Tag Archives: bad luck

House Hunting Superstitions

Nationality: Asian-American
Age: 18
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Honolulu, Hawaii
Performance Date: April 9, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese, Vietnamese

“There’s two [superstitions] that my parents told me they look for when they’re house shopping. The front and the back doors of a house can’t align or else money will come in through the front door and just leave out the back (she loudly laughs as she finishes her sentence). When I asked my dad about this, he was like, ‘I don’t know why,’ and I asked my mom and she said, ‘whatever comes in through the front door will leave out the back door,’ and I was just like, ‘ok, mom.’ Also, the stairs can’t lead directly out the door because it’ll fall out the door, like your possessions, or your fortune, or your good luck. I think my parents believe in this because, when we were younger and were going house shopping, if the stairs were even remotely near the front door, my mom refused to look at the rest of the house. I guess these just superstitions or old wives’ tales that get passed down from your parents.”

Background Information and Context:

This is a superstition that was relevant to the informant’s parents while shopping for real estate. She believes that the superstition most likely came from Vietnam, from which her parents immigrated.

Collector’s Notes:

Growing up in a Vietnamese family, I, too, was exposed to many strange and illogical superstitions, usually from my grandmother. I am all too familiar with asking for an explanation of why something is good or bad luck and getting a reply that doesn’t clarify much, as my informant recalled in the above example. I also found it interesting how she was so quick to dismiss these superstitions, while I know from previous conversations that she is usually eager to accept certain other luck-related traditions like cleaning the house for the new year. I think a large part of accepting a tradition is feeling a personal connection to it and a positive association.

Haircuts Kill Uncles

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 23, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

The interviewer’s initials are denoted through the initials BD, while the informant’s responses are marked as HZ.

HZ: This involves a Mandarin wordplay, so it might not translate into English, but I think it’s funny. So there’s a saying in China, that in January—like lunar calendar January, the whole month of New Year—you can’t cut your hair.

BD: Why is that?

HZ: Because it will kill your uncle on your mother’s side. Your mother’s brother. Because in Mandarin, we differentiate your mother’s siblings and your father’s siblings.
So your mother’s brother is “舅舅” (pinyin: jiù ji), and your father’s brother is “弟弟” (pinyin: dì di). The saying goes “正 月 剃 头 思 旧” (pinyin: zhēng yuè tìtóu sī jiù) meaning that if you cut your hair in the first month of the year, your uncle is going to die. In the Qin dynasty, when the Qin government took over, they forced all the Hun people to shave their heads, and change their hairstyle. So if you look it up, the first half of the head is shaven, and there is hair only in the back half. But a lot of people who didn’t like the new government and were reminiscent of the old regime, they protested by not cutting their hair. Being nostalgic, the word for that are the last two characters in the saying, “思 旧” (pinyin: sī jiù). But it sounds very much like “死 舅” (pinyin: sǐ jiù), which means “to kill your uncle.” So people just started saying that cutting your hair will kill your uncle. A lot of people still choose to not cut their hair in the New Year’s month.

BD: Does your family believe it?

HZ: It’s obviously silly, and I don’t think it really matters. But everyone keeps saying it, and Chinese people are very superstitious. So if they really don’t need it, they will try not to cut their hair. It’s totally baseless, but people still avoid that. Old barbershops just close their businesses in the lunar new year month.

 

Analysis:

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-03/06/content_12126196.htm

The article above discusses the same saying, as it is thought about today in modern day China. The informant is quite accurate in that many people today do not believe the idea that an uncle will die, if they cut their hair during the first month of the lunar year. But the article also introduces another saying into the mix—”a time for the dragon to raise its head.” So there’s two contrasting ideas about getting a haircut during the lunar new year month. The photo caption introduces another superstition, that “getting a haircut on the second day of the second Chinese lunar month, which falls on March 6 this year, is likely to bring good luck.”

These varying superstitions around hair cutting and luck (whether it be good or bad) are all related to how words are spoken and thought of in Mandarin, or related to numbers and numerical values. I feel that this marks the significance of attributing specificity in meaning in Chinese culture. My informant, a linguistics major, would definitely agree.

