Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Ritual – Chinese

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 20, 2007
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Notes:

Every birthday the subject eats either a meal of noodles or one single noodle. The noodle symbolizes good luck for the upcoming year. The subject’s mother also practices this ritual on her own birthday as well as the subject’s grandmother. The subject say’s that she learned the ritual from her mother and that the ritual stems from a “Chinese tradition rooted in one [their] staple foods.”

The ritual of eating noodles is very important to the subject in that she has repeated the ritual every year since the age of three. To prove this point, during my conversation with the subject she remembered that she had forgotten to eat a noodle on her birthday (just two days prior). She immediately prepared Ramen noodles and ate them.

When asked if she actually believed that something bad would happen to her if she did not eat a noodle/noodles on her birthday she said no but she has not gone through a birthday before without eating noodles and would “rather not risk it.”

It is also important to note that the variety of noodle does not matter (i.e. egg noodles, spaghetti, rice noodles, glass noodles, etc.) According to the subject, it is the act of eating anything “noodle like” on one’s birthday that is important. Upon further research the length of the noodles can also be a factor in whether the person will live a long life.

Saying – Chinese

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: April 20, 2007
Primary Language: English

Notes:

The subject’s parents told him that if a person pulls together their fingers on one hand and there are gaps between their fingers then that person is deemed to be greedy. The subject further explained the reasoning behind the saying: “The person is greedy because no matter how much they grab—how much they have in their hands—it will continuously slip through the gaps between the person’s fingers.” The inability of the person to ever assess how much they have in their hands is indicative of the person’s insatiability.

When the subject was asked what this means to him he replied, “I don’t know because I don’t have gaps between my fingers and for the most part I am a pretty giving person.” My question would be what would happen if a child did have gaps between their fingers? Is that person automatically destined to be greedy?  Does the saying also extend to those who are poor?

Saying – Chinese

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 20, 2007
Primary Language: English

Notes:

The subject acknowledged that she was aware of a variant of a piece of folklore I has collected earlier: “If you put the fingers on one hand together and there are gaps in between your fingers then you will be poor.” This is different from another piece of folklore that makes the conclusion that the person is greedy. The main difference being that one is greedy and one will be poor.

So in a sense, looking at the same saying, the subject argued that the man is actually poor because he can’t ever keep what he has in his hands. The second subject (she) offered this explanation: “If someone always spends what they have in their hands then they will have nothing in the end.” The subject stated that she too learned this saying from her parents and that she had never heard of the variant of the saying.

My conclusion is that the two viewpoint on the (essentially same) proverb can be melded into one by saying that someone with gaps between their fingers will be a greedy poor man.

Folk Belief – Nigerian

Nationality: Nigerian-American
Age: 26
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 11, 2007
Primary Language: English
Language: Ibo

Notes:

The Ibo saying goes “Never answer yes to a voice calling you if you are not sure who it is. It may be an evil spirit calling you.” My mother used to tell me this all the time because for some odd reason I always thought I heard people calling my name (my name happens to sound like many things). I would get annoyed and shout “Yes. Yes! Yes!!” until my mother would say “Yes what?” To which I would reply “Weren’t you calling me just a second ago?” My mother would reply “no, “ and add “how many times do I have to tell you not to answer yes if you do not know or you are not sure who is calling you?”

Another take on this superstition can be found in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart where one of the character’s mother calls her from another hut and instead of answering “yes” she says “is that me? (Achebe 41),” which is a way to verify that the person calling you is human and not an evil spirit.

To me, not only is it a widely held superstition in the Ibo tribe but also it is a way to teach children how to answer with a yes and not a what and to properly identify who is calling them because it requires the person being claed to seek out who is calling them by not yelling across the room, yard, etc. to see who is calling them. It is a part of Nigerian culture as a whole to approach the person calling you, especially if they are an elder, by answering yes sir, mamn, mother, father, uncle, auntie, etc.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. Thing’s Fall Apart. Anchor Books: New York, 1994.

Folk Belief – Nigerian

Nationality: Nigerian-American
Age: 52
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: February 11, 2007
Primary Language: English

Notes:

The subject, as many Nigerians, is a firm believer in the power of dreams and that certain motifs in dreams can be used to find their meaning and/or imbedded warnings. On numerous occasions, the subject has had dreams in which she would or people in her dream would be eating fish. The appearance of a fish in a dream means one of two things: (1) if the fish is not being eaten then dream doesn’t really mean anything at all. However if there are people in the dream who are eating the fish, especially fried fish, then the dream means that someone close to you is about to die.

I am not a big believer in superstition and dream interpretation but as a first hand witness to the power and validity of the subject’s dream I am now a believer in, at least, the validity of the subject’s dreams. The subject has had three dreams, all very similar, all on different occasions, and all of the dreams included people eating fried fish. The first time she dreamed that dream the subject’s mother died. The second time a close family friend’s wife died of breast cancer. And just a couple of years ago her beloved friend and coworker suddenly died after a routine surgery. Three days before her coworker’s death the subject had the fish dream.

Now anytime the subject dreams the “fish dream” she proceeds to warn her kids and husband to be careful and not to carry out any plan if you feel like maybe you shouldn’t go or if you feel like some “outside force is hindering you from leaving”