Tag Archives: luck

You shouldn’t wash your hair the day before Chinese New Year, because then you will wash away all your luck

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Diego
Performance Date: 04/20/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant is currently a student at the University of Southern California and has resided in the United States all her life, though she has gown up with Asian culture due to her parents. She knows many Chinese, Japanese and Thai proverbs due to the fact that her mother is Thai and because she studied abroad in Japan when she was in high school. She first heard this saying when her mother told about it when she was a young child as New Year’s was approaching.The folk belief about good and bad luck is a prominent theme in Chinese culture and the community has several different things that indicate good and bad luck in their society. In Chinese folklore, the informant says that a lot of beliefs are mimicked by the actions of a person. For example, the luck is washed away because a person washes their hair. The act of washing one’s hair simultaneously causes the luck to “wash” away as well. She says that there are several pieces of folk beliefs in China and East Asia that pertain to these types of actions.

I agree that Chinese folklore does have a lot of superstitions about good and bad luck. The analysis of the meaning behind the saying also makes a logical progression, which is easy to follow. The saying is very phonetic, like many of the sayings and proverbs in Asian culture. However, the informant couldn’t tell me why exactly the saying was the day before Chinese New Year’s. I believe it is because Chinese New Year’s is a day full of celebration and beginning anew for the year, and to wash one’s hair the night before would be washing away all the luck that one would have begun with for the year. It is also possible that because the night before New Year’s is a liminal phase between the end of one year and the beginning of a new year, the creation and participation in this ritual is is important.

“Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than be good.”

Nationality: Italian- American and "mix of other ethnicities"
Age: 58
Occupation: General Surgeon
Residence: San Diego, California
Performance Date: 3.23.12
Primary Language: English

Saying described verbatim by informant and his wife:

“We use that a lot at work, in surgery, in medicine. And there are there are times when (pause) no matter how good a surgeon you are the result is not what you hope it would be, the patient doesn’t do as well. You can do the same operation the same way, you know, the same way on ten people but you can get you know 3 or 4 different results and so. It’s not to belittle anybody’s effort or ability but sometimes it just matters you know how the cards are dealt. And uh an example, another example would be: we take call at night, you work all night. Some nights a guy will be, won’t have any emergency surgery to do and he’ll be able to sleep all night and there are other nights where the guy is up All night uh through no fault of his own just happened to be a night where a lot of people showed up in the emergency room. So we always look at each other and we say ‘Well, it’s better to be lucky than good’ cuz no matter how good a surgeon you are you’d rather be lucky and not be working all night. You’d rather be the lucky one that gets to sleep.

I don’t think that phrase is unique to surgeons or in the medical world.

(wife’s interjection speaking quickly and emphatically: You’ve been saying that since the day I met you. You didn’t say that as a surgeon. You said that, when I met you you were saying that. Because you said you were good all the time and you had no luck. You used to say that all the time, I’d say like you know “You’re so good,” and he was like “Yeah, well sometimes its better to be lucky than be good.” And I was like, “Well what do you mean by that?” You’re like “You know I have no luck” Kay, not for nothing, you’re a pretty lucky guy, you work really hard but some people work really hard and they don’t get places, but that’s for another day)

(In answer) Well, there’s also the expression that you make your own luck, so. But I don’t, I didn’t realize that I said that so often but I don’t think the phrase is unique to me. I think I heard it from someone else.

(wife: No, of course not. But it obviously spoke to you. Right?)

I always think of my brother P. (P is an name substitute to keep confidentiality) cuz my brother P. was kind of an imp of a boy, always in trouble, but he was always incredibly lucky. I mean he he

(wife speaking as he spoke: The luck of the Irish!)

never got caught by the cops, he uh um he did very well playing cards um always had luck with cards (laughing)

(wife: Always had incredible luck with women)

Yeah well, he was very handsome so he didn’t have to be lucky

(wife disagreeing: Uhhh, I’m sorry)

but but uh certainly, Certainly when I’d look around at how hard I was working at school and he was still pullin good grades uh, usually he was lucky he had a good teacher or he had a good friend.

(wife’s question: Did he get good grades?)

He got okay grades, much better than he deserved (laughing) so.”