The Baton

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: University Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 03/27/2018
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: The Baton

The following was a story told to me by a friend of mine, AA, in my Anthropology lab, and I am DM. The story was about track runners who swore by a folk belief.

AA: When I was in high school, I ran track. One of the first things I learned running track was to not drop the baton. In a race, if one were drop the baton during practice, it was considered back luck. It was said that if dropped in practice, one would drop it in the actual race. The way to get rid of the bad luck after dropping in practice was to run a mile for every time dropped. So if you dropped it twice, you would need to run two miles.

Background/Context:

The participant is eighteen years old in her first year of college at the University of Southern California. She is American. In my Anthropology lab, we were sharing folklore with one another for our final project and AA decided to share with us a belief she has as a track runner.

DM: How do you know this belief?

AA: I ran track in high school.

DM: Why did you believe dropping the baton would give you bad luck?

AA: Because it happened to me (laughs).

DM: Where did you learn this from?

AA: I learned this from my track coach.

DM: What does dropping the baton mean to you?

AA: If someone dropped the baton, we were going to lose our next race. We already knew. It was like it was a for sure thing.

Analysis/ My Thoughts:

A week’s worth of lectures, for my Anthropology class, was all about folk belief or folk superstition. We went around the class and mentioned some people’s superstitions like if you drop salt it’s bad luck or to keep from jinxing yourself you knock on wood. This is a form of folk belief/ superstition because they were convinced that dropping the baton was the only reason to lose the race. This goes to show that superstitions do not have any boundaries because it even goes into sports as well as other things. Some other superstitions in sports are like lucky shoes, lucky socks, or even lucky shorts. This baton dropping is not lucky, but it is a form of superstition.

 

Paying for Pearls Superstition

Nationality: American
Age: 56
Occupation: Stay-at-Home Mother
Residence: Yonkers, New york
Performance Date: March 14, 2017
Primary Language: English

Informant: The informant is Janet, a fifty-six-year-old woman from Yonkers, New York. She has lived in the Bronx and Westchester County, New York throughout her entire life. She is of Italian descent, is married, and has two children.

Context of the Performance: We sat next to each other on a couch in the living room of her house in Yonkers, New York over my spring break from college.

Original Script:

Informant: I learned that you cannot give pearls as a gift, not even anything that contains a pearl. Pearls represent tears, meaning sadness, so if you give someone something with pearls, they must give you money in compensation, even if it as little as a penny. Then, it’s like they purchased the pearls from you and did not receive them as a gift. My mother taught me this at home when I was a teenager when she gave me a piece of jewelry with pearls. She asked me for a penny.

Interviewer: Why is this piece of folklore important to you?

Informant: This piece of folklore is important to me because I don’t want tears brought into my life because I associate crying with something bad happening in my life. I also don’t want this to happen to others. I am very superstitious, so I feel better and safer following this tradition, even though none of my friends had heard of this.


Personal Thoughts: I think that this piece is interesting because I had never heard of something like this. Providing compensation for a gift is unusual, and I have never participated in anything like that. I also like this tradition because while it requires the receiver to provide money, it promotes the selflessness of the giver. The receiver must only provide a single penny, and the giver is not only giving a gift but also looking out for the the luck of the receiver.

Good Luck Butterflies

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25, 2017
Primary Language: English

An old woman told my friend that seeing seeing white butterflies is good luck.

Lindsey: I was working on a community service gardening project and this old woman started talking to me. She said that if a black butterfly lands on you, it means you or someone you are close to will die or get very very ill. By the same token, a white butterfly indicates good luck.

Me: Had you ever heard of this before?

Lindsey: No, but I told my mom, and she said that a white butterfly is only good luck if the first butterfly you see in a year is white.

Analysis: In many cultures and religions, butterflies can be a symbol of rebirth. At first, one is young, and then they go into a sort of hibernation, and then they break from a cocoon into a beautiful butterfly. White is an auspicious color as well, in that white often symbolizes purity, goodness, and untarnished youth. To see a white butterfly, an animal which is relatively elusive and fast-moving, is to glimpse at a special gift that feels as though only you were meant to see it.