Author Archives: mhvora

Korean Toenail-Eating Mouse

Context: The informant is a 21 year old USC student. Her dad is Korean and her mom is American; this story was told to her by the Korean side of her family.

The story goes that one day, a boy cut his fingernails and toenails and didn’t dispose of the clippings properly. He threw them outside, where a mouse came across them and ended up eating them. The mouse turned into an evil doppelganger of the boy and when the boy was out, went to his home and replaced him. When the boy came back, he was confronted with another version of him that had essentially taken over his life. He came to his parents and told them this, and his parents, confused, set the doppelganger and the boy next to each other to figure out which one was the original. Somehow, the parents chose the wrong one, and the boy ended up getting kicked out of the house, never to return.

Analysis: The informant told me that the moral of the story was basically that if you don’t dispose of your fingernail and toenail clippings correctly, a mouse will eat them, become you, and ruin your life. This folktale is one that seems dependent on the concept of contagious, or contact-based, sympathetic magic. Here, parts of the boy are not destroyed and so can be used against him; his nails, having once touched him, are believed to still be part of his body to the extent that affecting them can affect the body. Just as the mouse consumed the nails, the mouse-doppelganger consumes the boy’s life, using parts of him to reconstruct the whole. It’s a cautionary tale, reminding people not to make anything that can be used against them public

The informant was unsure how exactly the nails were disposed of incorrectly or how they should have been disposed of for safety purposes. While neither she nor her family practices this, it is apparently a common Korean folktale.

Baba Yaga as the Bogeyman

Context: The informant is a 22 year old USC student and the daughter of two Bulgarian immigrants. She told me that when she visited her grandparents, they would often tell her stories about Baba Yaga.

In C’s words: “[A]s a kid, my grandmother would bring up the story of Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga is this old witch who lives in a house deep in the forest. She lurks there, skulking the countryside, looking for naughty children to abduct. The only visible sign of her witchcraft is how her house moves around on its own two skinny chicken feet”

Analysis: C told me afterwards that her grandmother told her these stories in order to scare her into behaving, with Baba Yaga functioning much in the same way the Bogeyman would. Here, Baba Yaga is treated as a legend, with C’s grandmother purposefully attempting to make it seem as if being kidnapped by her is a genuine possibility; this is a common tactic to get children to behave.

Interestingly, this version of the story doesn’t emphasize that Baba Yaga is terribly ugly or scary in any way physically — the only way to tell that she’s a witch is to see her cottage, at which point it would be too late for a potential victim. This makes it easier for Baba Yaga’s story to function as a legend, as she could essentially be anyone around you, making it easier to think that she’s real. It seems that because there’s no popular hero/villain story with Baba Yaga’s defeat in it, it’s almost easier to transition her from a fairy-tale creature to what could be considered a legend. In comparison to, say, the Big Bad Wolf, who also seems to function as a manifestation of the consequences of one’s behavior, Baba Yaga is much more believable as a real and present fear because she isn’t clearly associated with a narrative in which she is killed. By this, I mean that saying that the Big Bad Wolf might come after you doesn’t work as well partially because the most popular version of Red Riding Hood today ends with his death.

Part of the associated fear seems almost as if it’s due to an inversion of the grandmother stereotype/figure/character; rather than being maternal, Baba Yaga steals children. As mothers or grandmothers would typically be the ones telling these stories, it would only further that feeling of discomfort due to some sort of transgression upon the traditional concept of an older maternal figure.

Lunar New Year Origins

Context: the informant is a 21 year old USC student with two Taiwanese immigrant parents. She told me that this was the story behind Lunar New Year. I was unable to record her exact words, but I was given permission to paraphrase.

The story goes like this: a long long time ago, there was a village that was attacked on the same day every year by a monster named Nian, which is the Chinese word for year. Year after year, people would die and they couldn’t do anything about it. Somehow, the people found out that Nian was afraid of fire, and so before he came to attack the village that year, they hung up red lanterns, tapestries, and banners outside their doors, hoping the monster would mistake the red color for fire and leave them alone. That year, when Nian came, he saw the decorations and was frightened away; that was the first year that nobody died. Every year after that, on that specific day, they would put up red decorations, hang red lanterns outside the walls, and set off firecrackers at night to make sure that the monster would never come back. During the day, children would also be given red envelopes to put under their pillows for protection. After that first year Nian was driven away, he never came back, too scared of the red colors that he thought were fire. Now for Chinese New Year, everyone wears red and puts up red decorations as a tradition, but this is the way it started.

