Text:
“When the baby is a hundred days old or something, yeah, the parents put like different objects in front of the baby each meaning like a different career or something lets say there’s like a book meaning you’re going to be a scholar or money meaning the baby is going to get rich and you see which one the baby picks as a way of predicting its future.”
Context:
Informant (JG) is a student aged 19 from Beijing, China. Although she was born in Los Angeles, she has spent most of her life living in China. She currently goes to USC. This piece was collected during an interview over breakfast in the dining hall. She’s seen this on tv shows and knows people who practice this tradition. She thinks parents want something psychic to guarantee success for their children.
Interpretation
As (JG) mentioned, this belief is largely meant to guarantee success for the baby. None of the options are negative; there isn’t an item that symbolizes bankruptcy or homelessness. This reflects a larger belief that whatever the baby picks is what they will have in life, so best not to lay anything negative in front of them.
Tag Archives: Folk Belief
Nian New Year
Text:
“I guess some Chinese stories and traditions have different meanings in different parts of China. For example, we like exchange red packets for new years and the reason why its red is cause in Chinese mythology there’s this monster that shows up every new year I forgot the reason but yeah in the story there’s a monster that shows up every new year and apparently, it’s scared of the color red which is why everything is in red. The monster’s name is:
Chinese: 年獸
Phonetic: nián shòu
Transliteration: zodiac
Translation: year
and if you translate it into English it means year. I don’t know the story, but thats also part of the reason we have fireworks is to scare the monster.”
Context:
Informant (JG) is a student aged 19 from Beijing, China. Although she was born in Los Angeles, she has spent most of her life living in China. She currently goes to USC. This piece was collected during an interview over breakfast in the dining hall. She learned this in primary school. She doesn’t have any interpretations for its meaning, she just thinks it’s there to preserve New Year traditions.
Interpretation:
This folk belief demonstrates how elements of festivals and folk practices may be “rationalized” by other elements of folklore. In this instance, the possibility of a monster is what drives part of the folk practice. It also encourages the people to keep the tradition going.
The Cursed Daughter
CONTEXT/BACKGROUND:
The interlocutor (JG) has many relatives living in Mexico and is a first-generation Mexican American themself. The area their family is from is very superstitious about witches, curses, and magic. The following describes one of the stories about curses being put on a member of that community.
DESCRIPTION: (told over a phone call)
(JG): “Okay-but, so- basically, um…my grandma has a house in Mexico. She lives here now, um, ‘cuz she came over here but like, she still has her house in Mexico. And that’s where we stay whenever we go visit. Um, and she told us this story about how when she was younger, her next-door neighbor, this older woman, had a daughter. And the daughter got cursed by someone. They don’t know what happened. They probably think it had something to do with a…cheating situation, ‘cuz that was a lot of the things back then, or…even now. Yeah. And so she got cursed.
So apparently she got really, really skinny, like she completely lost her appetite. Um… she started throwing up lizards, and they said that like, nails started coming out of her head. I’m not sure if it’s like, fingernails or if it was like, steel nails. But yeah, my grandma wouldn’t really ever see her, since she was always inside the house and stuff, but she started getting really, really bad. And so they started a healing process, like, they brought a healer. And one of that included like, putting a lizard in a jar and like letting it shrivel up and die, and that killed off that part of it. Um… and then they tried to do like, an exorcism-type-of-thing. But, something went wrong and like, the house started catching fire. But it was only that house.
And so like, that house is still burnt—like, we can see it when we go. The daughter, I think, turned out fine, like everything turned out okay, but that was one thing that happened.”
FINAL THOUGHTS/OBSERVATIONS:
I’m curious about the effects of the curse, from the lack of appetite to the more surreal aspects, such as the lizards and the nails. I’m conflicted about the legitimacy of this story, since JG did bring up how everyone in their grandmother’s community knew about it but never really saw the girl, so all of the information they had was mostly word-of-mouth. I’m also unsure about whether this was a result of homeopathic or contagious magic, and while JG doesn’t know too many details of the curse itself, they do know that many kinds of these curses have some connection to the person’s corporeal self, so I’m leaning more towards understanding this curse as a form of contagious magic.
Witchcraft and Curses in Mexico
CONTEXT/BACKGROUND:
The interlocutor (JG) has many relatives living in Mexico and is a first-generation Mexican American themself. The area their family is from is very superstitious about witches, curses, and magic. The following describes one of the stories about the community’s cemeteries acting as a hotspot for placing curses
DESCRIPTION: (told over the phone)
(JG): “There’s also a really….because witchcraft is just like—fairly common in Mexico, especially in the cemeteries. So like, when we went to the cemetery, ‘cuz we went to go visit my uncles and we also went for like, a spooky little tour that they do.
There’s this grave that’s like, split open, like it’s broken open, and they regularly have to send people to like, check, because they put like, little witchcraft charms in there to curse people…because of, like, the energy of the cemetery. So they do that.
And then also, when we went to go visit my uncle, my brother saw something sticking out of the ground. And he was like, “What is that?” (He was like, younger.)
So he went to like, dig it out and it was a picture of a guy and it had like a coin and some pottery stuff… and it was meant to cure him. And that man had been, like, cursed. So we had to take it to a priest and he had to like, bless it and undo the curse. So that was that.”
FINAL THOUGHTS/OBSERVATIONS:
Different stories about magic and curses are prevalent across cultures, and I definitely find it interesting to hear about the different ways people acknowledge and try to free themselves of these malevolent forms of magic. Oftentimes, we hear about curses being lifted by some kind of shaman or healer, one that the community designates as someone who can control or get rid of a curse. JG and their family taking the cursed objects to a priest is an example of this.
I also find that the graveyards being a hotspot for these curses to get placed makes a lot of sense. Since death is a major element of these curses and is considered one of the worst effects a curse can allegedly have on a person, it’s no wonder that curses and cursed objects can be found throughout a cemetery.
Color Green Protects Eyes
Background: The transcribed conversation between me and the informant shows folk belief on how to protect eyesight.
Informant: My mom bought a cactus for me… she says it absorbs radiation from computers and cellphones…
Me: Does it really? I’ve heard of it before but I don’t think it actually works.
Informant: I’m not sure, but I fell like it’s just a misconception. Mom says it protects your eyesight…maybe because it’s green?
Me: Oh that kind of makes sense. I’ve heard a million times that green protects your eyes, not sure if it’s true. Where did you first hear that?
Informant: I don’t know but I’d guess it’s because green is the color of nature and we’re supposed to look at nature more hahaha
Analysis: Cactus or other things can absorb radiation; color green protects eyes. These two are fairly common folk beliefs. They reflect that while we are surrounded by technologies, people can still be suspicious of the constant progress and existence of certain technologies. The association between color green and nature shows that nature is still regarded as healing, healthy, and in control.