Cutting Hair for Chinese Lunar New Year 

Informant Details

  1. Gender: Female
  2. Occupation: Student
  3. Nationality: Chinese-American

Folklore Genre: Holiday Ritual/Superstition

  1. Text

The informant explained a ritual done for the Chinese Lunar New Year. She said that people are supposed to cut their hair before the new year, and then not cut it for a while after the new year. It doesn’t matter how much is cut off – it can be just a trim. Sometimes she will go to a salon, but other times she cuts her hair herself. She has done this every year for as long as she can remember. Both women and men partake in this tradition. If you don’t cut your hair, the superstition is that you are carrying all of the bad things that happened to you in the past year into the new year. So, if you don’t cut your hair then you bring bad energy and bad luck into your future.

2. Context

The informant’s understanding of this ritual is that it signifies “out with the old, in with the new” because you cut off your dead ends to make room for the new growth in the new year. The informant was taught this ritual as a young child. She learned this from her Grandmother, who is from Guangzhou, China.

3. Analysis

This ritual embodies the principles of contact magic. The hair is believed to carry the energy of the past because it grew during that time period. By cutting off the ends of this older hair, the individual is able to move forwards without the weight of the past. In International Folkloristics, Dundes says “With Contact or Contagious magic, one can carry out an action on an element that was once touched by or connected to the designated target of a magical act.” (186) In this example, the hair was connected to the individual’s past. Therefore, cutting the hair is analogous to cutting energetic ties to the past.

aumakuas

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Informant: “So there are these things called aumakuas–which are like a Hawaiian cultural belief– and so your family can have like a spiritual connection to a certain animal and usually it is something to do with your family’s professions. So if you’re a fisherman or your father or your husband or people throughout your lineage were fishermen,  then you’re aumakua could be something like a fish, it could be a turtle, it could be a shark and stuff like that. But basically when your family member passes away, you do a ceremony to bury their bones and then their spirit takes a form of this animal that they have a connection to. As a person, you aren’t supposed to harm this animal because it’s part of your family. And usually you will see it very often, and those are your ancestors in their animal form visiting and protecting you. \

Me: “So how do you figure out what your aumakua is?”

Informant: “I think you just have to–”

Me: “Do you ask your parents? Is it the same one as your parents”

Informant: “Yes, so it’s the same throughout your entire lineage and Hawaiian language was an oral language so it wasn’t written down so everything was passed down through words which is how it was passed down”

Me: “So what is yours?”

Informant: “Mine is a fish I think, but it’s only like one specific type, but I completely forget the name of it”

Context

Age: 19

From: Oahu, HI

The informant says that everyone in Hawaii that is a native has an aumakua and it is an extremely personal thing. The informant heard her aumakua at a really young age. She said probably 4 or 5 from her parents. She and the other natives take this very seriously and if they see their aumakua, then they take it as a sign which can be good or bad depending on the situation. She also said when you see your aumakua, it gives you some type of feeling– it could be relief, or it could be telling you not to do something you were planning on doing.

Interpretation

I think this is very interesting because a lot of people, even not from Hawaii, believe that the family members that have passed turn into animal forms such as butterflies or other things. Based on that, this idea is not really that foreign to me, but I like how their whole family tree has the same one. I remember a time I visited Hawaii and my friends and I were all meeting up, but on the way, one of our friends saw his aumakua and turned around to go back home. This is taken very seriously in Hawaiian culture and can determine a lot of things in life. I wish I would have asked the informant what happens when two people with different aumakuas get married–which aumakua are the kids taking?

The night marchers

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Informant: “So in Hawaiian culture, there are these- not creatures but spirits I guess and they are called the night Marchers. A lot of people hear them on Oahu around nu’uanu–Or at least this is what I grew up knowing because I am from Oahu– so in nu’uanu kinda by Manoa where University of Hawaii is in the valley, it is a very sacred area especially deep in the valley. So these night Marchers, they are Hawaiian spirits that are there to protect the land and usually they are there protecting bones like the bones of chiefs. The legend is that you are not supposed to whistle at night because if you whistle then you are like summoning the night Marchers. Usually when you summon the night Marchers you hear drums and you’ll hear like stomping, like uniform stomping. And you are supposed to just get on the ground and close your eyes until you don’t hear drumming because if you don’t, then I’m pretty sure it’s like you are challenging them like if you stand up and are facing them with your eyes open…and you will lose.”

