Background:
Informant (W) is a 78 y/o Chinese woman living in China.
Main Piece:
(Interview is translated from Mandarin Chinese.)
I: Can you tell me more about the jade necklace you gave me when I was younger?
W: Oh, I remember that. Your cousin had one, so you were begging me to get one for you too.
I: Why do people wear it? Is there something special about the jade?
W: Jade is a very important stone in China. If you wear a piece of jade, it sucks out all of the impurities in your body (吸毒, lit. “sucking poison”). When you see a dark spot in your piece of jade, that’s the negative energy it took.
I: So it’s stored in that piece of jade forever?
W: Yes, that’s what the jade does.
Context:
This conversation took place over a phone call.
Analysis:
The jade necklace can be loosely defined as a folk object. The existence of a folk object is defined by how it’s used, which changes over time, and are generally created from natural materials. With its staggering popularity, something like a jade necklace is probably mass-produced and distributed, and most likely has a variety of uses, from purely aesthetic reasons to religious ones (many jade necklaces are Buddha carvings or have Chinese zodiac signs). However, the shape of the jade is generally a round circle or donut shape—folk objects usually are slow to change in its form. In what my informant tells me, this particular instance of a jade necklace also uses contagion magic. By contact with the skin, the jade is able to suck out impurities within the body (specifically what this entails, my informant did not specify). This act gives the jade a sacred purpose and a usage other than aesthetics.
Category Archives: Magic
Yeet Hay
Background:
Informant (A) is a Chinese-American student at USC.
Main Piece:
A: It’s like, I don’t even know how to explain it well, it’s like, not hot and cold, but some food just have like a hotter energy or colder energy, it’s like all of this [gestures to her lunch], but that’s yeet hay, and it’s like if you eat too much of it you break out, and bad things happen to you and you need to have a balance in your diet and literally my mom would be so horrified by how I eat.
I: Was there anything in particular that you remember? Like just any food that you remember that maybe your mom was like, oh—
A: Just like, in general, like I would be like, “Parents, I have a medical something” or “Please use Western medicine” and they’d be like, “No, you can fix your issue by not eating chips” like eat a fruit, the balance or whatever.
Context:
This conversation was recorded in-person over lunch. The concept of yeet hay was brought up as my informant noted her lunch wouldn’t be conducive with yeet hay.
Analysis:
Yeet hay (熱氣, zheng qi, lit. “hot air”) is a Chinese medicinal concept in relation to food and the body, drawing on ideas of homeopathic magic. As explained by my informant, eating foods with a certain type of energy would either raise or cool down the body’s internal energy/temperature, which in turn affects biological functions and conditions. The longstanding tradition of Chinese medicine is most likely what drives belief in the idea, as opposed to Western medicine which has sprung up only in the last couple hundred years. Of course, in my informant’s case, yeet hay seems to also be applied as a method to get children to eat healthier by using such a traditional/ancient belief as a method of persuasion.
Sports Ritual — Certain Victory
Background:
Informant (P) is a student studying computer science with a minor in linguistics.
Main Piece:
I: Can you tell me about the words we had on our hands?
P: Yeah, it was 必赢 (bì yíng). We basically both had one of the words and we both wrote it on each other’s hands, with a pen, since we’re both right-handed. It means “certain victory” even though we definitely did not win all of our matches. But it’s fine, it was our special little thing. Better than when people did the racket hitting after they won a point.
Context:
The informant was my doubles partner throughout high school badminton. We wrote the words before each match that we played.
Analysis: This is an example of a ritual that my informant and I created and performed. Writing down the words on our hands was something we both saw from a sports show where a duo did the same thing, and we decided to incorporate it into our pre-match traditions as well. Sports rituals are a common practice—the outcome of a game or match is always unknown, so many athletes consistently perform some sort of ritual as a way to control the uncertain and connect with a non-human, sacred realm. In our particular case, as we were both right-handed, we had the words on our right hand (though this didn’t happen all the time). This act is an example of contagion magic, since the hand with the word would be in contact with the racket to further “strengthen” the power of this belief.
Stretching To Grow
Background:
Informant is a half-white, half-Korean student studying at USC who has lived in America their whole life.
Main Piece:
“It’s literally like, when I was in Korea—I’m short as fuck—and like every morning my aunt and my mom would get all the cousins and they would pull our legs—they would stretch the shit out of our legs every like, morning or night or something, so that like we could be taller. I didn’t grow [laughs].”
Context:
This conversation was recorded in-person. I asked my informant whether they knew of any Asian customs.
Analysis:
Being tall is somewhat associated with East Asian beauty standards—this is often done in comparison with Europeans, who are on average taller than Asians. In my informant’s case, they experienced a form of contagion magic that acts as a folk belief (the belief that being in contact with someone’s legs and physically stretching them out would make the person taller). The act of physical contact is perhaps what continues this custom, as the person feels like there is control over the act of someone growing taller, which is always an unknown. Belief in this custom has perhaps waned, as noted by my informant who laughs at the fact that they’re still short.
Feng Shui
Background:
Informant is a Malaysian international student with Chinese ancestry at USC.
Main Piece:
“I had my Feng Shui read by an old lady when I was there [hometown in Fujian]. I have fire, fire, fire, wood, so the Feng Shui master gave me a necklace that’s supposed to be water to balance it out.”
Context:
I was discussing Western astrology with a group of friends and my informant, who did not know much about zodiac astrology, started talking about Feng Shui.
Analysis:
Feng Shui is probably one of the most common pieces of Eastern folklore/pseudoscience known to a Western audience, but only in regards to architecture or interior placement (how to design your bedroom, how should your house be facing, etc.). My informant’s piece is more focused on personal astrology, which in its essence, is trying to look into an uncertain/sacred/”other” realm in order to understand oneself better. The necklace my informant receives is an example of a conversion superstition, where something is done to undo the bad luck an action can cause—in this case, to balance out my informant’s energies. While my informant got his necklace for free, selling objects with folk belief attached to them is an easy way to trap unsuspecting people (tourists especially) into buying the objects, especially if the belief attached has same form of connection to the sacred.