Tag Archives: Chinese

Chinese Proverb

Nationality: Taiwanese
Age: 68
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Taipei, Taiwan
Performance Date: March 15, 2012
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Taiwanese

“If you want to live, you have got to keep moving.”

My informant told me this proverb while she was taking me on a tour of an outdoor shopping center.  I had been really tired as we had been out for over two hours already and had asked if her if I could take a quick sitting break.  At this point, she said this proverb to me.  I asked her where she had heard it from and she told me that her friend had told her that phrase when he was trying to inspire her to exercise more.

I further asked her what the phrase meant to her.  She replied that when she first heard it, she just took on a biological interpretation of it.  In her words, she said, “People who exercise do actually live longer.”  However, after further pondering it, she felt like it was good spiritual motto for how to live her life in which she needs to continually go out or “move” in order to truly take advantage of the thrills and excitement in life. I agree with both of her interpretations of this and feel that it must have originated initially as a phrase to inspire an active lifestyle.

Chinese Hansel and Gretel

Nationality: Taiwanese
Age: 68
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Taipei, Taiwan
Performance Date: March 15, 2012
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Taiwanese, Japanese

(Translated from Chinese) Once upon a time, there were these two children, a brother and a sister.  The brother and sister had both been very bad children so their mother sent them out into the forest and told them not to come back until they had learned their lesson.  The children wandered around. It became very dark, and they began to look around for shelter.  They came upon this little house and knocked on the door.  An old grandma answered the door and let the two children stay in the house.  She led them upstairs where there were two separate bedrooms and told them that they each could have their own bedroom.  The brother and sister went into different rooms and went to bed.  A couple hours later, the sister heard a really loud crunching noise (made a crunching noise).  She tried to ignore it, but the crunching was so loud that she went downstairs to see where the sound was coming from.  Downstairs, she saw that the old lady was eating something, and the crunching was coming from the old grandma chewing.  The little girl asked, “Granny, what are you eating?” The grandma replied, “I’m just eating some peanuts, go back to bed.”  The little girl went back to her room but did not go back to bed.  Instead, she waited for the grandma to go to bed and then, she came back down to inspect what she was eating.  When she looked into the bowls, she saw small, little bones.  Horrified, she ran back upstairs to find her brother but found that her brother was nowhere to be found, only his clothes were laid on his bed.  The sister was able to figure out that the old grandma had eaten her brother.  She quickly ran out of the house and back home, where she told her mother that she had learned her lesson and begged her to take her back.  The mother let the daughter back in the house, and the girl was never disobedient again.

My informant has told me this story quite frequently when I was child.  This story was usually told at night as a bedtime story.  She told me that this story had been passed down through the family as her grandmother had told her when she was younger.  I asked my informant what her interpretation of the story was, and she replied that it was a way to teach children to be obedient to their parents.

After rehearing this story again, I realized that there is definitely a connection with “Hansel and Gretel.”  Some common elements include the presence of a brother and a sister, the setting in the forest, and an old woman who likes to eat children.  However, there are some major deviations such as the fact that the brother dies, the mother is the one who sends the children out, and the old woman does not die in the end.  While “Hansel and Gretel” served more as just a fairytale, this story had a pretty clear lesson to it; listen to your parents, or else you will be eaten by an old lady.

Chinese-English Spider Joke

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 53
Occupation: CEO of an electronics company
Residence: California
Performance Date: December, 17, 2011
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, Vietnamese, Cantonese

蜘蛛是什么颜色? 白色. 是白的.
Translated: What color is a spider? White. It is white.

This joke was heard at a Christmas party for a company that was predominantly made up of Chinese people.  This joke requires an understanding of both English and Chinese in order to fully understand the punch line.  At first, the question seems relatively easy as it is just asking the audience what color is a spider.  Audience members tended to yell out colors such as black or brown.  At this point, the informant would yell out “白色” (pronounced “bai se”), which means white in Chinese.  Then after hearing the confusions from the audience members, the informant would say, “是白的” (“It is white” in Engllish), which is pronounced, “Sh bai de.”  As an English speaker can see, that particular phrase sounds like the word “spider.”

