Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

A Chinese Chopstick Custom and Folk Belief

Nationality: Taiwanese/American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Room 4305B, 920 W. 37th PL. Los Angelos, California 90007
Performance Date: 2/4/2011
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

My informant says this about her background:

“I was born in Connecticut, left when I was two months old, went to Taiwan. For elementary school, went to Hong Kong and went to Shanghai when I was starting middle school, and finished high school there. My parents are typical Taiwanese or Asian parents who only came to America for school and they don’t know that much about American culture and aren’t that great at English. So I was raised in a very “Asian” atmosphere/family.”

One time during dinner at a shopping mall, she brought this folk belief up, reprimanding one of her Caucasian friends for sticking his chopsticks vertically into his rice:

“If you stick chopsticks in the rice straight down into the rice bowl, it’s a bad, a very bad omen. It’s disrespectful because it’s like you’re putting incense on a grave and yeah, okay.”

Before I elaborate on this custom, I just wanted to talk about my own background first. I’m a third generation Chinese Taiwanese male student who was born in Taipei, Taiwan. I speak English and Chinese. I lived in Taipei for two years before moving to New Jersey, where I lived for seven years. After that, I returned to Taipei where I finished high school.

Returning to the topic at hand, in Chinese culture, it is customary to use incense as a way of communicating with spirits or as a way of indicating something is an offering to the spirits of our ancestors. My informant reprimanded her friend for sticking his chopsticks vertically into his rice because it is similar to putting incense on foodstuffs Chinese people offer in front of graves.

I grew up in a Chinese family too so I’ve heard this “rule” before. But, varied as folklore should be, the version my parents told me was that sticking chopsticks (or anything similar in shape to incense) in my rice would invite spirits to feast on the rice, which is at once disrespectful and uncanny–you wouldn’t want spirits eating your rice at the same time you are eating it.

She mentioned another folk belief right after talking about the chopstick “rule”:

“Ok, I heard this from my mom. So another thing is, depending on how far you hold the chopsticks [she picks up her chopsticks], so depending on how far you grip the chopsticks, it depends– they say that…this is for girls, like if you hold it like here [she notions to the bottom of the chopsticks], you’re going to be married off to some guy who lives really close to you and like vice versa, like if you hold it like super far they it’s like ‘oh, you’re going to be married to like, you know, to a distant country or something like that’. Like it depends on how far you hold the chopsticks [she notions to the top of the chopsticks] , like around the tip.”

While I never heard of this belief before, maybe because I am male, this website (a sort of online journal) has a writer who brings up the same belief: thestar. This belief reveals a heavy emphasis on marriage in Chinese culture, which seems to be targeted at young women, that is passed from parent to children or in this case, mother to daughter. My informant elaborated that she heard this from her mother when she, herself, was caught holding the chopsticks near the tip. Her mother lamented that my informant was going to be married far away from home. From that background, we can see that marrying and residing far away from home carries a certain stigma-like quality to the extent where parents will warn their children that they will marry away from home (home as in the sense of city, town or country).

Blonde Joke

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Oakland, CA
Performance Date: March 15, 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

A Red headed woman walks into her teenage daughter’s room and finds cigarrette butts. And she says “Wow I didn’t know my daughter smoked”

A Brunette woman walks into her teenage daughter’s room and finds an empty beer bottle. And she says, “Wow, I didn’t know my daughter drank”

A Blonde woman walks into her teenage daughter’s room and finds a used condom. And she says, “Wow, I didn’t know my daughter had a penis”

My informant first heard this joke in high school from one of her friends. She went to high school in California’s Central Valley, which is a fairly conservative area in the state. But her high school was a very small one filled with students that needed more of an academic challenge in school than the local public high schools provided. The joke is funny because of it’s twist at the end. The first two mothers drew logical conclusions from what they found in their daughters’ rooms. We expect the third mother to do the same and say “Wow, I didn’t know my daughter has been having sex”, but instead she draws an absurd conclusion that she should already know to be false. Which is “Wow, I didn’t know my daughter had a penis”.

I agree with my informant’s explanation as to why the joke is funny. But aside from the obvious surprising twist at the end it also draws on the blonde women are dumb stereotype. It is the blonde woman who sees a condom and assumes that her daughter must have a penis. Both the red hed and the brunette make logical assumptions.

Blonde Joke

Nationality: African American
Age: 49
Occupation: Account Manager
Residence: Fresno, CA
Performance Date: March 28, 2011
Primary Language: English

“There was a convention held to prove that blonde people were not as dumb as everyone believes them to be. So a man stands up in front of an audience filled with only blonde people. He asks one woman, who is also a blonde, to come and stand with him. And he asks the young woman: ‘What is 3+2?’  She thinks for a bit and then replies, ‘umm… 8?’ And the man says ‘Sorry that’s incorrect’ and the crowd yells ‘Give her another chance!’  The man agrees and asks the woman ‘Okay then, what is 1+2?’ Again the young blonde woman thinks and replies, ‘umm…5?’ And the man says ‘Sorry that’s incorrect.’ And the crowd yells ‘Give her another chance!’ The man agrees again, ‘Okay, I’ll give her one more chance, but that’s all. Alright Miss, what is 2+2?’ Immediately the blonde woman says, ‘ Oh, Oh I know that one. It’s 4!’ and the man says ‘That’s correct! Congratulations!’ and the crowd yells ‘Give her another chance!'”

