Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Cheese Touch

Text

“When I was in like elementary school a lot of us would mess around with a game called the cheese touch like if you said cheese touch when you were tagging someone then they would have it. And the only way to prevent it would be to have your fingers crossed. And once you have it you have to give it to someone else or you’re stuck with it. So, I remember we would always have our fingers crossed because anytime was fair game. I remember getting frustrated because kids would lie and say their fingers were crossed when they got tagged. Me and my friends would team up in secret and promise we wouldn’t tag each other if we got the cheese touch. In my senior year of high school, we played senior assassin which gave me flashbacks to the cheesetouch because of the safe rules and the lies that would be created after someone got out. I was completely into both games because they brought out the inner kid in me and my competitive nature.”

Context

I first saw this game when I watched the Diart of a Wimpy Kid movie. I remember being at my friend’s house in his living room watching with my childhood friend group of 4 guys. When we saw the cheese touch scene with thought it was funny but also disgusting because the cheese was rotten. Other kids at our elementary watched the movie too and one of them copied the movie. Since we were immature kids who just wanted to have fun, the mention of the cheese touch got everyone riled up and the game began.

Analysis

The cheese touch game shows the diversity of forms that folklore can come in. It is a variation of another folk belief known as the “cooties” because they both involve infecting others with a negative thing. While it originated in a movie, kids around the US adapted the game into their own and transformed a silly game into a national form of folklore. Folklore is highly prominent in the younger generations because with social media and televesion, kids are prone to copy what they say without questioning its validity. Similar to Alan Dundes’s idea, folklore functions socially within groups that share similiarity giving mutual trust in this scenario. The secret alliances he formed with his friends show the strength of culture through folklore. Regardless of the rules of the game, their tight knit folk group shaped by friendship and a collective interest to not get the cheese touch led to them bending the rules and creating shared identity.

The Haunted Forth Floor

Context:

The informant attended the same elementary school as me. We ended up going to different middle schools but somehow remained in contact. She is now studying Chinese literature at a highly selective university in China.

Text:

In the informant’s Chinese local college, there is a well-known student folklore about the “haunted fourth floor” of the Literature Building. Students say that after a certain hour in the evening, you should no longer step into the fourth floor, or else you will be cursed by a ghost who died in the building. There is also sayings that the literature building use to be a small factories, and a worker died from an accident yet their family was not compensate, thus he haunts the livings. Students sometimes would avoid staying there alone, especially during exam season.

The informant doesn’t believe in this ghost story. She thinks the fear is closely tied to the number four itself, which in Chinese pronunciation is similar to the word for “death” (死). Because of this association, the number is widely considered unlucky, and in some buildings it is either skipped or treated with discomfort. She considered this as superstition.

But when asked if she would go study there, she said no.

Analysis:

This folklore shows how superstition, memory, and academic pressure come together to shape student space and behavior. The “haunted fourth floor” draws on the cultural association between the number four and death, which gives the location an immediate symbolic unease even without belief in ghosts. At the same time, the story of a worker’s death adds a narrative of unresolved injustice, turning the building into a site of imagined haunting and moral tension. Even though the informant personally rejects the supernatural explanation, her reluctance to study there suggests that folklore can still influence behavior without belief.

Fermented Rice (醪糟)

Context:
The informant is a Chinese woman in her mid-50s who was born and raised in China and currently lives in Beijing. She grew up within a traditional cultural environment where home remedies and food-based health practices were commonly passed down between women in the family.

Text:
The informant describes fermented rice (醪糟) as a common traditional food often associated with women’s health, particularly during menstruation. It is typically served warm, sometimes with eggs or sugar, and is believed in popular practice to help “warm the body” and support recovery during a woman’s period. The informant explains that in her experience, it is often recommended within family settings as a comforting food during menstruation.

Analysis:
This shows how fermented rice functions not only as a household food but also as part of a gendered system of folk health knowledge. Its association with menstruation reflects broader cultural ideas about balancing the body, warmth, and recovery through food. Within this context, the dish becomes more than nourishment—it carries symbolic meaning tied to women’s bodily experience and care. At the same time, its continued use in everyday life demonstrates how traditional beliefs about health are preserved and normalized through domestic practice. In this way, fermented rice can also be understood as a form of embodied cultural knowledge that connects food, gender, and wellbeing in everyday life.

New Month Prosperity

The Story:

“A tradition I grew up seeing was on the first of every month take a handful of cinnamon and blow it out on your doorstep from the palm of your hand. It’s  so  interesting. It was meant for prosperity, to bring prosperity for the new month. I think this is more of a witch spell type thing, I don’t think it’s cautionary really, but it’s just for you to bring abundance and prosperity to your front door, on the first day of the month.”

Reflection:

The informant showed an example of ritual with the historical link to voodoo and magic. The tradition of cinnamon and the first of every month with the blowing action frame this to be a prosperity spell originating from a folk group. Additionally, something I noticed from the information was the acknowledgment of these spells, but they did not participate. It allowed for the informant to talk about how they appeared in their life while also being able to objectively inform me, an outsider, on the origin and the purpose behind these spells. This allowed for a nice insight of folk magic and just how deeply they are rooted within a folk group, even if it is not practiced by every single folk member. In this case, it was not an active ritual, but had enough significance to still be acknowledged by the informant. The timing of this ritual also shows the importance of calendrical rituals in this case and how they can be the backbone behind certain rituals within a folk group. 

Plane Tapping Ritual

Age: 20

Folklore Story:

“Every time I go on a flight  and I fly Southwest mainly every time I go on a flight,  I touch the little heart that’s on the outside of the plane  and I put my palm on it.  And then I as I enter the plane.  I do it as like a good luck thing and I got it from my dad because he would always do it.  He would like put his hand on and he would like pray or like say like a quick prayer.  So I just started doing it too because he would take me on flights  and it was always good. I first saw him do it at like eight because I’ve been going on flights kind of young. I like the idea of like having a child and just like picking up my kids so that they can put their hand on the heart, not the plane.”

Reflection:

The informant’s story is a textbook example of ritual and contagious magic. They describe the desire to touch the heart on the outside of a Southwest plane before boarding. This is a repeated, patterned act performed for good luck. The informant learned from her father, who would pray while touching it, that touching the heart on the plane connects you to the whole. The informant plans to pass this ritual to her own children, showing how rituals reproduce themselves through vertical transmission. This reflects a broader societal reality: despite the advancements of technology and the global dependence on it, people still exhibit small acts of control over the uncontrollable.