My informant told me that he heard this joke first when he was learning English after coming toAmerica.  He told me that he felt a sense of accomplishment when he was able to understand the punch line as it marked his achievement in English comprehension.  For me, this poem is a symbol for the blending of English/American and Chinese culture since the two respective languages are necessary for this joke.

擲筊 – Fortunetelling Blocks

Nationality: Taiwanese
Age: 43
Occupation: President of an electronics company
Residence: Newport Beach, CA
Performance Date: April 14, 2012
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, Taiwanese

擲筊 (Bwa Bwei) Blocks and the Different Responses擲筊 (Bwa Bwei) is an ancient from of fortune telling. My informant, a Buddhist, uses these wooden blocks as a way to ask Buddha questions. Bwa Bwei comes in the form of two curved red blocks; one side of the block is flat and the other is round. The blocks are thrown onto the ground and the way they land represent different answers. In figure A, one lands on the flat side and the other lands on its round side. This represents a "yes" answer. Both figures B and C represent "no" answers, but have different meanings. For figure B, Buddha is angry at the question being asked. For figure C, Buddha is laughing at the question. The blocks have to be thrown three times and get the same answer all three times in order to be a confirmed answer.

My informant told me about this ritual when we were visiting a Hsi Lai Temple, a Buddhist worshiping center.  She told me she had learned this from a monk when she was little girl attending Temple.  She uses this method to answer a lot of personal and financial question.  An example of questions that she was ask are “Will this business deal be good for the company?” and “Will my daughter get into college?”  I asked her if she truly believed that Bwa Bweis revealed the best answers and possibly, the future.  My informant replied that for her, they have never been wrong.

I think that this form of fortune telling is a way to emphasize and support the idea of destiny.  Since the questions asked tend to be ones that reveal what will happen in the future, the answers seem to suggest that the future is set in stone and is just waiting to happen.  At the same time, I also view this practice as a stress reliever of sorts since the questions are usually associated with stress-inducing topics.  By getting an answer, the person no longer has to really worry anymore since the result is inevitable.

Teeth Falling Out in a Dream Means Deceit

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

My informant told me about a time when he was younger, maybe thirteen, and he had a dream about his teeth falling out. In the dream, his teeth began to feel loose and when he touched them they started to all fall out. He remembers being mortified and having a great sense of anxiety; the dream felt very real. When he woke up, he told his grandma, who lived with him. She got angry at him and told him the dream meant he had been telling lies; this was common knowledge in China. He tried to tell her he hadn’t been, but she wouldn’t believe him. His parents didn’t think much of the dream, though, and didn’t think their son had been telling lies.

He said he remembers the incident because the dream felt very real and it had disturbed him. He’d also been very upset to have his grandma angry at him when he felt he hadn’t done anything wrong. I could even see him become uncomfortable as he remembered the event.

I think it’s interesting to see that while his grandma put a lot of stock in this folk belief, his parents, the next generation, did not. This could reflect a changing attitude in the world and show how more recent generations are more apt to side with science and logic rather than trust old folk beliefs and superstitions. I also think it’s interesting to see that losing teeth became symbolic of telling lies, as if the lies had been so caustic that when they exited the mouth, they caused the teeth to fall out. Or maybe losing teeth in the dream was almost like a punishment for lying. I’ve heard the more modern belief that losing teeth in a dream represents a lack of confidence or feeling of insecurity. Because we use teeth to forcefully chew our food, they represent power, and seeing them fall out could reflect a sense that we have lost power in our lives. Another interpretation I’ve heard of the dream is that it indicates a family member will die, though I don’t know how that necessarily relates to teeth falling out, except maybe because people lose their teeth when they grow old and approach death.