The informant first heard this joke from her daughter, who was in 7th grade at the time. It was during the era when Dumb Blonde jokes were really popular. She remembers finding the joke really funny when she first heard it. The joke is funny because the stereotype suggests that blonde people and especially blonde women are stupid. In this joke the young woman is unable to answer the first two math questions, supposedly because she is a dumb blonde. But when she finally manages to answer the third and final question correctly, the crowd who is also made up of blondes isn’t aware of the fact that she answered correctly and demands that she be given another chance because they are also “dumb blondes”.

I also believe this to be the reason that people find this joke funny. Blonde women have been historically considered very attractive and beautiful. Someone who was a natural blonde was not very common and their beauty was a rare beauty. However this led to the stereotype that blondes can get by on their good looks and don’t need to be intelligent to get through life. So basically they are all beauty and no brain. People probably like to tell these jokes and encourage the stereotype because it gives them an ego boost. They might feel that if some people are lucky enough to be born beautiful, it’s only fair that they have to trade their intelligence in exchange for their beauty. An average person may not be all that beautiful or all that smart and while they realize that they are not as beautiful as these blondes they can take comfort in knowing that they are at least much smarter than them.

Iranian Winter Festival

Nationality: Persian, Puerto Rican
Age: 18
Occupation: Graphic Design Major at University of Southern California
Residence: Laguna Niguel, CA
Performance Date: April 23rd, 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: spanish, Persian

“In Iranian tradition there exists the winter festival which is kind of like Christmas. The real name is Shab-e Yalda, which in translation means birthday night. I think it’s because we consider it the rebirth of the Sun. It happens every year on the night between December 21st and December 22nd. The reason is because that is the longest night of the year, and after that there is more and more light. Because darkness is considered evil and light is associated with good, during this night fires would be lit outside while inside families would be gathered around. What makes this similar to Christmas is the celebratory aspect I think. Inside the house while the fires protect them from the evil of the night, people and their families would keep each other company while they stay up all night. This would involve music, poetry, stories, anything that could keep the night fun and the energy flowing so that no one would fall asleep. I had only had the pleasure of experiencing this once when my father’s family came to visit, it was extremely fun! Other than that we don’t really celebrate it here, but I really like it and the story of evil vs. good that is the reasoning behind it.”

It is always fascinating to me hearing about different festivities that are parallel to ones in other nations/religions. Though my roommate has chosen to compare this to Christmas, the usual Christmas related activities are barely seen in this tradition. It must be the spirit of the matters that she is talking about, the family time, and the excitement towards the morning. Other than that, from an outside perspective, I don’t see how it is like Christmas at all. Of course it is a couple days away from Christmas, but again I see no relation.

What I do find interesting is the concept of celebrating according to the calendar. This relates back to societies that rely on agriculture. Anais had also happened to mention to me once that during this time the host gives out fruit of the season, and that tradition is to celebrate the past harvest’s produce. It also associates me to the Jewish calendar, which we use in Israel together with the regular one, mainly regarding holidays. The Hebrew calendar or, the Jewish calendar, is a Lunisolar one and most holidays correlate with agriculture.

Though Christmas is a religious holiday, this winter festival is about harvesting season and the fight between dark and light, evil and good, and in my opinion , does not need to relate to Charismas, as it has its unique beauty.

A Variation on Macbeth Superstition

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Room 4203A, 920 W. 37th PL. Los Angelos, California 90007
Performance Date: 3/28/2011
Primary Language: English

My informant grew up in Los Angelos. His father is from the Michigan and his mother is from Indonesia. He performed the following variation on the Macbeth theater superstition during a casual hangout with a friend group:

“Informant: So the myth is amongst theater professionals that if you say the word Macbeth, it depends on how serious you are, sometimes people say on stage, in the theater, the most serious people won’t ever say the word, they’ll say ‘Mac B.’ or the ‘The Great Scottish Tragedy’ or whatever because it’s bad luck in the theater, because there’s all kinds of weird superstitions around the theater and I was taught this by my technical theater teacher who was also a guy who had been in it for years and years and years and he was running like an introductory group kids at school called Shakespeareans or Shakespeare Plays. And he to-told them about the rule about how you’re supposed to never say Macbeth and like some kid in the front row like was being a joke and during an entire performance, he kept saying Macbeth, Macbeth just trying to scare the actors and when the intermission came and the lights went down, a light crashed from the ceiling and landed right in front of this kid…and like, it would have killed him if it landed on him, like a huge light, that had never fallen before and never had any problems just like crashed right in front of him and that’s sort of the reason that I’ve been given to believe in the Macbeth rumors that some dark force will drop a light on you if you say it.”

The Macbeth superstition is common among theater groups. The rule remains the same: “Don’t say Macbeth”, but there are many variations on what happens to people when they say it or what one is supposed to do if they say it by accident. In my informant’s story, he attributes the reason for the light crashing to the “dark force” or curse behind the Macbeth superstition and furthermore, he changed from a non-believe of the superstition to a believer after “witnessing it in action”. My informant repeated emphasizes the safety of the light before the accident and after the accident to make his audience (a group of friends) believe that it was truly Macbeth that caused the accident. Ultimately, this is a good example of a personal account that adds to an already existent pool of knowledge that surrounds a superstition or belief, much like how UFO stories add to each other.