Tag Archives: architecture

Ancient Chinese Architecture Folk Belief

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 20
Occupation: Waitress
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/18/2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

So basically, in Chinese – in ancient Chinese architecture, the roofs are – each tile is curved – and the roof is built in a jagged way, so that it’s uneven. And the point of that is to keep the demons from sitting on your house, because if your roof is slanted or flat, the demon will be comfortable there.

My informant also told me that many roofs today are still built with curves and slants. Even people who are really impoverished and live in shanty houses, will build their roofs with several pieces of tin or wood to make sure that there is still a slant. My informant said that when her family moved into an apartment complex, her mother believed that the “place was fucked” (as my informant put it) and that misfortune would befall those who lived there because the roofs were all flat. Buddhists believed that curved roofs would ward off evil spirits believed to manifest as straight lines. So the ideas of traditional Chinese architecture have been passed down and people still hold deep beliefs concerning them.

more information can be found here: http://library.thinkquest.org/10098/china1.htm

Chinese Architectural Superstition

Nationality: Korean
Age: 54
Occupation: Nurse
Residence: Cerritos, California
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

“A house that has a staircase that leads directly to the front door is a cursed house.”

 

My informant first heard about this superstition from her friend Mrs. Jin.  Mrs. Jin had been boasting about how she had been able to rent a beautiful house in Irvine for the cheap price of $1100 when it should have been $1700.  She told my informant that the owner of the house who rented it to her was a Chinese man.  He was aware of the old Chinese superstition that a house with a staircase that runs into the front door is cursed, leading to inevitable death.  Mrs. Jin and my informant laughed about that notion because they were at church function at the time, so as Christians they found the superstition preposterous.  Eerily, Mrs. Jin that same week went in for a bypass surgery that should have been simple enough, but she died from complications.  Now she is uneasy about the superstition.

Mrs. Jin’s death and her renting the “cursed” house could have been a mere coincidence.  A front door that connects directly to the staircase can cause uneasiness because good fortune can fly out the door easily, or perhaps death can easily find you since the stairs are a direct pathway to your room.  I am a Christian, so I should not pay attention to such superstitions about death, but to be on the safe side, I myself would never live in a house like that, especially after hearing about what happened to Mrs. Jin.