The Taboo of the Left Hand in Yemen

Nationality: China
Age: 75
Occupation: Arabic Interpreter
Residence: Shenyang, Liaoning, China
Performance Date: 4/20/2-21
Primary Language: Chinese

Backgrounds:

CC was born and grew up in Beijing. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Arabic, and then served as an interpreter for China’s medical assisstance team sent to Yemen. He stayed in Yemen for over 10 years, helping with the communication between the patients in Yemen and the medical workers from China. During his time in Yemen, he got to know many local Yemen people and was able to learn a lot about their culture from local people.

The informant shared this piece of folk practice during an interview via phone call.

The Main Piece:

In Yemen, most people eat with their hands instead of using forks or chopsticks, etc. One has to use the right hand and may not use the left hand to eat. Also, when handing stuff to other people or receiving things from other people, one must use the right hand. It is super offensive to use the left hand to pass objects.

CC gives the reason: after defecation, the people in Yemen use water, instead of toilet papers, to clean their anus. And this is always done with the left hand. So everyone in Yemen keeps it in mind that the left hand is for the “dirty business” and the right hand is used to interact with other people.

Analysis:

I believe this custom reveals that the people in Yemen draw a clear line between their “private” practices and their interaction with others. I personally think that even if someone uses the left hand to hand objects to another person, it wouldn’t be that much of a big deal because the hand is already washed. But the people in Yemen still make this distinction between the left and right hand. It shows their respect for other people’s feelings, as well as their dislike for faeces.

Another interesting things is that the custom makes everyone to clean their anus with the left hand, because normally people might have different preferences for the left or right hand. This case is an example how cultural norms can shape ones habits.

Jamaican Duppies

Nationality: Jamaican, Chinese, Indian
Age: 79
Occupation: Retired
Residence: San Antonio, Texas
Performance Date: 4/9/2021
Primary Language: English

Intro

This story is a tradition in Jamaica told by my grandpa proclaiming the importance of telling ghost stories. Now 79 years old, he lived the first 26 years of his life in a crowded house in Old Harbour, Jamaica. He moved to New York in ‘68 and has lived in the US since. A lot of his family still live in Jamaica and the country is still the place of his roots. He is Jamaican, Chinese, and Indian. He has a thick Jamaican accent so if you can read this in a Jamaican accent it may add to the experience. This is a transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted.

Story

“In my country Jamaica, ghost stories were told to the kids a lot. Not to scare them but to keep them in and around the house. Because when they hear these stories they become scared and they don’t want to go out and stay out late. The kids thought that if the kids were bad the ghosts were gonna get you. The adults and the family members would bring into the picture where the ghosts were like good ghosts, not really evil ghosts that would just destroy you, so when they told them stories about them ghosts… we had this name that we call them in Jamaica, we call them Duppy. It’s just a folk name for ghosts. They were telling them ghost stories that would really get them scared. They would make up a lot of these stories though. Because my brother, my older brother used to tell me stories about ghost stories, and after I was so scared, after I finished listening to these stories I would go to my friends and stay out late and be thinking of the stories they told me. But in real life after I grow and I realize these ghost stories were old family traditions that they made up and that they weren’t really true. I remember coming home once, this is a real fact, I came home and I was in my 20s and it was just getting dark, and I came through the front door – this was my older brother, he was like about 14 years older than I am – and he was sitting at the table with his wife and his son eating. You know supper, and I knock and he say come in. And I left the front door open and I look straight past him and I’m thinking of getting back to him what he used to tell me about ghost stories and make me scared and the wife look at him and say ‘ [name] what are you looking at and he said, ‘look at [name], he’s looking right past us, I don’t know what he’s looking at, he’s not saying anything.’ And I look like I’m looking through the back door and I turn around and I run and they all run from the table. *my grandpa starts laughing*. And he turn to me and go ‘what was that!.’ And I say ‘it was a ghost.’ And he lost it. And I say ‘I just made it up and look past you guys. I just want to see your face thinking you saw a ghost.’ But we just used to make up stories about ghosts and that’s what I did to him that time, I can just remember they were trying to get past me into the yard, I don’t know how they did not trip over. It was really funny that they believe me.”

Analysis

While this story wasn’t a specific legend about a ghost that haunts some part of Jamaica it does show the significance of ghost stories. As my grandpa says in the beginning, ghost stories were told by all members of the family, but normally to scare the younger ones. This then turns into a tradition or coming of age thing where the younger siblings could eventually scare the older siblings. The story was important to my grandpa because of how the stories can remind him of his brother and other family. 

