“If you look in the mirror in a dark room, you’ll see a really scary face.  If you look in the mirror at midnight, you’ll go to ‘mirror land,’ which is a really scary place that’s all mirrors, so basically you just see yourself everywhere and there’s absolutely no way out.”

Marilyn told me that she learned of these superstitions from a classmate when she was in the second grade.  She said that at such a young and impressionable age, the superstitions became ingrained in her beliefs and she continued to fear them well into middle school.  Now, she said, she still gets “the jitters” when she thinks about the superstitions and will not willingly attempt to test them out.  She confided that she was afraid that the mirror superstitions really affected her and that they will have a lasting effect on her for the rest of her life.  These specific mirror superstitions also bring to mind other mirror superstitions such as the ideas that breaking a mirror will bring seven years of bad luck or that spinning around in front of a mirror three times in a dark room while chanting “Bloody Mary” will inevitably bring the demonic female ghost to life.  When I asked Marilyn what she thought of these other mirror superstitions, she said that while they also made her uneasy, they were never as frightening to her as the ones she had picked up from her young classmate probably because she learned her classmate’s superstitions before anything others.  In this sense, age plays a critical role in shaping beliefs and identity.  For Marilyn, it helps her to define who she is today.

“The number 9 is lucky.  If a street is directly pointing to a house, that house will have bad luck or someone in the family might die.  Running water and fountains in the house are good luck, and if your plants die, usually bad luck will come, and business won’t stay as prosperous.  On the first three days of the Vietnamese New Year, don’t sweep the house because we believe if you sweep stuff and throw things away you’ll lose money.”

All having to do with the household and the Chinese concept of feng shui, these superstitions emphasize Vietnamese cultural values of harmony, luck, and prosperity.  Passed on to my mother from her own mother (as well as other relatives and family friends) throughout her childhood and adult years, these folk beliefs reveal much about the Vietnamese culture and the people’s lifestyles.  My mother explained that when buying a house or just maintaining it, these superstitions are seriously considered, and individuals act accordingly.  For instance, a house with an address number whose digits add up to the number nine is thought to be especially lucky and a fine place to live.  Then, once the house is bought, the inside must also be taken care of to ensure success and future happiness.  Consequently, these superstitions demonstrate the importance of the home and the emphasis on preparing and looking out for signs of the future.  In this way, it is interesting to note that Dundes’ argument that America is much more future-oriented than other countries and societies is not as applicable here; followers of the superstitions will or will not commit certain actions based on their beliefs of those actions’ direct correlation to the future.  Now, a follower of these folk beliefs might decide to buy a small indoor fountain just to follow the superstition and hope that the decision to purchase one was the right choice.  In turn, this demonstrates the influence of superstitions on cultures, especially the Vietnamese.  Superstitions constitute a large chunk of people’s identities, and they can act as a sort of system of guidelines for those living the Vietnamese lifestyle.

Annotation: Too, Lillian.  Lillian Too’s Easy-to-use Feng Shui: 168 Ways to Success.  Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 1999, pg. 75.