Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Chinese folk belief: Signing in red ink

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (Business Administration)
Residence: Atlanta, Georgia
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese, German

My informant doesn’t remember having ever seen a red pen in her house. When she was in elementary school, she found out why. She’d written her name on a homework assignment in red colored pencil, and her mom made her erase it and write over it in black. Her mom explained that in ancient China, the names of people who were condemned to be executed were written in red ink, so writing your name in red is bad luck.

Though my informant doesn’t believe that signing her name in red will bring her bad luck, she never does it because “there’s no particular reason to sign in red when I could just as easily sign in any other color that isn’t associated with bad luck.”

I found this superstition interesting, since Chinese signature chops are usually stamped in red ink. Also, the Chinese consider red to be a lucky color. Both of these facts seem to contradict this particular superstition.

Chinese custom: Birthday noodles

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (Business Administration)
Residence: Atlanta, Georgia
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese, German

My informant’s mother always makes noodle soup whenever anyone in the family celebrates a birthday.  Her mother’s mother, my informant’s grandmother, was from northern China, where wheat noodles were a popular food item. The long noodles represent long life. The person whose birthday it is must eat enough to be completely full so that he/she won’t ever be hungry in the coming year.

This custom turns every birthday into a family occasion. The family shares a homemade meal, which promotes family bonding. It’s a ritual of sorts to mark the transition into being a year older.

My informant skipped her classes on her birthday to go home and have a noodle meal with her family, which shows how strong a tradition this is for her family. She says that she will have to learn how to make noodle soup so that she can continue the tradition in the future.

 

Folk Medicine

Nationality: Hispanic
Age: 54
Residence: Riverside, CA
Performance Date: 3/15/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

One way that my grandmother passed down to my father to fix the palate of the baby. “It sounds like abuse but trust me it’s not”

When babies have something wrong on the soft spot on their head your grandma told me that if they fell or if something was wrong with that spot on their head what you needed to do was put the baby upside down, press your thumb against the top of their mouth, and tickle their feet. You must softly press on the roof of the mouth and it was supposed to help close that space, or push air around or something. This was called Mollera caida.

After research, I have found that this is a pretty widespread folk belief in the Hispanic community.

Thai folk belief: Butterflies carry souls

Nationality: Thai-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student (Fine Arts)
Residence: Northridge, CA
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Thai

My informant had a personal experience with this folk belief while attending her grandmother’s funeral in Thailand. She and the other funeral-goers were kneeling in prayer in front of the Buddhist temple where the funeral was being held, when she noticed a black butterfly fly over her grandmother’s coffin as the monks chanted a sutra to help the soul pass on.

When my informant mentioned the butterfly to an aunt afterwards, the aunt told her that butterflies are containers for souls, and that they carry souls away. The timing of the butterfly’s flight, as well as the fact that she’d never seen a butterfly in Thailand before, convinced my informant of the validity of this folk belief.

My informant suggested that it may be comforting to someone mourning a death to equate their loved one, and maybe death itself, with a butterfly, which is almost universally considered to be beautiful and graceful.

The main religion in Thailand is Buddhism, which rejects the idea of an unchanging self or soul, and so the soul’s flight in the butterfly could be considered the luminal stage between death in one body and reincarnation in the next. Also, while human/alive, we can’t fly—it could be exciting to think that in death, we are able to rise beyond the limitations of our past human bodies.

Thai folk belief: Mole on foot

Nationality: Thai-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student (Fine Arts)
Residence: Northridge, CA
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Thai

Shortly before starting her freshman year at college, my informant noticed a mole on the back of her left foot which she was sure hadn’t been there before. She mentioned the mole to her mother, and it was then that her mother told of her the Thai belief that when you get a mole on your foot, it means you’ll travel far. (My informant’s mother is from the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand.)

My informant strongly believes that this belief is accurate, because she moved away from home and into a college dorm a few weeks after noticing the mole. She told me that the belief was bo-lan, a historical saying, or ancient/common knowledge, and that you have to respect bo-lan. Though she didn’t move far (her home is about a half hour drive from her college), she believes that this is because her mole is fairly small, and the size of the mole either determines or predicts (she’s not sure which) how far you’ll be traveling.

The location of the mole on the foot is probably significant. The feet are associated with walking, and therefore travel. This belief reminds me of another bit of folk speech: the “travel itch,” the desire to travel. Moles can itch, prompting the desire to walk, which could be a metaphor for travel.