Context

Age: 19

From: Oahu, HI

Her relationship with this piece is personal since she is in close ties with her ethnicity. It is something she actually learned in school where they taught Hawaiian culture, history, etc. She interprets it as just a story to tell with doubt that it will happen. There is a very low percentage of her experiencing it first hand, but she is glad that she will know what to do. She says her friends always forget that you aren’t supposed to whistle, so they immediately stop when they realize. 

Interpretation

I do not really know what to think of this because I want to respect Hawaiian culture, but I find this very hard to believe. When I went to Hawaii recently, I stayed with a bunch of locals and I remember they actively and consciously avoided whistling at night. Right after they realized that they were whistling, it was not a big deal, they would just say “oops” and stop. I feel like if this was something so important, then the tourists should know it as well to respect the land.

Old lady Hawaiian legend

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Informant: “So in Hawaii there’s a legend– And it’s basically like an unspoken rule– where basically if you are driving at night and you see an old woman…”

Me: “Where at?”

Informant: “So on the big island, to get from Kona to Hilo, there are two ways. You can either go around the island which takes like 2 hours or you can cut through diagonally on the straight road called Saddle road. It just got renovated so it is really nice, it has lights and it is very safe, but a few years ago it was basically almost like a dirt road. It was barely paved and there was only one painted line in the middle. The unspoken rule that was– that all of the locals know– is that if you are driving, especially at night, and you see an older woman with really long white hair in a white mo’u mo’u, which is just a really long white dress, you are just supposed to stop and pick her up because that is one of pele’s forms. Pele is the goddess of volcanoes, and on the big island there are I think two active volcanoes right now, so the Big Island residents respect her very much especially because at any point their homes can be destroyed by volcanoes. Basically, you just pick her up and you just keep going about your drive. It’s just a sign of respect and it shows that you respect her, you respect the land, and the culture. Usually she is silent, but then she will just disappear. 

Context

Age: 19

From: Oahu, HI

In regards to her relationship to the piece, it is very close to her since she has such a strong bond with Hawaiian culture. Although she lives on Oahu and not the Big Island, she says this is still important for when she visits. She does not really remember when she found out about this legend, but she has heard stories about people picking her up. Weird enough, she says the stories are never in the present tense though. She interprets this as real, but she doubts it will actually ever happen to her.  

Interpretation

I interpret this legend as something that will be close to never happening. I think people could abuse this in order to get a free ride since there are a lot of homeless in Hawaii. Knowing this though, if I were to ever be in this situation, I would still pick up the lady just as a sign of respect even if I don’t necessarily live there. It sounds pretty frightening as a non local, but I am sure it is not something the residents are afraid of–or at least that’s the way I understood it from my interview with the informant.

la llorona

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Informant: I never really wanted to know the story of La Llorona because it’s scary but it is supposed to be kind of like a bloody mary type of thing; like for that one you go into the bathroom and it has a ritual that goes with it and then she comes out, but I never wanted to know it because I don’t like that kind of stuff.  But what I know is that you are supposed to hear her at night, coming when kids are bad. Like when you hear her coming, they can hear her crying and coming to get you. That’s why they would call her La Llorona because ‘llorar’ means to cry. So they would call her La Llorona because when kids were bad they could hear her crying outside, like coming to get you. Really, it was dogs I think that they were hearing, but the parents would be like ‘do you hear her? she’s coming to get you.’ Parents would use it as a threat to their kids or a behavioral mechanism and say that she’s coming. 

Context

Age: 51

From: Chino Hills, CA

Ethnicity: Mexican

As the informant explained in the text, she does not really like the story behind this piece and prefers not to indulge in it because it is scary. The relationship between her and this piece is that her friends’ parents would use La llorona to make them stop acting up. She heard it just growing up, she doesn’t remember the specific time she found out about it, but she has known the story since she was about 7 or 8 years old. Her interpretation of it is that it is just another thing to help parents when their kids misbehave. She said she would never use it because she would feel mean, but she always knew of other parents using this. 

Interpretation

I have heard a bunch of different ways to tell this story, but from what it sounds like, the informant does not know the details of this legend. I think the different variations of this story are what makes it considered a legend, but I think it is interesting that the skeleton of it remains the same, no matter where you hear it. Personally, I think this is a really scary story and I would not use it on kids in the future. I feel like if I were to know this story as a kid, I would be frightened at every crying sound a dog made. It would have been all the time because where I grew up, and to this day, I would hear dogs crying almost every week at night when the coyotes get them where I grew up.