Obviously this proverb applies to numerous situations. For my informant, it held truth in both his professional and personal lives. With a high-stress high-stakes job as a general surgeon, the subjective reality of treating patients sometimes can only be justified and understood with the concept of luck. Since their work holds great consequence to people’s lives, when things don’t work as they “are supposed to” it can be a heavy blow to both their conscience and confidence. Being a good surgeon and doing things exactly as they are supposed to isn’t always enough to save someone, and that can understandably be a difficult concept to wrap their heads around. Also, the absurdly difficult “On Call” shift in the Emergency Room overnight takes a lot out of surgeons physically and mentally. Having the luck to sleep through the night is often favorable to performing surgery all night; even though you may be a good surgeon and can help people, there’s luck in the sense that people aren’t sick and don’t need help, which in turn is lucky for surgeons who can then get some sleep. So far as my informant’s personal life, he sees his impish younger brother as having luck in the sense that things easily work in his favor. Naturally, a man who by both his wife’s and his own description is a “good,” hardworking person, it’s easy to view the luck and ease his bad-boy brother always had as both irritating and enviable. Good for him that he can smile and laugh about it. In this manner, the proverb is almost a calming truth; not everything is within your power. That luck is an important concept to my informant whose family is a mix of Italian-American and Irish-American, among other things, isn’t so surprising.

Never Let a Cat Near a Baby

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Residence: NC
Performance Date: 2000
Primary Language: English

My informant for this story is my friend’s mother.

She has always loved cats.  When I would spend time at their house, I would see the cats and pet them and I developed an appreciation for them.  This was fairly new to me, because my family had always preferred dogs so I had never had a great deal of experience with cats.  One time, the cat swiped its claws at my hand and scratched it deep enough to draw blood.

My friend’s mother felt bad and she mentioned something about the fact that cats shouldn’t ever be around babies.  I asked her why and what that meant and she explained the superstition that cats such the breath out of a baby and kill it.  She also explained that the basis for this fear is the multitude of times in history when a cat would smell the milk or lactic acid on a baby’s breath and jump up on to the baby and put its own mouth near the baby’s mouth.  Most times, as is imaginable, the parents thought this was very cute and left it.  But, sometimes the cat would be too heavy and would constrict the baby’s lungs or airway, causing them to suffocate and die.  It is understandable that with the proximity of the cat’s mouth to the baby’s mouth, an association would be made that resembled a cat sucking the life out of a baby.

See a Penny

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 55
Residence: Wilmington, CA
Performance Date: January 2012
Primary Language: Spanish

When I was a little girl I would pick up coins I found on the street indiscriminately. One day my uncle say me pick up a penny and smacked it out of my hand. The penny I had picked up had been tails-up and according to my uncle, was therefore bad luck. He believed picking up pennies in particular to be good luck but only if done in a certain way:

” ‘Nomas cuando cae de cara lo levantas. Y luego le ases la señal de la cruz en el cemento o donde haiga caído. Si no lo persinas entonces no es buena suerte. Y de una vez te persinas tu tambien para que tengas mejor suerte”

“Only pick it up when it’s heads-up. And then you have to make the sign of the cross in the cement or wherever it had fallen. If you don’t cross it, then it’s not good luck. And you might as well cross yourself with it too so that you can have better luck.”

My uncle was a devout Catholic who immigrated here when he was an adult. He is particularly attached to his rural Mexican and Catholic superstitions in America. He came to the U.S. for the prospect of economic advancement. While I’ve heard it is prudent to bless any money you find from other people in my family or Mexicans from the same region as them (Southern Mexico) my uncle always stressed pennies were the only luck money to pick up. In fact he thought it especially bad luck if you found bills – the higher the value of the money the worst the luck.

I believe this is a reflection of his reconciling his rural and religious virtues with his experience in the economic culture of America. He appreciated the economic resources of this country and therefore saw the value in picking up found money. But his background warned him against potential greed that would distance him from his religious beliefs. Pennies symbolized a brick-by-brick approach to economic gain that he could support.

After my uncle told me about this I was particularly attentive to pennies, and anytime I saw a penny I would think of the rhyme from the musical movie Grease (1978):

“See a penny pick it up… all day long you’ll have good luck!”

Frenchy recites this rhyme and is the one prudent enough to notice the penny to give to Kenickie for good luck in his race. Rizzo’s greedily intercepts Frenchy, however, and she snatches the lucky penny to give to Kenickie herself. The penny then not only looses it’s luck so innocently acquired by Frency, but it becomes unlucky as it causes Kenickie to get a concussion which takes him out the race completely.

 

Chinese folk belief: Signing in red ink

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (Business Administration)
Residence: Atlanta, Georgia
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese, German

My informant doesn’t remember having ever seen a red pen in her house. When she was in elementary school, she found out why. She’d written her name on a homework assignment in red colored pencil, and her mom made her erase it and write over it in black. Her mom explained that in ancient China, the names of people who were condemned to be executed were written in red ink, so writing your name in red is bad luck.

Though my informant doesn’t believe that signing her name in red will bring her bad luck, she never does it because “there’s no particular reason to sign in red when I could just as easily sign in any other color that isn’t associated with bad luck.”

I found this superstition interesting, since Chinese signature chops are usually stamped in red ink. Also, the Chinese consider red to be a lucky color. Both of these facts seem to contradict this particular superstition.