Tag Archives: Mandarin

The Girl with the Red Thread

Age: 18

Context:

One evening, while walking on campus with my friend, we began sharing spooky stories. She suddenly recalled something that had haunted her for years — a strange experience she had as a child, which had blurred the lines between dream, memory, and legend. This is the story she told me.

The Story:

When she was around 7 or 8 years old, she lived in a home with a study room that had a bed but was rarely used. One night, after waking from a nightmare, she found herself in that very study — a place she never usually slept in. She remembered lying beside her mom, both of them facing the wall, and gently shaking her awake out of fear.

She asked her mom to tell her a story because she couldn’t sleep. Strangely, her mom — who was known to strictly avoid ghost stories or anything scary — agreed. What happened next would stay with her for life.

Still facing the wall, her mom began to tell a ghost story. In the story, a nurse was working the night shift at a hospital. One evening, while heading out from the first floor, she took the elevator — but somehow, the elevator inexplicably descended to the 4th basement level instead, a floor used as a morgue.

This floor had no button, no lights, and no one should have been able to access it. But the elevator stopped there, the doors opened, and the nurse saw a little girl standing silently in the dark. The girl got into the elevator with her.

As the nurse glanced over, she noticed a red thread tied around the girl’s wrist. In Chinese superstition, red thread on the wrist is sometimes associated with the dead. The nurse was so frightened she reportedly died on the spot.

What terrified my friend wasn’t just the story itself — it was the realization much later in life that this was a widely circulated urban legend. Many people she later met had heard it before. And yet, she had never heard it before that night, and neither had her mother — who later insisted, repeatedly and sincerely, that she had no memory of telling the story, or even of waking up that night.

My friend later searched the story online and found that it had indeed been turned into a movie, or at least referenced in popular media. This deepened the mystery: how could a widely known ghost story have been told to her by someone who had never heard it — someone who vehemently denied ever telling it?

To this day, my friend remains disturbed by this experience. She remembers it vividly. Her mother, however, insists it never happened.

The Informant’s Thoughts:

She finds this story creepy, not because of the ghost itself, but because of the contradiction between her clear memory and her mother’s absolute denial. She believes the most chilling part of the experience isn’t the plot, but the uncertainty of how she ever came to hear it.

Years later, when telling others the story of the girl with the red thread, people would say, “Oh, I’ve heard that one!” But she hadn’t. Not before that night. Not ever.

My Thoughts:

What makes this story so compelling is not just the content of the ghost story, but how it plays with memory, belief, and reality. The idea that a story could be “implanted” through a moment that no one else remembers adds an eerie, almost psychological horror element to the tale.

It made me question how many of our memories are truly our own — and how stories that seem personal might actually belong to something much larger, floating around in the cultural subconscious, waiting to find a host.

The repetition — her telling the story to others, retelling it to her mother, and hearing denials each time — builds a quiet but powerful kind of fear. Over time, the story’s scariness comes not from the ghost, but from the accumulated sense of being haunted by a memory no one else shares.

As a piece of folklore, it’s fascinating because it shows how legends can find their way into our lives, not just through media or hearsay, but through deeply personal and unexplainable experiences.

The Shadow Behind the Curtain

Age: 18

Context:

This story was told to me by a Chinese international student at USC, whom I’ll refer to as SG. We were sitting together in one of the quiet study lounges at Parkside after midnight, discussing the kinds of ghost stories we’d heard growing up in China. That’s when she told me something she had never written down or shared publicly—something that happened to her in her childhood that she still remembers with frightening clarity.

The Story:

When SG was 10 years old, she lived with her grandparents in Harbin, a city known for its long, dark winters. Her grandfather had a habit of rising very early, often before sunrise, to boil water and do light chores. Their apartment had large, thick curtains that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room.

One early winter morning, just before 6 a.m., SG woke up suddenly. She had heard soft footsteps and assumed her grandfather was up again. Curious and still sleepy, she wandered out to the living room—only to find it completely dark, with no lights on. She paused at the doorway.

That’s when she saw it: a silhouette of a person standing perfectly still behind the curtain, as if staring out the window. The form was unmistakably human—tall, slightly hunched, and entirely motionless.

Thinking it was her grandfather, she called out to him.

No answer.

She approached slowly, heart pounding. The air felt wrong—too still, too cold, as if the temperature had dropped. When she finally touched the curtain and pulled it aside—

There was no one there.

No one in the room. No sound of footsteps. No open windows. Just the snow falling silently outside.

Terrified, she ran back to her room and hid under her blanket. She didn’t tell anyone for weeks.

Informant’s Thoughts (SG):

SG says what disturbed her most wasn’t the sight of the shadow, but the fact that she saw it so clearly, and yet her grandfather had still been asleep in his room the whole time. Years later, she still isn’t sure if it was a dream, a hallucination, or something else.

What unsettles her most is that she continues to experience the exact same dream every few years: waking up in a different place, walking into a dark living room, and seeing a shadow behind a curtain.

Each time, she says, she wakes up before pulling the curtain open.

My Thoughts:

To me, what makes SG’s story haunting isn’t just the visual horror of the silhouette—it’s the way it has embedded itself into her memory and dreams, repeating like a ritual.

I’m struck by how familiar this setting feels: cold northern apartment, heavy winter curtains, the eeriness of early morning silence. Even though nothing explicitly supernatural happens, the ambiguity makes it even scarier.

