietnamese social groups.