Tag Archives: Chinese folk belief

Woman and Rabbit: A folk tale

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Southern California
Performance Date: 4/1/23
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Text

“One folk tale I know is a Chinese one– about the lady and rabbit on the moon. I don’t remember it that well.” The informant racked their brain for the information. “There was an immortal lady who was in love with a human man. Because of this, they weren’t meant to be together, though. So she was banished to live on the moon with the rabbit to keep her company. There, she waits for the man to come to her, but since he’s mortal, he died on earth. This is why you’re able to see a woman and a rabbit on the moon.”

Context

RELATIONSHIP –
“I don’t have much of a relationship with these pieces. It’s cool, but it was something I had to study. Everyone I knew, knew the story. It’s very much a Chinese folk tale that a lot of people here [in the U.S.] don’t tend to know or study.”

WHERE THEY HEARD IT –
“I had to study a lot of folk tales in Chinese school. They teach it everywhere. I had to read it a bunch then.”

INTERPRETATION –
“It’s just a cute fairy tale that people tell children. I don’t really think there’s a lesson, or says much about morals. It’s just an origin story explaining a part of the world people back then weren’t able to explain. Worldbuilding.”

Analysis

This folk tale seems very similar to one that I know about a woman named Chang’e and the love of her life named Houyi; and I think that they either are the same story, but my informant didn’t remember all the details, or they are different stories that derive from one another. While this story seems to serve primarily as the reasoning for why people can “see” the image of a woman and rabbit on the moon, it also works as a lesson. I think that an important part of this story is the fact that the woman stays, waiting on the moon for the man even though he has died long ago. She seems to be trapped in a denial stage of grief, refusing to move on. Because of this, she’s perpetually stuck, waiting both physically and emotionally.

The place you hold on the chopsticks

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 48
Occupation: senior manager
Residence: China
Performance Date: 2020.4.20
Primary Language: Chinese

Main piece: where you hold on the chopsticks decides how far you are gonna go away from your home.

The informant said one of my relatives said I would go really far because I held the chopsticks near the end of it. There is a belief of how far you held the chopsticks from the bottom reveals how far you are gonna be away from your home.

The informant said when I was young I held my chopsticks really far away from the bottom, then one relative of us told her that I might go really far.

Background story:

The informant is my mom. She heard this piece from one of my relatives and did not really believed it. She mentioned this only because we were talking about that relative.

Context:

I was casually chatting with the informant.

Thought:

No matter if it is a real thing or just superstition, I did go far away from home to study. I still hold the chopasticks closed to the top.

What Trees Not To Plant in Your Yard

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 54
Occupation: /
Residence: Shanghai
Performance Date: Apr 3
Primary Language: Chinese

Context:

The collector interviewed the informant for Chinese folklores. The informant is the mother of the collector. She lives in Shanghai. She learned some of the following folk beliefs about twenty years ago from a seller, when she was buying trees for a new house she bought. Another time she learned the superstition about peach tree because she saw her new neighbors cutting down a peach tree in their front yard and asked them why.

 

Main piece:

  • Peach tree

Peach trees should not be planted in front of the house.

The first reason is related to a Chinese folk speech: 桃花运 (In Pinyin: Táo Huā Yùn, Literally: Peach Flower Luck), which means good luck of encountering love relationships. If people in the family frequently see peach flowers as they step out the door, that might bring extramarital affairs to this family, which should be avoided.

Another reason is that in Chinese folklores, weapons or charms made of peach wood are used as tools in exorcism. So peach wood is considered to be related with evil things and people don’t want them to grow near their house.

 

  • Mulberry tree

Mulberry trees should not be planted in front of the house. The Chinese name for mulberry tree is 桑树 (In Pinyin: Sāng Shù, literally: Mulberry Tree) . Meanwhile, another character with the same pronunciation, 丧 (In Pinyin: Sāng), means funerals and mourning. Thus it is not a good sign to plant mulberry trees in front of one’s house.

 

  • Willow tree

Willow trees should not be planted in the back yard. Because willow trees do not bear fruits, willow trees in the back yard are believed to signify a family without offspring. Also, because willow trees often appear in Chinese grave yards (Collector’s note: which the informant doesn’t know why), they seem ominous.

 

 

Collector’s thoughts:

There are a lot of Chinese folk beliefs based on homophony or puns, probably because there are numerous Chinese characters with the same pronunciation. The belief about mulberry trees is a very good example. Chinese people also care a lot about arrangement, decoration and surroundings of their home.

Even though people do not necessarily believe in any cause-and-effect relation stated in these folk beliefs, they always think it’s better not to violate these taboos.

The folk belief about peach trees might count as a meta-folklore because it is derived from a folk speech and belief in magic.

Chinese Folk Belief on Leg Shaking

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2, 2017
Primary Language: English

Note: The form of this submission includes the dialogue between the informant and I before the cutoff (as you’ll see if you scroll down), as well as my own thoughts and other notes on the piece after the cutoff. The italics within the dialogue between the informant and I (before the cutoff) is where and what kind of direction I offered the informant whilst collecting. 

Informant’s Background:

My mom was born in Hong Kong and lived there up until she was 19 before moving here, and I was born here (in America).

Piece:

My mom would not let me or my brother shake our legs. You know how some people have that nervous tick where they shake their legs? Well she thought that it symbolized shaking money off a tree, so if we did it we wouldn’t be rich in the future. So she would tell us “we were shaking the money off the trees” so now me and my brother don’t shake our legs anymore, although we used to a lot when we were kids. 

Piece Background Information:

She probably got that from her parents as well.

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Context of Performance:

In person, during the day, in the informant’s apartment adjacent to USC’s campus in Los Angeles.

Thoughts on Piece: 

This is clearly an instance of homeopathic magic, where the mimicking of shaking a sort of trunk (legs seen as the foundation for which the body depends) has affects in reality and in this case negative effects of losing money or fortune. I could not find other similar accounts so it is pretty likely that the informant’s mother, and possibly the informant’s mother’s parents (and so on), have shared this with their children in order to stop them from shaking their legs and groom them into proper adults. Leg shakers are the worst.

Chinese Folk Belief on White Headdress

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2, 2017
Primary Language: English

Note: The form of this submission includes the dialogue between the informant and I before the cutoff (as you’ll see if you scroll down), as well as my own thoughts and other notes on the piece after the cutoff. The italics within the dialogue between the informant and I (before the cutoff) is where and what kind of direction I offered the informant whilst collecting. 

Informant’s Background:

My mom was born in Hong Kong and lived there up until she was 19 before moving here, and I was born here (in America).

Piece:

So my mom would not let me wear anything white on my head because she said that it meant like death in Chinese, or in China. So when I would try to wear like a white headband (I used to wear headbands) or put anything like a white hat on my head, she told me not to because it was death basically. 

Piece Background Information: 

Maybe when they bury someone, they put a white sash around their heads or something. It’s probably something her mom told her.

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Context of Performance:

In person, during the day, in the informant’s apartment adjacent to USC’s campus in Los Angeles.

Thoughts on Piece: 

Although the informant was not too sure on the origins behind this practice, the informant still holds to it to this day.Although I could not find anything supporting the informant’s belief that a white sash is placed upon the heads of the deceased when being buried, which would have been in a sense homeopathic magic (magic of similarity), there are clear associations between white and death, and it comes to no surprise that the informant’s mother would choose to see a white headdress as symbolizing death. Upon further research, apparently white is typically symbolic of the dead in Chinese funeral rituals – it is common in practice to place a white banner over the door of a household to signify that a death has occurred.