It also makes me think about how many ghost stories we hear as children in China are tied to domestic spaces—kitchens, hallways, staircases—not abandoned mansions or graveyards. They are ordinary spaces made terrifying by something just a little out of place.

This story lingered with me long after she told it—not because of a ghost, but because of the uncertainty that still follows her.

Proverb – “Eat from the Bowl, Look from the Pot”

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Near USC campus
Performance Date: 2/21/2023
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Text:
Mandarin (Simplified): “吃着碗里，看着锅里”
Pinyin (Simplified) : chi zhe wan li, kan zhe guo li
Literal translation: Eating in the bowl, looking in the pot

Context:
C is a Chinese international student from Anhui Province, Hefei studying at USC. There were a lot of pauses between sentences as C was finding the right words, as English was not his first language.
C： “This folk speech is relatively widespread in China. It’s not very local or original, but it’s more like a proverb. That kind of thing. It’s called “吃着碗里，看着锅里“ (chi zhe wan li, kan zhe guo li). My parents used that a lot with me, because when I was very young, I tend to be very protective of my food. And that’s why my parents described me as that. It translates that you’re eating the food in the bowl, and looking at the food in the pot. I remember one time when my cousin was visiting over the weekend and my parents was cooking a lot of good food. I was always the one eating the chicken leg, the best part of the chicken. And I was so protective, I licked the chicken. I was so young at the time. And my mom said that [proverb to me]. In my family, it was more about not being greedy.”

Interpretation:
This proverb is a shorthand bit of wisdom passed down from parent to child. It condones the subject for being too greedy with food. In Mandarin, it’s also a comment on personal character. The direct English translation implies a passiveness to eating and looking, merely an observation. What’s lost from the original Chinese wording is the tone of condescension and the clear subject being the person who is eating. It is not only an observation but a warning. What is in the pot, what the eater cannot look away from, is something the bowl cannot and will not have. This proverb is not only about sharing food with others, but also a caution against selfish desire. One’s personal needs cannot always come first in every situation nor can they be met perfectly. It is not the right response to be ungrateful and expectant for a self-centered result every time, but better to practice moderation and patience with what one wants most and be understanding towards others about their own desires. This proverb’s nugget of knowledge goes past the surface level hoarding of food and deeper into human nature without becoming overbearingly moral. It exemplifies how proverbs operate in folklore well; as generational sayings that though short, have deep meaning.

Chinese Proverb of “To Kill Two Birds with One Stone”

Nationality: Chinese/ french
Age: 23
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin/ French

Main Story: 

“There is a common saying in Chinese (Mandarin) : 箭双雕” 

Original Script : 箭双雕 

Phonetic: Yi (Yee) Jian Shuang Diao

Transliteration: Complete two tasks with one job 

Full translation: to shoot two birds with one arrow

This saying is also present in English, it is the same concept as “to kill two birds with one stone”. The theory being you can complete two separate tasks with one action. For example: say a person has to go get a test done at the doctor’s office and also a check up with a different doctor. But both doctors happen to operate out of the same medical office building. By scheduling the appointments back to back, the person is able to complete two tasks (the doctors’ appointments) with one action (driving to the medical office building). 

Background: 

The informant of this info is my friend and she is Chinese and used to live in Shanghai. She always found it interesting that this phrase exists in both English and in Chinese in an almost synonymous context. She can’t find anywhere as to which phrase came first and who got it from who or if the similarity is purely coincidental, and if it is a coincidental likeness then she wanders what does that say about human nature? 

Context:

The informant is a friend of mine and we were video calling over the phone during quarantine and just chatting about life and funny coincidences across cultures.

My thoughts: 

I kind of agree with my friend on how she feels about the odd coincidence between the two languages and the same phrase. It is interesting that they are so similar in literally every aspect of their meaning. 

Clock and Watch

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 13th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Informant Background: The informant was born in rural parts of China called Hainan. She lived there with her grandparents where she attended elementary school. She moved to the United States when she was thirteen. She speaks both Chinese and English. She lives in Los Angeles with her mother but travels back to visit her relatives in Beijing and Hainan every year. She and her mother still practice a lot of Chinese traditions and celebrate Chinese holidays through special meals.

 

In Chinese you can’t say the word clock because in Chinese the word clock sounds the same as death. People usually point at the clock instead of saying it or called it “big watch,” “time,” “the time thing,” etc. If you end up saying the word then you have to apologize to the people around them for giving them bad luck.

The informant lives in the United States but still speak Chinese. She was taught about this ever since she can speak the language. It was emphasizing in the family and she found out it is practiced among her relatives and her friend’s family as well.

 

I think this is similar practice to the reason Chinese people avoid saying the word four because it sounds like they are saying death. Death, which is the unknown, is feared and avoided in everyday life. The idea of death is only mentioned and emphasized at funeral. The clock, in this case, has a nickname to avoid saying the actual word. Certain words that have overlapping sound are then muted for everyday life. The same way funeral rituals occur as a special event, words surrounding that particular event are prohibited to occur at any other time otherwise bad luck will enter your life. It is also similar to Western culture’s belief around the number thirteen where in a tall building floor 13 are eliminated.

I always find it peculiar that many everyday word and objects can have bad luck connotation through the way it sounds; also having to apologize for saying those words by mistake. This reinforces the idea of belief and how the truth value of it is irrelevant to whether or not it is practiced. Saying the word “four” or “clock” in Chinese would not bring bad luck but it would bring the belief of bad luck. I think that these traditions are carried through as accepted practice rather than the actual fear of the consequences.