I think it is important to look at this story, not as a very family-specific story, but as a symbol of how the Jamaican ghost stories are important. In Jamaica, the people have their own folk name for ghosts, Duppies or a Duppy, which then give ghosts a different meaning. Instead of evil spirits that simply haunt, Duppies are spirits that are given meaning by messing with bad kids. By putting their own twist on ghosts, Jamaicans had made a new type of folk-monster.

Jamaican Curry

Nationality: Jamaican, Chinese, Indian
Age: 79
Occupation: Retired
Residence: San Antonio, Texas
Performance Date: 4/9/2021
Primary Language: English

Intro

This is a recipe told by my grandpa. Now 79 years old, he lived the first 26 years of his life in a crowded house in Old Harbour, Jamaica. He moved to New York in ‘68 and has lived in the US since. A lot of his family still live in Jamaica and the country is still the place of his roots. He is Jamaican, Chinese, and Indian. He has a thick Jamaican accent so if you can read this in a Jamaican accent it may add to the experience. This is a transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted.

How To Cook Curry

“Well, one of the bad things that I did not learn from them (his parents), or did not get help from them, was because I didn’t participate in cooking and all that. I had it made when I was living with my parents in Jamaica, but I never did go around the fire at all. Later in life after I left home and got married I remembered what they used to do, like for instance I remember cooking some of the local dishes like curry chicken or curry goat. I learn a lot from them, like how to prepare it, cut it up and wash it, you clean it real good. With the curry chicken, a special way that the chinese does the curry chicken is the spices. One of the main spice was a scotch bonnet pepper. It was very hot. They have a way of rating pepper by how hot it is and this scotch bonnet goes way up there. Apart from the indian pepper, but it might be the hottest in the world. But the scotch bonnet is not only hot it has a nice flavor to it. So if you’re doing curry, curry chicken or curry goat, you want to use that scotch bonnet. For some reason after you season it up it takes a long process to cook goat, because there’s hardly any fat on the goat. It’s mostly muscle. The goat runs a lot so it doesn’t have a lot of fat like a sheep or a cow. It’s very lean so you have to cook it real long. So they use a lot of curry, that really yellow indian one. And they use a lot of… that thing, let me go to the pantry. They use the pepper and the garlic on the curry. And a curry that they use a lot is the Blue Mountain Curry. Tell her (my mom), they can mix the Blue Mountain Curry with the Sam’s curry and it makes three more bottles. As for the curry, you just got to cook it real long and add a lot of onion and green scallion (a vegetable) and cook it until you take a fork, it can stick it easily, and that’s when you know it’s cooked properly. Yesterday we cooked some curry chicken, but chicken is much easier, it cook much faster than the curry goat. But the curry goat is like a national dish in jamaica.”

Analysis

My grandpa told me this meal over facetime the other day. Ever since I’ve been a kid, curry chicken and goat have been a staple food of our family gatherings. You often can’t go to a family reunion of ours without seeing a curry dish made by grandpa. You may notice that the process of cooking it is very vague. That is actually how he tells people to cook it, saying things like just cook it until it’s done or add a bit of pepper. For example, my dad learned how to cook curry from him, and that is exactly the way my grandpa taught him how to cook it. This is certainly an interesting way of passing on folk recipes. The process of cooking curry definitely has a learning curve when learning it this way: learning how much water and how long to cook it add to the variety that it gets across the family. Without having clear measurements the curry dish always comes out different, and usually pretty tasty. 

My grandpa also gives a variant ingredient with the scotch bonnet pepper. His dad was chinese so this ingredient was an addition from that part of his heritage. By the way, the scotch bonnet is not one of the hottest peppers in the world. The curry dish also has origins in India and not so surprisingly, my grandpa is also Indian. Curry has always been a classic food in his life and will continue to be in ours.

The White Witch of Rose Hall

Nationality: Jamaican, Chinese
Age: 79
Occupation: Retired
Residence: San Antonio, TX
Performance Date: 3/14/2021
Primary Language: English

This performance is a ghost story told by my grandpa. Now 79 years old, he lived the first 26 years of his life in a crowded house in Old Harbour, Jamaica. He moved to New York in ‘68 and has lived in the US since. A lot of his family still live in Jamaica and the country is still the place of his roots. He is Jamaican, Chinese, and Indian. He has a thick Jamaican accent so if you can read this in a Jamaican accent it may add to the experience. This is a transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted. 