Analysis: From the definitions we work off of in class, this would be classified as a legend because, while it’s an origin story, it’s an origin story for a tradition rather than a people or a land. It’s clearly set in our world and isn’t necessarily sacred, so if anything, it would be a legend, considering its veracity cannot be verified and it seems like something that, though supernatural, has the potential to be true.

Considering the red is supposed to mimic fire, it seems in theory very similar to some points that Francisco Vaz da Silva made about chromatic symbolism. He argues that the use of the black/white/red tricolor symbolism was “part of a general encoding of cultural values in sensory based categories” and while his argument was in relation to womanhood, I would say that some of might still apply. Red, in his example, was more of a sign of blood or maturation in Europe, but he goes on to reference a paper on African color symbolism that considers red as associated with activity or life-giving, much in the same way that blood might function.

Here, it represents similar concepts — red is a marker of life-giving in the way that it is a symbol of protection and its presence means the continued existence of life. Fire, and by extension, red, are both connected to the idea of life, resulting in an association of fire with vitality. Fire also brings light, driving away darkness and fear, creating another association with life-giving and continued success/safety.

Fire is also among one of the first things children are taught about (usually in the context of safety) and considering few things in nature are that color, I wonder if there’s more association of red with fire rather than blood for children who grow up hearing this story.

Zodiac Animal Order Origin

Context: the informant is a 21 year old USC student and the daughter of 2 Taiwanese immigrants. She told me that this was the story of how the zodiac animals were ordered the way they were, and said it was a story she learned growing up

The story goes that one day, the gods held a contest for all the animals. She was unsure exactly if the animals had been chosen beforehand or if it was for all the animals, but essentially, twelve animals were in competition with each other, and the ones that completed the race first would be earlier in the zodiac cycle. The biggest obstacle in this course was a large river. The rat, which is first, won by jumping onto the ox and waiting for it to ford the river normally; once the ox had crossed, the rat ran further ahead, which is why the rat is first and the ox is second. The tiger came next, with the rabbit following quickly after as it had to jump across logs to make it across the river. The dragon was fifth, as it had stopped to help others out on the way. The snake and horse came next; the horse was initially first, but was scared by the snake and fell behind. The monkey, rooster, and sheep followed after, having tried to help each other through. The dog came second to last, and the pig came last, as it had accidentally fallen asleep during the race. The order that the animals arrived in was the solidified zodiac order.

Analysis: this is very much a myth about the origins of the Chinese zodiac calendar, attaching stories to animals in a way similar to how ancient Greek constellations were categorized. It’s not a story that’s meant to be questioned — only to be believed. The informant and her family don’t necessarily believe in this directly but they know the story regardless, and believe that children born in different zodiac years carry different qualities. I’ve been friends with many East Asian kids growing up, and all of their parents attach different qualities to the zodiac years, much in the way that Westerners typically do with astrology. They’re aware that it acts as a sort of pseudo-science, but this does not affect their belief in it, which stands in line with the idea that myths are not questioned, only believed.

Hou Yi and Chang’e Legend

Context: The informant is a 21 year old USC student and the daughter of two Taiwanese immigrants. She told me that she was definitely missing some details, but this is the story she learned growing up about the origins of the Mid-Autumn festival. The following are her exact words.

“So, there’s a couple, right, and the guy has like superhero strength – warrior vibes. At the time, there were 10 suns in the sky, and they were so hot that they were burning everything up, so he shot 9 of them out of the sky, leaving only one behind. As a reward, some higher power gave him this magic potion to make him stronger, but in the middle of the night, the day before he was meant to take it, his enemy poisoned it. For some reason, he still wanted to take it, so before he could, his wife drank the whole thing to save him. She ended up floating up into the moon, and so during the Mid-Autumn festival, because the moon is full, people say you can still see her silhouette up there.”

After doing some research, I found out that this is known as the story of Hou Yi and Chang’e, an immortal archer and his wife, the moon goddess before the latter becomes the moon goddess; this seems as if it would count as a mythic narrative. Not only is this the origin story of the sun, but it’s also the origin of the designs present on the moon. There’s a pretty common history of humans seeing faces where there are none (tree trunks) and looking at the moon would reasonably yield the same result. It’s not a story that anyone thinks could have happened, but also not a story that one would disagree with, considering the nature of it. Interestingly, there’s multiple different versions of this story online, including ones where Hou Yi goes mad with power rather than having his elixir poisoned and instead Chang’e must protect others by acting against him. It would be interesting to see if these differences revealed anything about typical historical conflicts that a certain region might have faced or a regional variation in values that might have caused this oicotypical difference.