Story

“I was telling them (my family in Texas) ghost stories at the Mo-Ranch… but we call them duppy stories instead of ghost stories. In Jamaica we call them duppy instead of ghosts. I was there telling them around the fireplace duppy stories… but when we told ghost stories in Jamaica no one wants to go to bed because they are too afraid to go to bed. And then the following day I ask them if any of them dream about ghosts. And then Noah (my cousin: 14 y/o) said, “ya, at 3 in the morning it feel like someone was touching my toes.” In Jamaica there’s a true story about a white witch who rose on… near Montego Bay there’s a county, we call it a parish, it’s called Lucy, and there was a lady there from America I think. She had a big estate back in the 1800s and they had a lot of plantations where they did sugarcane and she had hundreds of slaves and she would work them so hard. When they died they would just bury them on the property. And she got so old that… she still had slaves and all that on her plantation… and when she died she used to have a big stallion, a big white horse, that she rides around the property, and it’s rumored that she died and she was still riding around the property on this white horse, a lot of people saw her, or think they see her on this white horse, and they’d be scared of her. So I was telling the kids about this story, saying that this woman would come into your bed and scare you tonight. I guess that’s why Noah dreamt why someone was holding on to his foot that night.” 

Analysis

My grandpa had told this story over zoom to me and the rest of the family, but it was brought up when they were talking about the family’s trip to Mo-Ranch. While sitting around the campfire and entertaining both the kids and the adults, my grandpa told them this story to try to scare the kids. Luckily, the two youngest were not phased and slept soundly through the night. I am not sure where my grandpa learned this story, and neither is he, but to him, it seemed like a fairly common story among his generation of Jamaicans. 

I personally really enjoyed this story from my grandpa. Even though it can be difficult to understand him at times (the Jamaican accent and many paths in the story really don’t mix well) it was still an interesting story. I thought it was funny that he opened by saying how the story was true. I looked the story up and found that there were indeed some elements of it that were true. The story is known around Jamaica as The White Witch of Rose Hall. The story I found on other websites was considerably more in-depth and gruesome than the one my grandpa had told. Perhaps he was censoring it a little so it could be told to the kids. Perhaps his memory was a little splotchy and he just missed some things. Or perhaps that was just the way he had heard the story told. 

Some things missed in the story from other folklore accounts included the name of the ‘White Witch.’ Her name was Annie Palmer, and from other accounts, it said that she was a cruel person. It is said that she had killed not one, not two, but three husbands and enjoyed torturing and killing her slaves. When she died (killed by her slave lover Takoo), a voodoo ritual was performed on her but it was done incorrectly and her spirit was released into Rose Hall. So there were things that my grandpa missed, but he got the overall essence of the story, how a cruel woman now haunted a plantation in Jamaica. 

For another reference to this story, see the link below. https://exemplore.com/paranormal/The-White-Witch-of-Rose-Hall-A-Jamaican-Ghost-Story

Chinese Dragons

Nationality: Irish, Chinese
Age: 19
Residence: Oregon
Performance Date: 4/29/21
Primary Language: English

Intro

The following is a description of Chinese Dragons and their importance to the people. My friend first heard the tradition from his parents, specifically his mom who is Chinese. I have known this friend since elementary school. I knew that he had heard many stories about where his parents are from so I asked him to tell me about a few of them. I recorded this over the phone as he was very busy and couldn’t find a time to meet up (also COVID). This is a direct transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted.

Description

“Ok so, there’s a common thing with Chinese Dragons. First off, they don’t have wings. Second, they have four legs and a head. And they are often associated holding balls in their left or right hand. They are normally made out of either wood or clay and they can be seen holding balls. The reason they are holding balls is because it represents the sun, or fire. And basically in China and in Chinese folklore the sun was seen as this omnipotent thing, or this overarching power. Because back in like, you know like f*****’ 200 AD no one knew what the sun was. So they’re like okay this thing provides good crops, it provides warmth and all these things so the Chinese people really respected this thing, the sun. And they’re like so one of the most important things in our history, the dragon, is going to be seen holding this thing, because they can harness the power of the sun. And it is associated with wisdom and intelligence. And it represents how the dragon is like the overarching thing of the chinese zodiac. So, ya that’s just a little thing about Chinese folklore.”

Analysis

I always knew that dragons had importance in China but I didn’t know that they were seen as such powerful creatures. My friend described dragons as other cultures describe their deities, which I didn’t know was how they were viewed. I also thought it was interesting that they were depicted holding the sun. 

My friend heard all this from his mother, who I believe is 100% Chinese. I know the family doesn’t really have a lot of rituals or anything that they still perform from China (they’re actually all Christians), but I do know that the mother likes to let her kids know the culture that they came from. I don’t know what kind of significance the dragons might have in their life, or if it was just told as a story to the kids.